Refusing Ebb

Bluer than the brushstroke
up and to the side
bridging the divide

Bluer than the tears
always pooling tidal,
refusing ebb

I see the tide 
a little farther true north
just a little farther

To place the space
my soul resides

  

Inland

How can my world
become so small

and today

Even when it's here

Ticking of the clock

Driving

each ping

each clang

The day

sways

away

Inland

  

Amber Pale

What I see staring back at me

Colors amber, violet

Pale with vivid centers

Silent as a sunset

speaking volumes of doubt

Behind silhouettes of hills

and waves upon the sand

Fog folds inward

on itself

As the search

concludes

  

Currency

I took your gifts

at the dawning

Enough to fill

an innocent

Freely

just to be

But the gifts you never told

were only on loan

A love freezer burned

Currency, laundered

  

Far from Awakening

Where does a glimmer
stepping on ahead
toward a fascination
Lie underneath my path?

How do I get past clues fracturing
The bones of one disregarded thing
after another

Dragging down cluttered dreams
that seem
Far from awakening
A defeat blanketing what remains

 

Out of My Way

Why can't you just get out
of my way
You are not welcome
here

I can't let you
stay on
Like a ride spinning
jarring, lifting
Away from sturdy ground

Sounds berating
tearing down
the climb

If only for a space
where dismal voice
could trip
out of my mind

 

Missing

In between the lines
reads silently rootless

Flowering colors
float away on a cloudy breeze

Gray mist hovers
hiding victories

Missing an unknown place
Where the colors go without a trace

 

But Wish You Well

Is it possible
to say your goodbye
with a well wish

Deep as a well
my wish for you
helps

Swallow
what is so hollow

How is it possible
for you
To inflict
such a goodbye

Without me ever seeing it
in your eyes?

Yet time
could service
your disguise

Cooling

'Nothing will change for you'
you said

Then I felt cold
Where a shadow
passed over my vision
of hope
and light dims
upon a window
of our last chapters
together

What will change for me
being ever together,
for us?

An opening
of possibilities
A freshness as a breeze
cools the air
and filters the sun

Yet you seem to say
my days are already done

 

Not One Letter

Light is gone away
again from these times
wanting

A place not there,
faces
not aware
how closely they follow

Light is gone away
from readying my stay

In the shadow of together,
not even one letter
sees today

Collapse

Burnt imagination
branding liquid memory
reflects
a vibrance untarnished,
locked away

Frozen underneath
key and all

Sitting by bolt and shutter
with hope of any warmth
to neutralize
a path

Where the sound of hammer
or chisel
could collapse

Could collapse

or chisel

where the sound of hammer,

a path

to neutralize

with hope of any warmth

Sitting by bolt and shutter

key and all

Frozen underneath,

locked away

A vibrance untarnished

reflects

branding liquid memory

A burnt imagination

To Amputate

Can people be amputated
from our minds
like a limb from our body,
an eye when blind?

When silence settles 
in like a web spinning
around a butterfly

Choking its wings, hiding
radiant color
that used to glow
in a vision caught

Stony silence
a citadel
high above 
intrusion or loyalty,
weeding out obsession
yet also care

Asking a friend to retreat,
deny, amputate

That section of heart's colorful wing

Graduating

Caught in a pocket
of the shadows

A distant ship
invisible to light of day

Makes space
suited to the graduating moments
in a cavern of sound overturned

Strewn

A thin line grows thinner

in between the people who matter most

Tossing away the knotted days

spent in unison
bound

In what seemed eternal

Through the betrayals

of ourselves our ties

fray strewn

Gray with age and dusty confusion

Heavily we step

the ground shaking too soon

  

Mechanics

So the mechanics of doubt

tic-toc

like a clock ill-fitted
unwound

Still they sit

staring

down the barrel of weariness

Shouting with no voice

no name

The mechanics

of dull days

Useful Hum

Shadows cloudy
                 familiar shadows
disturb life's useful hum

The sun with a different sort of face
hardens our soil

Impenetrable
walled to hide blank space

Unapologetic

Swept plans tossed outside
dismiss me
unapologetically

Deeper underneath
halting steps

across eroded effort

Across Weathered Dreams

Fears like hard pebbles
drumming
upon the hour

Chime just in time
to unravel hopes

Thinly woven across dreams gathered

Fears climb
across weathered dreams
as if beams with trusses shattered

Shards

Side target withdraws
any remaining initiative

Taking not much
to tumble moments

Pieces of sharing
scattered

Relief stumbles
swept, discolored,
overshadowed

Loud Smile

Down a One-way street
words flow
in crumpled blankness

Mismatched spinning
of stories

in frosty reappearance
and loud smiles