The boys of summer,
playing in a young sand lot,
fighting to be men.
never turn your back
on the ocean, mother warned,
the dead come in waves
a homeless man knows
more than preachers with bibles
messages of life
Smoke streams from age-old
chimneys of trembling nostrils:
The winter of life.
Heat envelopes me,
The clock ticks, the curtain's still,
Salty sweat trickles.
Awkward note quivers
Calling over pain's retreat
The sweetness of life
Rich man wanting more,
a pauper needing nothing,
which life would you choose?
hear birds spreading joy
music waking dawn today
around their feeder
drunk man stumbles home
beats his wife for the last time
she leaves while he sleeps
the twilight of youth
too quick childhood fades away
bitter is wisdom
Leaves changing colour.
Lives changing like the season.
We no longer talk.
Twenty-five, she lives
wholesome in a halfway house
learning how to be.
Rose hues on gray sky
Earth blue islands faraway
Worlds where no one dies.
A handful of books
Sown into the desk's hard wood:
Harvest of the dead.
faces float on past
greyhound stations, trains and tracks
returns air grayscale
Small moments convey
Larger truths unobvious
Much like stones upturned
The sand strewn with souls
Sitting on the beach of Death
The tide rushes in
What a life to live
Meaning, purpose, passion yes
So go ahead live
Creation stories
have been lost, so let's create
our own by living
Young man wanting new
erases his pencil sketch:
clean sheet once again.
Stopped at the train tracks,
graffiti tagged boxcars pass,
five minute art break.
Flutter butterfly,
beat the tiny wings of time
before the Earthquake.