death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father's garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his dank hole
nervous and exposed
the puff of body swelling
hanging there
not really quite knowing,
and then knowing-
something sending it down its string,
the wet web,
toward the weak shield of buzzing,
the pulsing;
a last desperate moving hair-leg
there against the glass
there alive in the sun,
spun in white;
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-*******:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a ***** speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy
and somewhat valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving nothing there
until at last the red gut sack
splashes
its secrets,
and I run child-like
with God's anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime

Forever ago,
               maybe,
I had done this before,
                            but growing up had pushed it aside,
      disregarded it as child’s play.

           Yet somehow as I listened
           to the rain
                        pounding against the auditorium roof,
the child in me
               awakened
                     and now I stand
                     breathless,
with my pant legs soaked, as
          he looks at me
                     and laughs
                              and takes my hand to walk me
                              to the dry and warm.
But before we step onto the sidewalk,
              as we linger there in the parking lot
in the swirling space between young and old,
       I can see us years ago
as 8 year olds dashing through nightfall
          to splash ourselves
joyously
               as we did tonight.  
   And for all the maturity I pretend to have,
             my soul sheds a  
                 raindrop tear
for the simple happiness

                                                            I have lost.

I caught a falling leaf today.
I took it to another place far from where it should have landed.
Was it hoping for me to catch it?
I left it next to an intersection.

Sleep giggles from the corners of my mind,
A child, playing hide and seek.
And I search,
calling its name in a frantic need of assurance
that it hasn't wandered too far off.

It waits in closets and cabinets
crouching, playful,
when I open the doors of my consciousness
hoping to find it in spaces
the moonlight   can't
                                           quite
                                                        reach.

Then, as the sun rises
and it sees with dismay
that I have given up,
thinking it must have fled to the empty house on the corner
it curls up beside me
with a smile of childish satisfaction
and embraces me with sincerity
unmatched by any apology.

When you disappeared,
you left your letters
here on the bedroom floor.

I found them when I came
to this abandoned home
looking for a ghost story.

I didn't find any ghosts,
but I did find a soul
written into lonely letters,
never sent.