So Far Away

Spread your arms                                    wide

dive

the snow envelops my knees

it makes me want to believe                     in you

your candle is dim                                   a flickering light

in sight on top of the hill

I am pushing

a thousand clouds to insulate the sky

only the beat of the ice crunching                            underneath my feet

purple the color of your hidden majesty

in this river flood of oncoming night

                               

play your sad drums for me

underneath the tree

up there on our crayon hill

keep it steady           keep it still

but in a minute I am undone

I cannot cannot leave you now

in the world all gray I wanted to feel

zephyrs and sunrise against my face

it looked so warm

                it looked so warm

from the other side

so I strapped on my wings

took to your sky

                blinded by a million sparkling dreams

                snowflakes falling into infinity

the howling drums of wind and war echoing

around me…

and then the

candle

                went out

                                

Volcano

I met her at the cafe where I liked to read the paper in the morning.  At the time she struck me as nothing special—just another smiley college student waiting tables over the summer.  Only after she gave me the wrong coffee three days in a row did I really pay any notice to her.

During her rambling apology—“I’m so sorry, I just can’t remember if the white doily means vanilla or regular, I keep thinking white has to be vanilla and then I think, no, it’s the opposite, and then I get myself all mixed up”—I didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her to go away.  In the end I did neither.   Eventually I would come to wish I had done the latter.

2013, England

If tomorrow is here then so be it

but don’t ask me to say amen 

because I won’t believe it I won’t 

believe it I won’t believe it

Three

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound

Predictability

is a lucky thing

A coin with two heads

or two tails

                        as the case may be

And yet too late

just one second too late

maybe

The joy was in

the terror of

the box

The Face in the Mirror

“I like your t-shirt,” I told her.

The girl smiled at me.  It was a relief to realize she couldn’t quite talk yet.  But when she gave me a little wave and turned to go with the dogs, I knew what she was saying.  She would be seeing me again soon.

Fire in the Hole

Hi there.  I won’t ask how you’re doing because I know, so...I guess you’re all right.  You still smile sometimes, although yesterday you were pretty angry over a dumb dominoes game.  Okay, it wasn’t the dominoes game that made you mad.  It upset you when he wouldn’t leave you alone, why won’t he leave you alone when you ask him to?  Anyway, you’re spinning and sinking again, I can tell.  You’re just sick of all this crap, you wish it could be over and you wish you could make it vanish, or at least not matter, but you can’t.  Just accept it.  Yeah, I know.  You’re getting that scared feeling in your chest again, it had left you alone for a few weeks but it’s back again, like it or not.  It's not going to disappear anytime soon.

Sorry about that.  We can't help it.  You just won't listen to us.

Locked In

Whisper it to me while no one is listening

tell me I am a fool

tell me I am not

tell me something that makes sense

and then prove it