Poor soul, grieving is all you’re bound to know
You burn the weak bridges of distant bays
In the barren shade you will never grow


You’ll reap the rotted seeds of all you sow
Doomed to be alone for the coming days
Poor soul, grieving is all you’re bound to know


Neither pain, nor pleasure, will make you glow
Stuck forever in your pitiful ways
In the barren shade you will never grow


Through evil, twisted words and forked-tongue woe
Do your everything to push them away
Poor soul, grieving is all you’re bound to know


In the haste of fright, you condemn your foe
Care little to not for the truth they say
In the barren shade you will never grow


I’d give you my heart for this final blow
Even for the fruit of love you’d not stay
Poor soul, grieving is all you’re bound to know
In the barren shade you will never grow

Dear Father
I’m alone in a very scary place
And I’m not certain how I got here.
I lost sight of the footprints I was following
And wandered off the pathway you laid out for me.

The wind is cold and the sky is dark.
I just heard screeches from the nearby woods
And this path ends in only brambles.
Kneeling on the rocky ground
I beseech the Lord to rescue me.
He either doesn’t hear my cry
Or this is where I need to be
To learn to never take my eyes
Away from the light that guides me.
ljm

Within each and every breath
wisps of it all drench alleles
swiftly, surgically.

Every photon, widening iris
consuming every angle
insatiable and unrepentant

Not anything but desire
coating a soul in what
a matte finish?

Fingertips around a waist,
leaning with closed eyes,
breath upon cold ears

Just another beat
another beat
another beat

Chanting so violently
it cannot be craved any more
any more than one can be loved

I told him I am sort of addicted to poetry
He said there are worse addictions
Simone Weil
The love of God and affliction

I like universities
But just to walk around
Everybody knows
I am the newsboy of this town

Encounters with Chinese hermits
Solitude the path
Clifford Pickover
Theology and math

I drive my son to work today
A Series of Unfortunate Events
According to T.S. Eliot
God relentlessly prevents

     Let us rise and go hence

Appearances in places of worship,
When thoughts and behavior differ in mind,
Recital of prayers are meaningless,
The deaf will easily befriend the blind.
There are correct ways to live humanely,
To live peacefully and avoid envy,
Practise simple philosophies of life,
Nurture understanding and empathy.

i'd stopped writing poetry
when i first met you...
i didn't need to anymore.



it's been a year now
and all i need is you.

but it's been so long that i've forgotten how to write.

Now here you come again to fetch me from the sea,
Ballast in my bones, this girl was born to sink;
A cautionary tale, I slip between the wood,
Limbs whittled thin and feet stained with soot.

But never-mind the waif; she waxes so pale
Drunk on dejection, I ponder the veil
Leaden and listless, for the sirens will sing:
Amaranthine is the color I bleed for the sea.

So I’ll spit out my sorrows wherever they listen,
Pumped me with pills and said that they fixed it.
The darlings have died off; the dolls are all broken,
Just left is me, thin-skinned and soft spoken.

And I’d rather lick knives than chew on love’s gristle,
Like a dog on a chain, I’d run when you whistle.
Far from it now, yet lost in the maze:
Chasing ways out for the rest of my daze.

tears keep flowing sometimes
and i wipe them all the time
but this time
won’t wipe my own tears this time
will let them flow in their own
flow, oh so slow sometimes
so low
won’t resist my own pain this time
cause my heart is tired of it all the time
how long can you resist to the flow
of a river of sadness, fueled by loneliness?