You’re never going to have the cake
Learn to like the taste of bread.

You’re never going to wear diamonds
Learn to appreciate cut glass.

You’re never going to hear applause
Learn to marvel at the stillness.

You’re never going to win the gold
Learn to admire the shine of copper.

You’re never going to be adored
Learn to love just being liked.

You’re never going to live forever
Learn to be your best today.
                 ljm

I’m trying so hard to maintain the flame
But my candle continues to flicker.
I’ve shielded it from the heaviest winds
But the breezes of sameness assail it.
I can’t see my way if it goes out completely
With darkness now poised to swoop in.
ljm

Looking for a sign that I’m heard-
Is it a bird outside my window,
A shaft of sunrise in my sky.
Is it a song come out of nowhere
Remembered and sung word for word.
How can you recognize a sign
When you don’t know what you’re looking for.
ljm

Dodging memories that bring me pain
I scurry through the obstacles
I set up for my foolish self
To keep me from the place I need to be.

I bruise my shins repeatedly
On dangers that I did not see
Due to the fancy mask I wear
That blocks half of my vision.

The need for haste is manifest
By ever looming banks of fog
That somehow scheme to bar my way
And keep me from salvation.
                 ljm

I’m in a contest I can’t win
Or even come in second.
My bird has flown from the streetlight arm
And taken promise with it.

Another lands and then departs
To mock my hopeful prayers
The sky teems with symbolic fowl
But I can’t suss their meaning.

A big one flew straight over me
But I can’t read its message.
Was it promising good health
Or telling me it’s sorry

That I’ll only get just what I have
To get me through tomorrow
And if I am not strong enough
The game will then be over.

Why are birds the messengers
In answer to my pleas
They send me signals I can’t read
And I walk on in darkness.
ljm

In the winter of
My darkest sadness
A candle glows,
Tiny and so far away.
It gives the darkness
A focal point and I
Struggle my way towards it.

Another candle lights my way.
I don’t know where it came from
But it makes a fearful journey
So much easier to manage,
And I eventually will dance
On thistledown to
The music of the Skylarks
In a sun-filled, cloudless sky.
  ljm

19 stones in the satchel I carry.
Some are huge and lots are small.
I hoist them up each morn at dawn
And stumble through another day
Looking for a place to put them down.
ljm