As pen rubs against paper
What is the purpose
To illustrate, with words
All that is within

Emotions imprisoned
Have feasted on my flesh
Now released to you as
Impressions on a page

Let me send them
To you, to others

Let us see if anyone
Has the compassion
To take them in
To live with them
As I have
Embattled, alone
At war with these
Unfulfilled passions

Walking on a river’s bank
Looking inward
I pause with fear

Turning over rocks
May not
Soothe my heart

There may be mysteries and
Fears waiting
Amid joyous realizations
Waiting in the warmth
Of the ground

Sensing what is about me
Intaking all that is
Allowed to transform
Like I’m pumping
an accordion’s bellows

Breathing in and out while
Each of my senses
Alerts me to what
Surrounds me

I want to feel those things
That are pieces of me  
But do not define me

The sheets are cool
Upon crawling inside
Unlike your continual warmth

A lullaby soothes me
Welcoming my dreamworld
Perhaps infancy is approaching

Over forty years
Beside legs willing
To entangle

Whoever thought our nights
Would become my
Emotional sustenance

We're supposed to care
in the pits of our hearts
and review in solemn
exactitude the magnitude
of little things we did
as kids

Try to recognize this
exsanguinating loss
and watch as what you were
is cast to disappear in past's
prolific mists

so vast they dwarf,
they drown us: caring as we are
in hearts' pits.

Odd standing alone
Before becoming
One of them

Their gathering looks
Warm from the outside
Will I become singed
When leaning into the
Friction they generate
Trying to hide
From each other

Being with them feels
Like I might
Shed some armor
And give up
That loneliness
Of staying outside looking in

Each one is hard to hate
Closeup,
How long must I wait
To be noticed
How shall I  
safeguard myself
Without degrading another
Lean in, stay curious

Each morning
the boundaries recede
Skies are still blue
Wisps of wind still stir
High noon marks an end
and a beginning
Must someone star
in a slow motion film
as a carp stirring
in the remnant floodwater
of a receding river

Sullen is seldom
Used to describe the day

Today stillness sets heavy
Amid morning’s dew

Shadows cast by
Morning’s sun seem
Uncommonly gloomy

How long will
Debate fill my brain?

Is the day glum
Or is there a surly
Infection upon my soul?