words fall
like hapless fledglings
tossed from a cliff edged nest

with much screeching, squawking,
countless feathers lost

and then an awful thump
or hopeful, glorious flight

first love is tachycardiac love
all adrenaline, sweating palms
and stutter-stumbling sqeakings,
ungainly gropings,
when not with you, mopings
unrealistic hopings
for happy ever after endings,
breakings, bendings,
awkward mendings,
repeated leavings,
repented lovings.
heartfelt givings,
of broken hearted rendings.
lendings,
of time stolen from life
tearing, teasing,
tantalising teamings
crying, begging,
pleading strife
and then,
the metaphorical knife
cutting, slashing,
wordblow bashing,
screaming, reaming,
end to loves life.

til eventually, words fall,
like old birds leavings
to settle, unremarked upon
at the base of the tree of life.

first love's loss, is slow dying.
arrhythmia to flatline
in a multitude of laboured breaths
and long lingering sighs.
a loss of warmth,
from breast and thighs
and water copious,
falling from red rimed eyes.
sobbing, murmuring,
don't know whys?
from lips turned
toward,
bleakset skies.
as one settles firmly,
into black dog muck
no longer able to give a f▼ck.
tucked in tight to sadness,
lost all sight of former gladness,
caught up and shackled tight,
to the badness
around and around,
the carousel goes.

then,
at last,
the blessed silence,
as you die
one of many of....
                    life's little deaths

The cold is my commander, it taunts me, while it steals my sheaths of warmer cleaving skin sections exposed by its notions and collected conscious. The sounds are complicated, the moons azurean hue resembles the coldness of my cigarette's embers blue, and then the commander shucks my final breath away. It isn't something that I barely feel, but rather something that lightly see. It's hoarfrost births its fickle shell of hardrime on the last of those interstices I once called my fingers. And from this choke, this frozen voice is detained by the vox ice amplifier that steals each noise. Besides, in an interruption I hear our whorish neighbors score of shouting scripted shouts, and screaming scripted screams. Each day she becomes less and less like any real human being. It's hard to believe that behind these walls that shield me from the albicant and atrocious heraldry winter casts me through, these sounds are concentric like limited Earth words written in the prompts that some ill and wanton succubus would. If only to lure herself from the pains she gained while lying to those amidst her closest ties. I am further distressed, though fully dressed narrowly watching bits of frozen water interlace themselves beneath freezing in the corners of my mind. When until the shaking and commandeering of my mortal sounds, disperse amidst the ferocity that Spring white snow absconds. The tremulent vocal chords are hailed by a hard-rimed ****, who ensuingly rips the cantering spirit from each last place it stood. Only those who know this wind could speak about the way it genuflects and obsesses on these rules. This freezing genuflection hails to every servant of its rein, I can barely exhale the inspiration that rises from the head, until any skin exposed to air is reclaimed by my commander for good. Then each neighbor's head may lilt upon the piste, and pray for something more balmy than negative eleven degrees.

here i am...
nailed to the cross....
of elephant hide.... memories
.....walking the slack rope
balanced..... between
if ..and ....why..
used to be...... watering
a ducks back .....was making
....a water feather slide
but now....... it just *****
up my equalibruimal tide......
making sense now?....
...........not ****** likely..
spinning words....
..on empty tequila shot glasses
  .....while student one
and student fourteen .....are
making moons with they *****
......so the mouse squeaks
memory roars......been here b4
time to climb.............down....
........off the cross.....jump on... .......off the wire
..let it go ......was just.... teenage .........angst v desire

walk away  now...get some water.....
..go home get to bed ....or the morning will be simply .....hangover.....
.....slaughter..... city .. rimed
with lime ...and salt.. and   tequila .....worm-fed fears...
so....listen ...well  ....to the squeek of the mouse......

I will call you a friend no more.
The days have passed of happiness.
Hard as I try myself implore
This is the end between us friends.

Innocent eyes that often smiled
To each other, a scene of mirth.
But times have changed, now teary eyed
I write these lines with sighs and grief.

The gaps between grew disparate
I foresaw not this change of place.
And our twined paths forked in their ways
Hard to accept but it's happened.

Distance is good between us two
For the fountains shall never spring.
Each will go back, say no adieu
To his former own state of mind.

True, in my heart you held a place
But if not rimed, what can be done?
Nay, I believe the strangest ways
Are always the beneficial.

I will call you a friend no more
From this day on you shall not be
The one whose eyes looked through me sole
But a dead stone in memories.

Old Father folds himself
into a corner of the doorway.
His cardboard bed is new,
has not yet begun to carry
the soak of his sweat
or the brine of his old *****.
It is a beauty - he guards
the box with a ferocity
only seen from those
who own nothing but what
they can carry.

Old Father sits like a monk,
quiet and contemplative.
His gimme-cap is a dirt ground halo.
The blanket of his beard
gives a sense of warmth against
nights too feral and bitter
for a man of sixty-eight years.
His breath sketches pictures
onto the air, and, like fog,
they drift away.

Sleep well Old Father,
on your cardboard bed, on the cement
of that doorway where dreams
are dusty shadows that become
ice-rimed memories.

