Last winter, I found
Your dream chewing on a wire
The main power cable that powers the machines
That kept me alive
One spark
One bright spark
Your dream fell dead

You blame me for that death
You blame me for that dying
You dreamed the death of me
Now, you blame me
And your friends call you a hero
And they reward you
For your suffering

And I am the enemy
For the crime
Of choosing to believe
My life
Has value

I killed a bug

I think it could fly
But, it didn’t
It was walking across the table
One pass of my index finger
It was no more

I killed a bug

Without a thought
Without washing my hands
Without blinking
Between breaths
I ended it

I killed a bug

What species? I don’t know
Could it sting me? No
Was it in the way?
Maybe so, but
It’s dead

I killed a bug

To be me

To be me is a choice
My life matters
You have to listen,
But you never hear me
I am a villain
In a poorly drawn cartoon
All-powerful, god like
And a total fool
*** is mine
Love I never know
Money is my brother
And I value nothing
My brightest creation
Died, never seen
Always the enemy
Never the ally
I miss my friend

Who am I?
My life matters
But death surrounds me
My gift to you
Broken, in mud
To be me is to rule the world
Alone, un-mourned, and asleep

Who am I?

I remember morning breakfast
In a small, cold kitchen
My sister voice
Mama says, he's leaving

I had to look up
I remember the ceiling was almost white
Spotted with old bacon grease
I had to look up

Arms up bye daddy
Hugs and kisses
Bye bye and my arms
Were up, and empty

His eyes were cold
Cold, my sister voice
I looked close at his expression
Lowered my arms, and they remained empty

Not I am hungry
But I hunger
Terms chosen with care
And arranged with the same eye
Think you not of my intelligence
Instead of that think the habitual thoughts
Of the small mind who wants to shine
I don’t glow, you can’t know
Of days when I was young
And the angry songs that were sung
To hell with that

Reach further, grow deeper
I am closer to an old man
And the me that was young
Is a stranger, and stranger still  
Was angry, and unkind, and loving
And a wanderer who was lost
Memoirs begin here
With the story to tell
Mining memories for memoirs
And I don’t care if it’s foolish
I risk my own creation
For the hellfire

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

Unedited

I'm tired. Tired into my soul. And I'm not that old...
But something in me wants to die.
Ask me again, I don't want to say,
or wonder, why once more
you want my thoughts and prayers.
Why, once again I must see my son dead in my mind, and why
you won't ask how that kills my hope
and leaves me tired in my soul.

Unedited...

I came here to write this down, because
******
"I can't close my eyes, and make it go away"
U2. Listen. If you can. S/he died from a bullet.
I can't think that away.
My prayer is tired.
And I wanted to write this down.

Unedited.

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

There’s one small window in the stone wall
I look out slowly on a twilight world
With people I never knew
Telling me they know me
By way of the voices in my head
I feel different, and hungry
Hungry for things I forgot
And still, I don’t know how they say they know
The last four digits of a number
I never decided to remember
Tell me what I hunger for and why why why
Are they in the way?

Stone walls are familiar to the air I breathe and
Somehow, to my sense of taste. Forbidden, it is but I never
Wanted to go through the window
Into a twilight world
Hoping against hope
That the star shines for me and this pain in my body
Isn’t personal, but neutral

Why can’t I remember the numbers?
The lock stays as it is
Am I forever inside
Stone
walls

We smell memories
If I described them you might forget
Call them nightmares
Leave them for death
And never open eyes
Deep breaths, cold inside
Made of metal and fibers
Slow twitches, fast movements
And I run to them
As you follow the trail
Chemical trails
And memories

By the side of the road
Rising from green uncut grass
Stone, rough cut
Sorted and ordered
Laying flat
Saying to one and all
This is a line
When you cross it
The rules change
The people that built me
Send you that message

It took time to build
Skill, sweat, and stamina
This was planned
This was needed
Stone walls make a difference
There is the inside
And the outside
But a dozen decades go by
On the inside, worthless trees
And poison vines
On the outside, a pathway for things
Beyond the dreams of the builders

The wall, made from stone from the fields
Still makes the inside
But on the outside
No one remembers the builders
Not their names
Or the length of the labor
Or why someone decided that here
There needed to be a difference
Between the inside
And the outside

Can you smile
And be a proud man?
Can you cry for the guilty
And look him in the eyes?
Plastic patches, and grafts,
And still, a real man

Enemy, my enemy inside
Do you need death?
Pain, the punisher brings
The hands of the man
The hateful heart
And I am not immune

Flowers die, in time
Flowers fall, in failing
But this is the high summer
Of a true king
Judgments made, judgments bringing
The punisher to earth

I speak of a river
And of moving its path 1,000 miles
Water to the desert floor
As a lake will become a desert
Flowers now grow in the dryness
On the lakebed, a forest burns

Changes
Echoes
Rain
Dust
Tears
Of a proud man

They call it automatic
The doors to the market open
For you
Only for you
Not for me, automatic breath shuffles away

Part of my soul remains on watch
Blood does flow
Automatically so
But the engine of the body
Is lacking fuel today

