A cracked record pirouettes upon its cherry oaked coffin,
Listen closely to the requiem for my ravine.

Can you taste the a’s, the b’s, the c’s,
The spearmint flavor of cool jazz prancing      along       your      tongue.

A eulogy for the mind.
Our memory is not like it used to be.

Light driven through unshattered glass.
Reflecting amongst particles, a burnt hay fulgence.

Before this home, the welcome mat was upside down. An encasement. A confinement.
A rigid sweater, crafted of jagged straw and course hair clung to my skin.

I could never leave. The smell of chemical potpourri coming from that pyrex plate,
leaving the nostrils flaring in metallic bliss.         The taste of frosting.

Same faces entering, different ones departing. Friend on the couch fearing ****,
Me in bed fearing robbery.

A visitor in my room. Masked. Too dark to see.   He apparates from view while I shriek in silence. Alley cats in life threatening quarrel in a deaf man’s yard.

He comes again unwelcomed, I dare this time to challenge.
The drugs are done.    

Heroes are seldomly forgotten.

Waning light braces itself for the cold,
The night slips in ever rhythmically,
Its widening tendrils of review and verdict,
Of judgement and embarrassment,
Things unsaid and regrettably not,
Which ebb together in tempo to the hearts-slow,
Until naught but beat and breath remain.
At daybreak this trial in retrospect
Is an unfamiliar and alien ‘mare;
A shack of sully and strife,
Cobbled together of all manner of conflict.
How surprised then the Travelers are,
When upon Paths Well Taken,
Through soft sand and smoke,
Apparates a moat!
Of Tinder-ful gorse and bramble,
Which cradles a finely buttressed fortress,
Upon which their lives continue to ply,
Such callous defences,
So routinely.