I will walk a road
Of rimed old men and invisible children
A barren scape, all uniform and erudite
A scene to some, so meaningless and sullen,
But to me, I crave such to behold a ****** white.
Corrupt, it is not, despite my trek.
At Peace, my soul, at rest.
Baptize this ailing body, come the advent of night.

what is it about this landscape
early angle of light
bouncing from flat of glass to glass
in clean and eager cuts against
the visible shrouds of exhaust
expired breath of automobiles
darkly herded
swimming in their lanes
light still so separate from the dark
in the long arc of a hollow sun...
this dissonance the chilled shade whose eyes
close to brace the rising retinal burn
of an overbright disc resurrecting
illusions of warmth
what is it about this landscape
rimed with gold
that draws the wilderness in my gut
to grow hooves
to stamp and dig among the briers,
to eddy an inward sudden
too much a wayward compass,
those spooked adrenaline horses...
until I can answer this question
I cannot write the poem.

My Grandpop's box has a word in bronze
Nailed into the lid
Of smooth plastic - fingerprints
On the box where the past is hid.

What cloistered things
What daring lives in the passage of the years
Lie dusted, browned, rimed with rust,
Blotted of fargone tears?

I hear the voice of the desert --
The wind-swept dunes of barren Deep Springs.
Or the elysian spire Mount Roraima,
Yggdrasil hewn bare by angry gods.

I hear the beckoning call of Alaska! --
The chickadee’s croon from an ice-rimed spruce.
Or the mountains of Maine in the autumn,
Swathes of arboreal flames crunching under my boots.

What does it mean to hunger for something?
What does it mean to leave the beaten path behind?

A plane vanishes beyond the azure horizon.

One day, I plan to be riding it.

She comes home
Tear filled eyes
Red rimed eyes
Pleading
Pleading for a simple explanation
“He pulled my hair on the playground”
Reaching down
Hugging her
Tight
“my baby
My beautiful beautiful
Baby,
He just wants your attention
He likes you.”
As if raising a hand to a women
Calling her *****
Means I love you
I respect you.

I shouldn’t have been surprised
When at 16
She comes home
Shaking
Shaking and wondering
“Why does it hurt?”
These bruises are love
My bleeding lip
Is proof
Of his love
Bruises she hides
Covers up
From me
I taught her
This is love
Harsh words
And fast hands

Listening to her
Cry late at night
Asking
Asking god for help
To get him to stop
Hurting her
But never once
Realizing
All she has to do is leave
But she can’t
Because I taught her
This is love
She thinks she will never be good enough
For someone else
She believes when he says
“I love you
I want you
Forever”
Yet when she turns around
She feels the sting
Of a slap
Hears him say
“*****
You are lucky
no one else will want you.”

Years of therapy  
And a lifetime of learning
Learning to love herself
Learning that bruises
He gave her
Was not what love looks like
Learning to say no
Learning it is okay to walk away
To leave him
Like the piece of trash
He is
It takes a lifetime
To finally believe the truth
The truth

All because I taught her
When a boy pushes her
On the playground
Calls her names
It means that he likes her
As if like and hate were the same
As if respect meant disrespect
As if love
Love is selfish
Love is the man’s will
To bow down
Because abuse
Is love  

Regretting teaching her
Leading her astray
From words
Words I thought were innocent
Not realizing
The impact I had
On my daughter
Words are power
Lessons are engraved
In a child’s brain
Innocent phrases become weapons
Weapons that tear apart
Their life
Teaching them without realizing
We as mothers
As fathers
Need to learn that our children’s heart
And mind is not to play with
Don’t teach your daughter
Something you will
Regret when she takes it
To heart
Takes it as truth

.
I looked with joy this Friday morn
at seasons changes subtly drawn
as imprints left on **** rimed grass
began to fade and ice like glass
began to melt as sun broke through
on frosted webs and merging dew
with welcome sounds of seasons tread
the signs of spring began to spread.

i'm as tiny as a fake something 
in the middle of nowhere
on the edge of nothing
wing-like 
with brazen teeth for grinning bites 
and the knee of listening 
howling into a phone
telling of hunger for food and herb
in a dream of diagraming sleep

~~~

she has no respect for the weak
hating her vulnerability
shrunken living in a cardboard room
stiff and dry the size of the sky
ranting tears in braids of rain
a five o'clock shadow of begging meditations
until deaths' lips formed the shape of O 
shaping a tunnel rimed in late afternoon
telling me her body is but metaphor
for orbiting angels
a fashionable estate of limbs
in apple fruited curved headlands
and demitasse islands of past desire
floating in pink glimmering heavenly clouds
licking the blue
where the emptiness of life used to be

she shimmers rainbow tranquilizers 
packaged by twos 
in shinny tinfoil marvels
slick as icicles
for the perfect dose 
you can feel in your hand like braille 

at tongues touch 
it folds into dark warm nothing
showing her that death 
has it's own special charisma
like calico tattoos
or syncopating neon moons

deaths mouth opens like an opera singer 
and eats her eyes 
till these sunken alters liquidate
and breath ascends distant from the ache of want
in the knee of forgetting
red and wet
black as crows

Sits beside his window, his red-rimed eyes
Unseeing
In his mind are sunsets and rainbows,
And shining stars in the dense cold blackness

Of space
He listens to the laughter of children, mixed
With the static roar of the engines
Of ancient warplanes,

And longs for the cool, loving caress
Of the sea
He dreams of a place where every decision
Is right,

And every game played
Is won
And the mezzo-forte of day diminishes
To the pianissimo of dusk, he wonders,

Did I do it right ?
May I play
Again ?