Dawn from Defeat.

Turn aside the burning blush

let the fire settle from thy smothered eyes.

Let grace like silent snow fall

and cool thy singed soul.

This is truth and grace abundant

that in the midst of despair

is the gentle hand, the turning sound,

the path made straight again.

Step away from the immolation

shame is not your birthright

You are a new generation

and the dawn is a gentle light.

Hazards

The address cannot be read.

The ink has grown into a spider's web

woven against the mossy envelope

and there is nothing to be done.

There is a room

in the back with no door but a slit,

A blank faced wall with a thin lipped mouth

always open but unwilling

to swallow each slender morsel.

Day by day they feed it

stuff it full of telephone bills

and birth announcements.

They have not checked it in years

gone back to see how full,

how heavy the room had grown

They did not hear how it groaned

under the weight of the words in their thin paper skins.

The words that were not read,

were not yet grown into thoughts

could not stay their germination

but burst instead into luminescent bloom.

It is Christmas Eve

and the Post Office is on fire.

Shadow Sonata

The dog next door is howling

I try to remember that he is just a puppy

and does not understand the lonesome sound

he makes in the deep night

but it is hard when I think of him alone

in the quiet apartment

making his own noises to keep away

the shadows that seem to slide under the door.

I too have my shadows

that slide through off-hand comments

and grip with a brutal grasp

leaving bruises where I used to breathe.

It's hard to breathe

thinking of you in the dark

walking some sidewalk by yourself

while I thought you are safely asleep

or at least at home, shut away from the night.

I am so afraid

that the shadows have lured you through the door

have taken you for their hungry own

and will not give you back.

The dog next door is howling

and I am crying with him.

Shame

There is a sort of sickness seeping

through my soul

As if hearing through a fog

that all my bones are broken

that they have no marrow in their middle

They have turned cold and brittle

beneath my skin

and stripped of their calcium

sit like rotten twigs against each other

in an autumnal pile-

not even good for burning

for the sake of the sullen smoke

that singes as it sulks along the streets...

there is a sort of sickness in my soul

and not even sleep will silence it.