Garbage and Laughter

sitting by the window
the scent of garbage and laughter comes in equal measure
then there’s a room silent
cavernous
and low

its emptiness glows
what a lonely sound echoing voices make with pleasure
all that remains
hollowness
bows

lying seditiously shallow
against a state of affairs, love evicted still rules writ
a law for fools
careless
fallow

the buildings and the trees
everything coated in painter’s black, bright moonlit
hope in the gallows
writhing
pleas

how many lines
that break and form again, never myself to permit
a peace that partakes
retreats
repines

The Amusement Park Wilderness Revisited

The First Visit

The Second

Skyscraper towers of rock silhouette the sunset sky

The evening star pokes a hole in the imminent darkness,

A promise that morning will come

But what dreams may pass between the shadow and the bluebird,

before the rise and fall of wild calls?

My hollow voice will echo faintly,

watch the ripple crawl across the watery table

The moon will glow and the sun will shine, ever brightly,

and where that ripple goes,

only they know

Reverse and Refrain

Bolted to the ground and bruised at the hip
Broken at the rib, where you once lived
The alpine wind comes and goes, who whispers while it whirs?
Something old, something blue, something eternally askew
Psalmist, sinner, and drunken lover never rest
the penultimate play, each must wearily address

Time shuffles forward and now my sins are my own
Paramours of the past echo flowered fields
circling a constellation crookedly sown
Truth survives the second coming intact
but some splendors were never meant to last

Dusky illusions will yield
while parched lips forever compromise in haste
Descending from the rocky summit, will you remember
or did you forget
The broken, the bruised, and the beautiful
sublimely written, wonderfully chaste

Forest corpses reverse and refrain
Only the sun redeems everything sane
Aspen groves gesture comically in the air
waving with faint flickers hello, then goodbye
Golden dusted lines crest every hair
before the cool breeze blows, a fasting sigh