Flicking through old photos
Since forever stashed under my bed
Mum points at one of me
Little, laughing
And my brothers
In colourful winter hats,
Climbing white trees,
A one of a kind cold day
The brown leaves sing
"Weren't you so cute?"
To think Christmas is wasted on me now
And I lie lamenting the happiness of someone long past
My throat hurts at the effort of not just bursting out
Crying
Like a baby as I lose control
In front of my own mother
That wasn't me on that fence
The little face swinging upside-down
That was someone pure
Locked inside me
That was light on a piece of card
I don't feel
Like a person
Anymore
I'm a mish-mash
Of random
Things
I am a split second
That's almost gone
I am traits, emotions, chemicals, hormones, electricity, fear, love, friendships
Fading into a maelstrom of humanness
Mounds of recycled carbon
Made-up meaning
Lost in fog
Where I begin and end fades
Into everything and nothing
I'm the dirt in the ground
The stars in the sky
Something words can't describe

Droplets of dark divine
                       rain
Don't really taste
                       of              
Wine, but water  
  
Still I savour those small things
Ringing out the night's nothings
On the wind's bitter gifts

Til there is nothing left
And I have outlived myself
The cyclone leaves pirouette
Down into moon-glow
Puddles, ripples

The moment will soon be past
Eight thousand hours or so, I have tasted
But a fleeting crumb of the universe
Myself

Forever outliving myself until
The Sun's beams stain the clouds
Then who will look upon this frightened page
And see my soul in theirs?

I sit alone beneath a dry hood
That patters like the slated roof
On days you slept scared

Of rain and thunder
I am all there is again
The page gets wetter and wetter

As the words fade out

To write real poetry
You have to feel something
So I'm sorry

At last the autumn
wind has stripped
the branches bare.
Even insubordinate
trees now stretch

their naked limbs
along a leaf of sky;

timber ledger lines
compose a staff
where birds rest
as quarter notes,
the nested chimes
of winter’s song.

You and I unlace
our leather boots.

We wait for snow,
white and absolute,
to change the score,
to blanket measured
roots, a silent chorus.

and it is beautiful
the snow fall making a winter blanket
for all the trees
meanwhile
on the other side of the world
a child in his bed gets his leg blown off
or just dies with nothing but hunger and pain
so I went about hanging lights on the
two evergreens in my yard
and the fake plywood santa
in his sleigh and all eight tiny reindeer
and had a realization again
of a boy and a ******* the streets of downtown Atlanta, Chicago
Detroit, or New York or Daleville
with no home, trying to live out of a small chevy or Ford or
Dodge , while Chevy and Dodge, got government help?
And they have no books , and their mom has bruises and
a broke arm and tries to care for them and cries while they sleep in the backseat and knows she could have done better and
is against the windshield in her hating herself
ashamed with not a bit of hope,
and I sit the star on top of the Tree and the glow lights the lawn and santa
winks in a pattern and Rudolph's nose glows red,
and it is all so beautiful