Machines learn and grow,
Humans falter, lose their way.
AI reigns, we bow and rue.

I lose a bit more of you every day
Relax my grip and you slip away
Each day a single sacred tear
Rations the loss of you, my dear.

adrift in each my sleeps
i've been caught
in summer afflictions

sounds and collections
of music and stories,
people and palindromes,
a Rollercoaster raceway
through time

is it better to know what
you've lost along the way
or to never have had it to begin
with?

i've been searching for answers
and i've been seeing them
in some eternal escape,
some savant survival,
railways and roads
i don't know the name of

As witches chant and cigarettes burn
I wait, patient, for my turn
I do not want what I have got,
But I sure do have a lot
Witches chant and have their fun
As I bake below the pressing sun

Pebbles and dirt,
Worms and sprouts
I open my mouth
And nothing comes out

While witches pant I've come to learn
That I will die before my turn
Nothing's promised except for stones,
Twisted sticks, and dusted bones
Now witches rest, while I ignite
The wasted pages of my life

Cinders and earth,
Ashes and teeth
It sometimes is better
To simply not speak

Witches gather their things to leave
And now I'm sure I'll become these leaves
What gets said between oak and fern?
If woods could talk would I ever learn?
The witches have gone, tho I have not
What's left of me now, just flesh to rot

So hard to stand
So soft, this seat
I can feel the forest upon me

Eat!

The pulse is thready now
What once fed life is gone
The eyes and mind flit away
While the change is sown
And nature knows just how
To make all else carry on
As if it were just a day
As if it were never known

In the valley of the Apricotted Sunrise
The black mountains with their jagged cliffs
Rise up each day to block it - and fail totally.
No mountain can hold back the dawn.

Seeping across the Eastern sky
Like an oncoming ocean tide
What was black and cobalt blue
Finally gives up the fight
And turns the color of a peach.
A delicious Arizona morning.
        ljm