Ignorance quashed the feline,
Rashness foiled the canine,
Cowardice cost the equine,
Greed consumes each swine,
Slothfulness traps the bovine,
But me? I'm doin' just fine!

You didn’t just break a mirror today.
Go Ask the shards of broken dreams .
Which lie ebbing away on the marble floor ,
Painted crimson by your hands ;
And you will hear them whisper,
The susurration of the fallen .
The susurration  of truth .
Heart them narrate
A tale of the vanquished .
For that is all I am ,
Vanquished .
Spent.
And Quashed .
Like the demons of desire,
Living a life of Denial,
In your hooded eyes .

You didn’t just break a mirror today,
You shattered the only abstract left in my shallow world.
You shattered my occult hope ;
An abstract alien to cynics ,
Of life , love and all that once made us celebrate our kind.
But the reviving spirit ,
For someone who has everything to lose.

You didn’t just break a mirror today .
You broke my silent mistress,
A lover who witnessed more than you ever did.
A mate who knew more than you ever will.
And yet ,
Who Never did judge .
And know these love ,
Its death will not wipe the slates of memory clean  .
For  the bitter wine spilt last night;
Has stained us .
But also ,
Has reminded us .
Of what we could be , but never will be.

You didn’t just break a mirror today .
Ask the pieces of your broken image,
That beg clemency from your shrine .
A Shrine of solitude you have built for yourself.

You didn’t just break a mirror today ,
You broke yourself.

There’s a fire on top of the rooftops,
Bombs are falling from planes nearby,
people are scrambling for cover,
And help is M.I.A.

Debris falls all around us,
Bricks tumble, our hearts fumble.

We ask ourselves: Will we make it out alive?

We fear for our lives,
We fear for our families,
But the enemy doesn’t care.

We’re gonna need more than a prayer
To get through this hell
that is World War III.

We know there’s no time to wait,
We have to keep going,
Or we may be another target,
Another casualty
of heartbreak.

As we hear the surrounding screams,
We dare not look back,
As the enemy closes in around us

The sounds of gunshots
Bounce off the walls,
And one by one, the loved ones around us,
like dominoes, take the fall.

We dodge, we duck
For cover.

They shoot, fire,
And another casualty
Another loved one
lost.

Our hearts beat faster and faster,
As our hopes of survival are quashed.

Adrenaline courses in our veins,
And time starts to slow down.

We begin to wonder
And ask ourselves once more:
Will we make it out of this hell?

We didn’t ask for this.
We didn’t want this war.

But here we are,
fighting just to survive.

We don’t eat, and we don’t sleep,
All we do is run away
And hope we live to see another night.

To family, friends and strangers-
I’ve bottle everything up inside.
Suppressed my true thoughts and feelings.
Quashed any emotion.

I couldn’t speak the words,
but I sure as hell can write them.
Maybe this will heal me.
Instead of hiding, let me rip myself open for all to see.

Two hundred and twenty miles
That is exactly how far from my door to yours
Somewhere in between near and far
The grey space it occupies is beginning to swallow everything between us
Literally

My drive down today
I was not met by the sun and clear blue sky
Instead it rained inside and out
As I made my way down from the mountains for maybe the last time
Slowly

I was in no rush to arrive
Speed demon tendencies quashed by gloom all around me
I wallowed in silence within my mind
Occasional cars flitting past as I slow and slow and slow… and slow
Stop

If only we ended this way
With a steady dwindle obvious to all involved
Seen from miles away, days ahead
Instead of the sudden slamming of the breaks causing us to crash together
Done

Now I’m sitting here waiting
Wondering how much damage has been inflicted
Will I get my heart back in one piece?
Or has it yet again been damaged beyond repair, what’s the word?
Totaled

the bittersweet silent story of my life age
fifty and nine automatically rebroadcast
     in indelible (yet never washed out) beige
indistinguishably linkedin, when counting
     the last three of seventy somber orbitz,
     signify torturous custom made cage

whose darkening shades of gray
housed a weakened Harriet Harris,
     an ashen corpse lay
no doubt a grown changeling dust play

a cruel trick, and soul of me mum didst slay,
so...tis with great difficulty aye write this poem today
cathartic to brush off self denunciation,
     an albatross that dust way

heavily incriminating, ostracizing this mind of mine,
recurring every year comb May fourth a line
codifying, delineating, earmarking,  
     and doth likened
     to elementary school Boyer

     as in  Henry Kline
no less painful reflection plus unavoidable,
     hence this middle aged man lets feelings incline
toward self expression this anniversary
     revisiting re: deign

upon memorializing general up beat
defiance at death of thine late mother,
     where disease rabidly did eat
ting her til she expired,
     this singular married heir
     set himself a writing fete

wordlessly mouths never expressed greet
unbeknownst reeders gleaning my sentiments heat
ting recollected adieu bid prior,
     whence she angrily wanted to meet
that accursed nemesis
     against healthiness and repeat
  
cherished apothegm,
     that existence offers no second act
as she relinquished slipping tenuous weak bract
leave ving ever fainter grip upon cracked
pommel of mortality, an immutable fact
thence black knight denounced, pounced, hijacked
trounced unannounced, vanquished, lacked

motive to rival nixed, extinguished sputtering pact
fast fading joie de vivre unspoken,
     where death rattle racked
personal def tone accentuation tracked
subsequent self castigation,
     excoriation nearly whacked

me to Timbuktu rebuking extolling bless
sing experienced from
     this sole son for thirteen years, aye confess
when the inimitable Harriet Harris

     devastatingly, grievously, inconsolably,
     got hexed, issued jilted livingsocial, a less
son learned to late, how maddeningly mess
say yon nick lee infuriated, not accepting press

sing ill fate, nor countenancing fatal injustice,
refusing to curtsy fiendish inxs did ****
her off (poisoned scorpion sting) remiss
cheekily peppering psyche as if Swiss

cheese, a once spunky Arthur Murray shored
dance instructor, who scored
door prize in the guise of thee less torte sured
near nonagenarian papa, where meanness poured

from grim mortal outlook parlayed moored
deadly reaper, quashed, ruined as lord
stole, sacred maternal tribal nurse, unfairly did hoard
final precious seconds unexpectedly meant un explored
positive rapport forever undergirded "door"

closed to resolve ambivalence with venerable bead
did association between
     kith and kin, unfairly
     dead poet society lettered deed
wrested a vibrant life despite zest that freed
a vibrant gal to coast along dialed up esprit

     de corps spirit to live, yet greed
of metastatic cancer upended lead,
where mind over matter, sans power
     in positive thinking rubric and plead
ding didst **** last ditch homeopathic screed

ambitions *******, thus giving up the ghost
wracking sadness, sinking sorrow spilling most
lee tears of loss, among family, fellow Unitarians
of the Thomas Paine Fellowship
     included with your obituary post.

Bound inside
These walls of pain
No one to turn to unable to say.

I contemplate life
Insides numb
Heart frozen
Confusion pondered upon.

I sit alone just cannot face
The world outside
The human race.

Quashed by society
Pushed upon a ledge
Pressure building up
I balance on a ledge.

Again you ask
If I believe
I’ve felt the
Ground shake
I’ve been deceived
One way or the other
We all crash and burn
All these years of living
We still haven’t learn

Judgements
We’ve placed
On each other
I want no part
Any longer

What could've been never really was
but all of our hopes weren't quashed.
_____