The giving hand

When you open your hand
and give them what they need
Shield and protect them
you expect your hand
to get bitten

I didnt expect
my heart
to get ripped out
and thrown away

in absentia

instead of connectedness
I just feel isolation
I stand alone
They say people come and go
it's not true
they just go
I dont know how
to forget their going
fill that absence

It doesnt really matter
how much I howl
for my pain
just another useless
toothless werewolf
in the black plain
you'd think
a lone wolf would
be better at isolation

Last night my soul
was overladen
overflowing with sorrow
I went alone to see what was left of the garden
which you watered

Bubbles

All life may be
just a dream within a dream
but some soap bubbles
are such coruscating
swimming rainbows
that when they pop
all I can see is the
aching vaccuum

Terri chiaroscuro

All I can see is images
of her laughter
of that grin
of her walk
of the odd hitch in her stride
that rolls her hips

Her blue eye glittering
from around the dangling
triangle of her pixie cut

The slightly spider flex
of her legs as she
perches on the green
leather chair, eager to
regale me with her
latest deviltry, in the
most Miela fashion

The empty rooms
are hardly visible
through this throng
of painful shades

and every shade has
its price in tears
another twist inside
of pain and anger
and stupid stupid loss

I wish I could dismiss
them,  even just let
the rage pour onto her
but I can't, I can't
I can't let go
of a thin and fragile
hope that some thread
of friendship might
still be woven back
between us

The greatest shadow
is that stupidity,
that vain hope,
worse even than the
hope of understanding
why, it keeps calling
more whorls and
delicate rays of pain

fading out

It's black
outside the door
and the lightbulb
is dimming
shadows are
reaching out
and the chairs
are all
sitting empty
It wont
be long now

Civil Wars

Watching the men, the boys

catching the streetcars to the Front,

antique rifles over their shoulders

and half a dozen cartridges in a pocket

cigarettes all, propped behind an ear

Believers all, idealists all

fools all, halfway to dead already

the harvest is taken and lost,

and the causa is lost with it

And reading about the end

of the rule of law, of the ruler

daring them to do something

about it.

And what the hell is there but

idealism

why live and die detached and

cynical

There’s a storm on the edge

of tomorrow, blowing hard

and it’s getting on towards

time to stand,

time to lie

Does the streetcar run nearby?