The older I get 
the less the word terminal bothers me.
I put my worries in a box called god 
and when my faith is weak 
I dump them out and burn them 
on the altar of my ego,
scraps of worded paper 
up in flames, 
legal words, ugly words, 
kindling of the heart words, 
words that wreak havoc 
on the innocent.

I burn them all 
but never learn

I put my worries in a box called god

Before I come and wake you
With hot tea and kisses
I will say some quiet words
In the dark
where you cannot hear them

I founder sometimes in your beauty
As if the side or depth of it are out of reach
I sink beneath its density
How your body shudders
With unwinding joy
When everything and breathing stops
In one intense point of space and time
Resounding and fading
A sheer pulsing drift of wonder

Then I feel your flesh vibrating
Like strings beneath my fretted fingers
Like an ocean of dazed and dazzled being
Exploding beyond your senses
And flooding your soul with holy vespers

And I am blessed to be in your body at such a time

And I am further blessed
By the intimacy of your secrets
Those fears and hopes
Your most precious self that no one sees
Beyond the energies of life and death
Beyond healing and forgiveness

You let me touch your prayers

In grace and bright dawning
When being is done and the universe explodes
Will the murmurs of our love
taste like Sanctus on the lips of angels

And I will be blessed to be in you at such a time

The wind is rejection.
I live on a hill.
The night is cold lonely.
A bittersweet chill.
I wander the hillside.
I plan my demise.
Then light through the clouds
brings relief to my eyes.
The moon is a magnet.
I can feel her sharp pull.
My blood tastes like metal
whenever she’s full.
I stand still in wonder.
I look in her eyes.
My worries are scattered.
The wind slowly dies.

Like a bonfire you are
hard to look away from.
I feel your warmth
even from afar.

Get too close
and your intensity
is vaporizing.

If only you could be
a firefly in a jar,
I ‘d let you out at night
to spread your light,

and I'd bask in the burn you ignite,

but by day
I’d keep you away

in a jar on a shelf.

I've been running
through the night like
a schizophrenic ghost,
looking for the angels
that used to hang around
here, the tarnished ones,
the ones that lost their shine,

and all the while
I keep bumping into walls
that aren't even there.

It's never quite right,
the way I feel upon waking.

It's never quite right,
at night when its time to sleep.

It’s a vicious cycle of dependence on
whatever the moment requires.

10 mg of this, 20 mg of that , 
  
my see-saw bloodstream
keeps me constantly in need
of something.

     It's like having Phantom Limb Syndrome,
      except you can't figure out
      which limb is missing.

          It's like driving a car on ice,
           constantly slipping and
           over correcting.

               It's like having PTSD,
                only the triggering incident
                hasn’t happened yet.

                    It's like mixing
                     red and blue paint,
                     in the end its always purple.


What’s left is a life of constant searching and
the frustrating inability to drive between the lines.

A life filled with debilitating fear and
an ever present sense of impending doom.

A lifetime sentence

in a land of purple fog nothingness.