8:30 in New Jersey

The evening air is still—

Black ice it lies in waiting—

Walking with the cold

I watch asphalt exhaling.

If winter had a home—

Or frost a day to rest—

It be within this heart,

It be within this breath.

A story

There’s always a story to tell.

Always,

A story…

To tell—

Weird

Man. Life can get pretty weird,

and if that means something

supernatural or uncanny, then

I’ll take it! Anything other than

Ugly normal, is fine by me…

Patience and Surrender

Most things can’t be unsaid,

though in my heart—

under the mess I’ve made—they

can be understood, in time

with patience and surrender.

I’ll always surrender.

I just haven’t got the skin,

I just haven’t got the heart

not to know better.

November 28 2020

A three ring circus

I was mocked

Then told off

On two separate occasions

For doing what excites me

For mere entertainment

Taken, always taken

Out of sorts and out of mind

Like a three ring circus,

This tamer’s been bit

For the very, very

Very last time.

still as the evening air

For some reason, people

just keep on sticking around—

no matter how I push them away.

And God knows I’ve tried, yet

still as the evening air

they remain, willing and shifty

to see me from my darkness

onward, till dawn.

A Song Once Sung To An Infant Under The Gun.

Today the time ran out

just as it had begun—

Hot water fills the tub

you swore you’d never become—

It’s warm and shallow now

cut servings for only one—

The echo down the hall, well

that’s just yesterdays love—

Now it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

Today the moon refused

to trade place with the sun—

Sidewalks full of people

but still you know only one—

It’s an impossible force

that drags you from yourself—

Now it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

I try, you know I do, to balance

fault lines and faith, the surgeons

steel blade, it draws a bridge between both—

It’s a symphony of simple things

that will seem eclipsed by the sun—

Cause it’s all become a song once sung

to an infant under the gun.

California, 2020

Streams

Whatever stream it gets to you by,

it’s still a stream—leading nowhere

to some, somewhere to many, and

to others it’s—already there.

Florida Sunset, 2018

Alone, together

Where are we

but forever

Alone, together

in the cosmos

of our love.

Austin’s Iced, 2020

Plain clothes

Let’s make this hard demeanor

seem effortless as clothes,

worn to keep you even

keeled, careful and alone, but

we’re not an island, flower petal

rock or sinking stone,

he’ll take the time, reverse the crime

and kill me in plain clothes.