Make friends with yourself
For a lifetime is too long
To be your own worst enemy

Don’t confuse the hypnotic
hum of highway traffic
with the anesthetic lull
of your dreams deflating.

Don’t confuse the murmuration
of small black flies above the bowl
of rotting fruit with the devastation
you feel in the hard pit of your soul.

Don’t confuse the blinding eyes
of white vapor streetlights
with the coruscating promise
of an unmolested path home.

Don’t confuse the empty auto lot
at the edge of town with an orchard:

tonight the gravel of crushed bones
blossoms in a shower of moonlight,
the interminable hush of a hard rain.

there was no way to escape
the strangling rising waters
now penetrating its hollow core
attacking from the depths of
an endless source of bubbles
sinking its last hungry breath
to the bottom sandy sea floor
this skeleton corpse lost
the little soul it had left

Like lucid dreams entrapped
  within a circlet ornately adorned
   A sweetest love conceived
   but can't be borne
    Trailing feathers
     billowing light as rain
       Starkness in ink
       blot reckless in heavy stain
     Strings strung taut
   attempting to keep all in place
  Dream catcher sways
by the window, free and chaste

In the coffin bare
You will find it there
If you want to know
All the secrets it will hold
All the sorrow and the strife
Will all end in the passing of life
Take a look at the empty shell
It's been released from it's cell

©Pauline Russell

Were we ever
Anything more than slurred
Words,
Whispered through liquor stained lips
Were we merely the
Frost,
That formed by night
On the window glass
Only to melt away
With the rising sun
A passing
notion,
In an ocean of thoughts
Washed away,
With the tide
Were we only a
Dream,
A product of a drug induced sleep?

Were We?

No one told me,
Death, was a she
She stopped by my house,
We had tea
She spread her black wings
In my sitting room,
She was beautiful
But smelled of doom,
I called her a *****,
She said to me,
"Sorry, my dear,
I'm necessity."