It was never a question

but just a reminder

a sacrificed memory

of what used to be

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2022)

“I don’t splain myself,”

Bill Hickok said

before his Colts went off

A dead man lying

at his feet

—his legend time embossed

 

(Dreamsleep: January, 2022)

The road to power

is mined with uncertainty

each step a commitment

—to live or to die

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2022)

Piecing it together

for a second time

the result was not the same

 

The years had altered

the way each piece fit

a strange familiar game

 

Instinct overwriting

what memory lost

the picture starts to clear

 

My past and future

now conjoined

—as moments reappear

 

(The New Room: March, 2022)

Ichor running through her veins

All blood is pushed aside

Her eyelids shut, her heart on ice

My fate she would decide

 

Wilted romance, rotting vines

Garden left in thorns

A lonely rose from last years bloom

Bent over in her scorn

 

New seeds unplanted, sterile lay

Her cold impounds the soil

To blow within a fallow lust

Abandoned there to toil

 

With one more look, beyond all hope

My vision love impaired

Her verdict guilty, poison laid

—in blindness I despair

 

(Longwood Gardens: February, 2022)

He had more talent

than execution

His well overflowing

no buckets to contain

Deep from the visuvial

a fountain’s raging torrent

Drowning his intention

—flooding mountain to plain

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2022)

Fate the end game

time is fleeting

Moments pass

hate unleashing

Choices lost

reason stalls

Darkness calling

—hell enthralled

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2022)

Atheist or Pagan

which gets to dream

reasoning stilted

 spirits unseen

 

Rational narcissist

tribal taboos

if given the choice

it’s easy to choose

 

Atheist or Pagan

contrast to compare

the first in self-worship

—the second aware

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2022)

People are people

—and a fool is but a fool

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2022)

Skeletons rule the attic,

 rooks have left the board

emptiness I can’t explain,

darkness untoward

 

Lapses in my memory,

lyrics left unsung

chasing all those things I’m not,

orphan on the run

 

Monday turns to Thursday,

Tuesday, Wednesday lost

time on fire, burning fast,

sanity the cost

 

One last chance for freedom,

pathway to the cliff

to jump into my deepest fear

—or sink in this abyss

 

(The New Room: February, 2022)