Lost

My lungs whisper love songs of 

you 

only to betray them  

with spasms of 

breath

The Problem with Memory

I hear riddles all day long

words but not in 
English 

no one wants

me to know

My heart is a tinderbox

I am not allowed to 

open

Fading

Because he was a vision in snow       

the carrier of my fears             he infected you with my reality          he melted you with my tears               he held out his hand as I looked for you             he was the last of my projections                       this hologram I could not see through              the carrier of your rejection     

Through the Glass

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They all instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out over the concrete ground he began placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid no one else any attention.

Over time the straws began to form a pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  It must be a formula, they said to each other. The kind that only made sense to a math genius.  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they had built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go.  

The Witch, redux

“I am not a witch,” she told me.  “I am a goddess.  And so will you be, as long as you do what you’re told.”

I looked at her for a long moment.  And then I said, “You were my mother once."

The witch smiled and gave a little shrug.  “The universe is our mother.” 

where did I go to

just to be loyal            

to one last deception

cycles of wishing

no chance to be faithful

the line for redemption

from here to forever

that jail you broke out of

the last portal to heaven

Inevitability

The defense has become the obstacle
I cannot give it up
it is giving me up
it is waving goodbye
it has become boring
please please please
it has become boring
I look out of the bus window and I see
houses and a golf course
not ready
keeps rattling at the gate
let me kiss you 
goodbye

After the Rain

We are one day past forever

so let me tell you a

story

full of hope and

recrimination

and yet somehow                   

somehow

            hello hello                    fire in the hole

I wonder

but I cannot get past the bluster

the suggestion dripping down my throat

We tried but

            this is not what I

kiss me good night

            as forgiveness winds around my

could we just

            a lie must never be hunted

when the game is already dead to me

I could tell you a story

full of tomorrows and redemption

but who would we be

kidding

acceptance is the poison

In this lexicon of sorrow

I am too tired to speak for myself

if you saw miracles spring from darkness

I saw only memory

swathed in charcoal dusty

dream