The song
A fugue of their notes
Soft and sharp
Floating at great speed
Through the open window
To my eyes
My eyes, they fool me
I see the motion
I only remember forgetting
The song
Is it still there?

See the birds and I know
There’s a celebration
Breathing deeply, and feel
The corruption and the growth
I lost my useful voice
Can I still see?
Birds sing of their beauty
Wrapped in a cloud
Of another mans treasure

Plates
Dressing
Chop vegetables
Sharp cheese
Sense of smell
Taste

Glass, pour
Wine, sweet, red
And wrong
But right
Over lips
And tongue

Mirror
Mirror
Low light, flicker
Breeze on candles
Hour old rain
Scented air

A moment captured
Forever the same
In different memories
It is the truth
Because, just then
A star fell

You found me decades
Past memories chosen
Words full of blood
Cold sharp steel
Memories trapped
Steal warm
Blood words remember
Distant cold thunder
Lightening stone
Grey lightning
Into their fingers
Broken bread
Brain full bursting

And then I wrote

Philadelphia, Mourning
Sad music, you know it
You can’t remember the name of the instrument
But you know the notes
Cold as a high school memory
All we had was the telephone
And a call in the dark meant evil things
But not to me, and my ears embraced darkness
And my movie plays on a screen
As big as a mountain
Sunrise
Philadelphia, Morning

Standing in cold air
Dusty, wet and somehow alive
Changes the taste of a personal universe
Flowers die before they've grown
And with it the chance

I didn't wash my hands
My hands, with old, broken fingers
I don't trust them anymore
But, like my eyes
They are in the light of a dawn

Fresh breaks bring hope
Hope of healing and renewal
Old breaks only ache in the cold
Dull, faded echoes of pain
Foreshadowing another dawn

And another day...

The nightmare is black
I saw them
I saw them fall from the edge
The abyss looked into them
And they fell

Old oil, cold and dark
Left a streak on their wrist
Right where I tried to grasp
Right near my hand
Left my hands empty

Gone, gone from here
And only the hope
Of another hand
But the bottom will come first

Of this I am certain

For the monster looked in
And reveled in what it saw

You imagined me as a child
And a family portrait
Drawn in number 2 pencil
From a 1972 television screen
No one in the picture looks like you
No one looks like me
Strangers to the world
Erased from an electronic hologram
That remains hidden from your experiences
No matter how far you can see
You see me as them
I see me as you