Tiny Bandits

While life sleeps,
And minds are doused
With buckets of colors
On white tired walls.
Riddles run wild
Like tiny bandits
Stealing memories and
Bending them
Like old cocktail straws.
Tying fiction to reason
In mismatched knotted fancy
With fuzzy yarns.
Coiling perceptions and
Spilling fears.
Monsters shrink and
Stand on heads of pins.
Spirits twist,
Pulling tight on the
Golden cords of life.

The Cool Air of Quietude

These words
Crash down cliffs.
Bite into my reverie,
Like long-fanged frothing
Snarling dogs.
My thoughts tangle
On these obstacles.
They twist like knotted ribbons.
If I could only bask a while
In the cool air of quietude.
If I could run from this din,
I could be entwined with
The moments I caress most deeply.
Those that wait for me
In the soft corners of my mind.

Fresh Air

Fresh air that runs over skin
And into hair,
Moving leaves and
Turning over forgotten missives.
Long in verse and short in thought.
They once held a woman's dreams.
Now in space the clarity,
The safety that unlocks her heart.
Ghosts arise and are soon forgotten.
Merrily and without regret,
She collects tears and
Waters the earth instead.
Sifting, sifting, sorting,
Through these dusty ideals,
With a vision
Unobstructed and not denied.
While the fortune of her
Innocence is made new
Each day.

Down Wooden Halls

Big hands,
Shaking in spasms.
Feels like feathers
On my tender face.
I am taken,
Wide eyed in wonder
By your household fame.
I make real families with dolls.
And listen for the ice to clank
Down wooden halls.
Don't know what to say.
What, you finally do talk?
Don't bother,
The scotch on your breath
Makes me sick.
Don't do me the honor
To blunder
An acknowledgement.
Just walk out of here.
Away from me.
I have grown
Accustomed.
To missing sentiments.
Morbid self-concern.
I wish you away.
This drama is old,
Even the pain is boring.
Please, GO.

Somber Dawns

So obscure the passing of days,
Thick like soup the air I breathe.
In this place my marrow mourns
This slicing chill.
Still we ride in packs, in droves
As hooves plummet into white glass hills;
And I can no longer feel my long thin fingers,
I can no longer feel.

Embraced by my thoughts,
Comforted by the thin lines
My soul has drawn across this land,
A land not seen by any man.
We will breed and build on this soil,
Our children will bask in the fruit
of our moil.
My heart aches uncertain
of my insular eyes and somber dawns.

Uninvited Hours

I called this meeting
To tell the time of play and nonsense,
To grab the clouds and walk the seas.
These gifts they came from prince (or) lord,
(And) the sun it shines with grace,
Over the earth in it's embrace.

Come and see there is no life
We do not breathe.
Take the hand of (this) starry-eyed child
Who carries his cares in his pockets like worms.
The mist and midnight rush in like
Uninvited hours.

The Bell

Old man wakes to walk
The path of a million stones.
Clothes hang limp as he climbs the stairs.
He takes his time, one foot after the other,
So close to the answers.
He rounds the top and steps inside.
There is where the answers lie.
He reaches high and takes hold,
With all his might he pulls.
At last the bell, it rings so loud,
The sound that made a hamlet proud.
Again, he pulls with all his might.
The bell, it beckons the rising light.
He looks about and shakes his head,
"I could have been a carpenter instead."
He looks below at winding stairs,
One foot after the other.
Little does this old man know,
Or did the man before him,
That right on the very tower high
There is a revelation.
What are we souls? Where do we go?
Is there heaven and is there hell?
The truth escapes the lot of man,
For the answer is written in the bell.