Me and the Moon

The moon is a boxer

A crossways eye rimmed pink and blue

Wide, rolling, frenzied

Clinging to ropes of black glory.

I am a fighter

Small fists, big heart clenched

Tremulous, terrified, savage

Dancing on the brink before the bell.

Tag team, we will swing and jab and swing again.

Nighttime is our square, spectators stars, a full house.

For the good of a cause with no need to be named

We take the hits from relentless forces

Insatiable, taking us piece by piece for their own.

By minutes, surge for surge, we snatch ourselves back

And rise from the dirty floor, always, every time.

We do not allow ourselves a choice.

14.12

So late it's early
No cool side to the pillow
Such fools, both of us

Wandering Song

A wandering song came on in my ears

As the train swayed, and swung, and swayed

The sky had old man eyes, squinting

Gray like the newspapers piled by his chair

The mountains were evening wear blue

And I was big, gigantic, absolutely enormous

Big as every earthly country on the globe

The yellow and red ones full of sand

Green and beige with grass like hair

The black and blue with big hands and long arms

I was all of them, incandescent

Moving feet in time with a wandering song

Dancing down cobblestone dirt paved roadways

And the train swayed, and swung, and swayed

The Word Goodbye

Around the time
When it's time to leave
We often find that word goodbye
Difficult to please
Lightly on your lap
Legs around your waist
Keeping you captive
Like a portrait in a picture frame
Tilt up your head
To expose a smug smile
And meet me halfway
For the longest kiss goodbye

A note:  1500 pageviews!  Pretty awesome, I must say.

14.9

My dear, I miss you

All of today, tomorrow

Till I can hold you

A prayer to the

Nighttime; please hold me warm and

Still until day breaks

Fix This, Doc

Outside reeks of cigarette smoke. 

All of it. 

The arthritic air and the black smudge trees

The fluctuating spaces between people

Walking hard and fast.

Snowflakes drop like fragments of ash

Tapped resolutely from the end of a Marlboro Red

Gusting in the cough of a tired wind.

Like the world is an ashtray with cigarette butt buildings

And in all our love and losing, we all are slowly dying

From cancer of the heart and lungs.

Finishing like Zusak

He's right, you know
When the final few lines jump to the last page
That last page, white like the gates of heaven
The worlds scrambling, tripping over each other
To be the first to be thrown down
Like the finishing planks of a bridge
All the while you are digging in your heels
Pulling back hard on the reigns, no, no
Slow down and savor like a roast Sunday afternoon
Like the last day of school
And the late hours on the eve of your birthday
Remember the crook of the hands on the clock
Remember the sounds and the taste in your mouth
What you are wearing, what clutter has gathered round
Sketch a picture, just quick, to preserve it forever
And when they ask by the thousands, how did it feel?
You can say, like each page was a single glass step
And I climbed every one to the peak of the sky
And as the last casualty words fell on the papery hillside
I looked down from the folds of a velvet blue night
And I was alone and on top of the world