you want to build a wall
to make it high and tall
to keep them out
them all
you fear because they call
with different voices
different words
wear different clothes
in brighter colors
have darker skin  
and
who knows
may have darker souls within

and you don‘t see
they only flee
from terror and lethal poverty

desperately hoping
that the Statue of Liberty
still remembers her promise

a shop sells spirits and flowers
for Valentine's and Ballantine's
it's owner's face quite happily shines

and would I cry
were I to lose you
     yes

my light of many decades
dimmed beyond return
would make the world
a dreary place

filled with the shadows
of our dark imaginings
we‘d kept at bay
with our love and joy
and our laughter

without you
they would gather force
draw closer

     a pack of hungry wolves
     sensing a weakness in their prey

yes
I would cry
were I to lose you

thinking in quiet
at the end of a busy day
about what you have actually done
can yield sobering results

they told me
my father died quietly
in his sleep
at 2 a.m.

with his pain-ridden last years
I think he was not unhappy
to go farther for once
return to the cosmos he came from
wake up painless
     at peace
floating in the universe
he had admired from mountain peaks
all of his life

is simply abysmal

no speech needed

I think
what saves today’s commercial xmas hype
from being absolutely nauseous
is the wide-eyed joy of children
when they open their gifts
and find their dreams come true

a faint echo
of the joy in the eyes of the Kings
when after their long travails
they discovered the baby of their dreams
had miraculously become reality