I spent the night staring out my window.

The bricks in front, the strangers below.

Their thoughts rose like steam from sewers

And blinded my heart with concerns much newer

To me.

It shocked me to think I knew their troubles

Like I was buried under that same war-torn rubble,

But I suppose that’s what it means

To be human, or at least that’s how it seems.

Every night it’s someone new

Walking past and a whole new brew

Of worries and fears

And eyes like headlight deers.

A saga of tumult and sacrilegious ant-sized men in suits and ties.

Fill the pages, handwritten, sloppy yet legible amenities,

For late night dinner parties and cocktails and compliments

And the veneer smiles.

–

Eventually one man will see the sun over rocky mountains

Cracked with professionally trained white enamel.

Excavates the geology of social interaction and party sins.

Now is not the time for him to break away the crust of will.

–

His parents taught him who he was, and he never questioned it.

He wrote off expenses with diamond tipped single-use pens,

And doesn’t know how to live.

Grace left behind her daughter,

Wrapped in drapes and swaddled with light.

Her breath came softly and only 

When her lips slide apart

At will she lets the lovely air glide.

She spoke with eyes and worked with words.

The heavy-lifting dictation a whisper at most.

And in one moment she knew me

And knew my needs.

Business is Business.

——-

I imagined,

In my head of course,

A story complete of a young man in a

Lion’s den.

–

His name was Richard

Or Robert or something.

In fact I don’t think he wore

A name card.

–

The lion didn’t need an

Introduction.

He roared and drank coffee from

His large metal tin.

–

He mewed business and facts

No time for names, I guess.

The gazelles had migrated too closely

For him not to attack.

–

Riley shifted from foot to foot,

And his toes got sore,

His palms sweated out, he dehydrated

For his life was on the hook.

Oh wait, memories.

Oh stay, my weaker knees.

“Stand strong to nostalgia’s breeze.

Give no ground to soldiers

of molded green nor

Those mossy bricks of nature’s belief.”

But myself is me and I am weak,

Due to years of trying to seem

Stronger than I was

Made to be.

“Put the left in front of right,

Push onward through the

Mental fight,

Because days like this were

Made to test you and

Your silent might.

Oh knees, oh memories

Do not surrender again,

Please.”

Sometimes

The air is thicker than my lungs can take,

But that viscous, vicious oxygen has nothing compared to the thought of what is to come. 

A dedication to the anthology on my shelf-

Frost-bitten teeth and winter is cumming(s).

Fall shakes(a)spear(e), but nothing can be Donne.

And Swift, Brad st. was covered by white, oh marvel(l).

The wall cott the snow, tracks along the previously pristine p(l)ath.

The rain will fall, and the fall will stall in the reed(s). 

Oh Lord, alfalfa fields are white. 

I decided today while sitting out on hurt brown benches

In front of drunken dancing wenches,

That time was a serpent named Frank,

Who coils around gaudily decorated necks,

Tightens his black diamond back along breathing tracks,

And waits in the night for morning to advance,

Full stampede forward.

I haven’t slept since two days

Ago.

My mind is muddled with fear and colorful pictures of the

Unknown.

Oh no,

The world is blurred along the edges.

Did you know?

Raindrops on windshields are elegant?

Circles of distorted light and gifts given freely from

Heaven.

Instead then,

I wish I could taste them but my brain revolts and becomes

Lead.

——

Oh please let me fall to the ground and

Sleep soundly

For once.

I’m sorry I forgot you.

But can you really blame me?

It’s Tuesday again and Tuesday it’s been

Since we went aboard that magic carpet to try and find ourselves.

But that didn’t work, so we burrowed underground to maybe find something

There, and you caught pneumonia in the rain one night.

I want you to know I kept digging.

I kept searching and rigging

my boots so dirt wouldn’t drip in.