Sometimes I just have to close my eyes

A sullen addict hunkered down
beside 40 watt candle light
after wallowing in his mind
he finally lets go

Down dirty down
It feels a lot like betrayal
though for a brief moment
he is reaching for the heavens

Not before sinking back into the depths of hell
a demon staring back in the mirror
it's disgusting
unrecognizable
but sadly still an echo of reality

The worst part is the lie
the secrets that keep him separate
from Love
from ever reaching freedom
A slave driven by the most virulent master

Loneliness

No longer a bleeding laceration
But a festering wound
That does not heal

A dull grinding of bone to bone
With soreness hanging like a fog
Shrouding the soul so nobody could connect with it

And there was a poignant,
Biting
Possibility
That I might not recover

The moment before I pulled away

The knuckle jumps, cuticle tingles
While electricity juices through
My index finger

Muscles contract, blood flows
We're frozen now
In a slowly building, numbing shock

Dance for me digits
Don't you know that pain and exhilaration
Stem from the same source?

I wish I could paint

Rain I love you

Cold weather I adore you with chattering teeth
And every breath looks like a cloud
Like I'm smoking

The wet streets
Make every step a special one
because the earth is now a diamond
A transcendent gem

And the sound of water hitting asphalt
is a rich symphony
It is a harp
moving up and down scales in such a flourish
The sounds like heaven

Rain I love you

When my too long shoe laces are getting soaked
I can barely hear you through my hood
Turn back now before you overwhelm me

I love you rain because you are so very neutral
but so very confident
No judgmental double standards
you don't care who is damp

Whether it's the old lady asking for change
or the four intellectuals beside her
debating whether the government
should give her a chance
The rain will cover every one of them

It's beautiful to me
How folks run from shelter to shelter
and I wanted to laugh all the while

The leaves on the ground are brown
the leaves in the trees are green
the bare trees are naked gray
and mountains are speckled white with snow

A true masterpiece
You know,
I wish I could paint
(all the best writers did, I bet)
maybe then I could be good company

Rain I love you
because you weep for us all.

Random mish mash of thoughts and feelings with feeble conclusions

I'm not sad anymore
But far from the opposite
No...
there is a different feel to it

Not the fit of an old baseball mitt
but the void when my hand isn't there

It just isn't there

And if life were a game I'd be waiting in the bull pen
warming up the pitchers
Or were it a tree
I'd be the one
lone
leaf in late autumn
somehow clinging to a twig
cut off from the life giving nutrients

It's not about the home runs
The spring bloom
The enlightened old shrub high on
a wise old hillside

It's not about making sense
Knowing what I want
Meeting someone
Buying flowers
Embracing love
or rejecting it

It must be more external
not from me but for me
from without

This is my Valentine's day requisition:

I'd just like to be liked
on a day for being liked

Simplicity itself

"It's really pouring outside right now,"
I told the woman trimming my hair

The buzzing of the clippers matching
clumps of black strands
falling in my lap

And the inane excess of pop music
on Top 40 radio
Eating away at my ears in the same way

4 down to a 2
Blend it in on top
leave some in the front
I think my hairline is revealing
too much of my modest forehead

I could only stare out the window
while she worked on the sides

It's just as well though
The glass was a mirror
but of a rare society
That I watched like a cat
perched on the sill

Cars created waves by the sidewalk
as they cautiously outmaneuvered
one another

Driving more carefully than if the moon were
shining pregnant on a dry summer evening
Her womb full of life

Blinding midnight light

In this storm the only brilliant shine
was the low beams
bleeding into the soup covered streets
Emanating from family sedans in rush hour traffic
fighting their way upstream
like spawning salmon

However, comparing humanity to trout
was a flawed metaphor
because they only make the trip once and die
while these folks kill themselves
five days a week

"I'm glad," she said,
Talking to my reflection
and so to me.
"We needed this rain."

It was then that I realized
Wisdom is not found exclusively in lecture halls
where we may only roam a four walled aquarium
and surmise what the vast ocean is like

And I knew that I could be happy
not despite myself
but because of who I am

I needed the rain more than she could have guessed

The haircut paid for in full
I joined the other fish
With a smile stretching from gill to gill.

Learning to walk, one foot in front of the other

A walk is a significant thing
Foot pounding pavement
the most mechanical motion we are capable of
The mind has time to dwell

To get lost on unkempt paths
long since treaded in real time
imagining bridges to gaps which
are impassable in immediacy

Solution after solution
Thoughts work overtime in their inward world
While the feet dredge on
an ever stretching
never ending path

The monotony would kill the mind
but the feet know their job and do it well
And in a subtle way
the feet know how important
their work is to the mind

And while each foot must stop in destination
and each mind must once again focus on reality

It is in walking that their truest purpose
is manifest
The feet for moving forward
the mind for forward thinking

A walk is all some people really need

I always intend to take a stroll
But some days I just feel like
I don't have the feet for it