The Sick Poet

He lay in his bed of words

Dying of meaning

The pages of a rhyming dictionary

Torn out, shredded and stuffed

Into a bag that he uses as a pillow

To rest a head bereft of connections

To his senses and his experience

He rarely used a rhyme anyway

Just when the time was right

“No rhyme before its time!”

He jokes to his Muse

Who doesn't get it.

Now every word seems like “orange”.

His hand shakes barely holding a pen

Scratching the pad like a car in a skid

It's his last sheet of paper

Now the pen runs dry

But it doesn't seem to matter

He has nothing to write anyway.

Words Without Words

He wore a perfect blindfold-- a bleak mask

For an elected blindness not to see

A thing, or any one, including their

Words to read that could be misleading him.

Words can deceive, even start bloody wars.

He began scrubbing his memory of language--

Thought symbols he used to speak, hear, read

And write... they only feed on themselves

Like cannibals hungry for glib answers

From his gut, twisted by feckless questions.

Now he hears language sounds that mean nothing,

Like the sharp commands heard by wild dogs

Unleashed by scarecrows that they ignore.

He hears rushes of the wind, cicadas,

Thunder, and waves repeating restful

Endings upon sandy shores, music heard--

Unspoken things like that, unwritten, move

On, to forget without traces so he'll be ready

To hear wondrous things as they are just born.

He might hear tandem footsteps on the sand,

On grass, moving closer, moving away...

Stopping, silence-- a real moment simmers...

He listens as the quiet of someone there

Brings their world so near to him without a word.

He feels her breathe without symbolic clutter.

He learns to know her, who she really is.

Maybe now he'll take the mask from his eyes.

Her heart was a lyric.

Her heart was a lyric.

Her eyes were a window.

Even in dreams they

Worked her sacred mind

Into a sublime frenzy.

The Perfect Crime

The Perfect Crime

I’d better write something good before I die.

What exactly, I don’t know.

Perhaps, the feeling just before death ...

Rather the awareness before not knowing

Only to be forgotten, rather never to be known by anyone

No evidence, and the only witness doesn’t exist.

This is the perfect crime.

The Greatest Painter

He wanted to be the greatest painter

He worked hard stretching his pale canvases

Past limits of never ending and then …

He was touched by an Angel, who advised

“Paint all of your dear subjects with sunlight.”

She vanished before he could ask her how.

Before he understood, he had palette

Brush and a feverish hand in motion ...

She came into view as he remembered her.

He looked away not wishing to go blind.

He could never get close to sign his name.

No one would ever know who painted her …

That he was the greatest painter of all.

She Wanted it for a Ringtone

The teacher played the recording just softly

Enough for the students to hear the tones,

The chords, and a fine gentle melody.

Though it was as though only one listened …

When he saw that she raised her little hand

He smiled and appeared before her blond desk.

“Maria,” he said, recalling her name …

“Yes,” she said with the truest smile, perhaps

Happy he knew her name when a year passed.

She asked her teacher for the music’s name.

“It’s called, ‘Arrival of the Birds’,” he said.

“Oh, I want it for a ringtone for my phone …

Could you write it down for me please,” she asked,

As she pushed her notebook to the desk’s corner.

He wrote the title and the orchestra

Between blue lines as surely as he could

“I don’t read script too well,” Maria said.

Then he engraved the page with capitals

Clear enough surely for any child to read …

But she was not just any child … she was

Maria, who loved this music so much

That she wanted it for her ringtone.

The Book of Lost Dreams

The book of lost dreams still lies in his heart;

Wherever he sought, the pages were not.

Disheartened, he imagined them as blank ...

Or what was worse, the worn leaves were gone.

He couldn’t remember them as though he

Constantly awakened from them each day.

What differentiates remembered dreams

From those that crush memory to whiteness?

Was a curious abyss drawing him

In, or was there something in his regret

Beside Vanity and Self-loathing … when

They try to resolve their differences?

He lost many duels with distracting mind waves

Trying to live those dreams again, but time

Wouldn’t agree to this vague indulgence.

He acted as though it were intended

To deceive him until he slept … never to dream again.