I shouldn’t have to think about this
It should be there
But it’s morning
And yes, the birds sing
And I can’t take a deep breath

I’d call it ironic
If I knew what that meant
Likely every listener
Finds it ironic
That I say these things
I have the blues
In my privileged ears
And I’m hungry
By my choice
To be other than that
I must cross the river
In the opposite direction
Of the old train
Quickly over the bridge
Into shadow
And I look into darkness
And see myself
And my love

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

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

My son wants to draw a shark
He chooses yellow and orange
From the box of crayons
I decide not to correct him
Because the world needs more yellow sharks

I used to draw yellow sharks
All jaws, and teeth, with yellow skin
And wide, large eyes
That followed you as you walked
Through my mothers kitchen

I also used to draw street views
Three vehicles, all trucks
One in the middle, one arriving to the right
One, departing to the left
Going somewhere, even I didn’t know

“He always does that. Yellow sharks, hmmm…”
So said my mother to someone who asked
Where was the road going
Off to the left? To yellow sharks?
No. To a table, 5 decades later, where my son sits

Drawing a yellow shark, and the shape of his own face

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

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...

ADD Your own picture

I know that’s not what they meant
But it’s true beyond their thinking
Advertisements wanting my attention
Too much, too many, never too little
ADD my picture, but what did I see?
Flashes color but I am blind
How can you explain color to me?
Who cannot see the green you love?

Add your own picture, says the ad
I connected them differently
And that is no error
ADD nothing, so I see
But only I see what is in front of me
Excuse reason difference
Who can tell? But please
I must ask you
Add your own picture

Infinite raindrops
Infinite dusty windshields
Will this ever produce
A forged Seurat?
No one asks
Just monkeys
Typewriters
Shakespeare

Rain not in dust
But pollen from this months trees
Can’t see through it
Can’t see under it
Dotted with rain
Borrowed from an oasis
Now the wind can’t blow it free

I have a button
And the pointless pointillism
Vanished, unrecorded, unlamented
Modernism removes the annoyances
But leaves remnants
Where I can notice, but
Not where I can see

What does it matter?
I admit, I’m uncertain
But I noticed
I recorded
And maybe now, you
Will think of dust, rain
And Shakespeare

There are walls of solid shadow
Between you. See through
Into a special place
And remember those days
As they were, not as they are now
Because, you know, the past has changed
Space age plastic is solid wood
Viewed out the window
Of the shadow wall

Depression
Great depressions become values
Over a grey haired shoulder
And the grass is dead
The grass that was left to you
Has died
No one will come to your door
No one will bring light
No twice burned candle
And **** the shadows
And the walls

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

I love the ocean, its sounds and scent
But the mountains can remain
I love them from a distance
Does lava bring me joy?
Do I cheer wave action making sand?
No, never.
The opposite of love is not hate
The opposite of love is indifference
And I feel none of the above
For purple mountains, your majesty

My brothers wife, lovely eyes
Is my love less because of her?
Questions crazy to ask or answer
But demanded of many today as passage
Into the valley, where we can walk
On a smooth path
But

Some love the mountain
Others, the deep waters
Water means truth, to some of faith
But does that mean the mountain lies?
No.

Lines
Lines in the corner
Of my eyes
Of my mouth
Mark my difference
The change in you
Everyone sees but lies
You were told who I was
But you refused
When offered
Everything I gave, I left
And it became stale, and broken
Then I could no longer breathe
As I became the color
Of my father

Where did my story go?

Slither and then scurry
Away, like a creature
That hates the light
An old filament glows
The shadows change
But never leave

Where did my story go?


I left it where
I can see
My other senses
Desert me
I need to feel
My ****** fingers are numb

Where did my story go?

Slide down the wall
Sitting in dusty footprints
Let it go dark again
Wait for an alarm
Wait in the shadows
And wonder

Where did my story go?

It leaves a place
Sore, and alone
On fingers
Remembered
The touch of a hand
And the pull of a needle

And I did feel it
But no more
Because
Because
One more time
Lead to death
The lonely death
Of the man in a crowd
Dead
From the pull of a needle
And the touch of a hand

Icy fingers cling to mine
And I cannot move them anymore
On the edge of rising beyond
The thoughts and dreams of what I’d had…
My mind goes blank
My arms seem to shorten
I cannot reach the ring

What I need to hear
I cannot say to myself
No, I can’t ask
Icy fingers around my throat
And a little boy remembers
Picked last for a game
Not invited to the party
And the look in the eyes
Of the older people
Disappointment

So **** them, all of them
Eyes willed to focus
My neck will function
My face will rise up
My hands will open
The prize will be mine

Wild man. Wizard. Summoning the fire witch
Words I heard so often I bought them
And was returned with a song
Locked up inside cold weather trending
As my brother works the lift, trying rightly
To remember where the sound was born
White nights, but where, and why
I loved you already, but we have yet to meet
And deeper kisses will seal the deal
True it is past the truth and the worn out time
To summon the fire witch, to illuminate my mind
For the first wild man
And the wizard
I have inside me