Numbered Poems

I love to be walked on,
to be treated like furniture,
to have my meals interrupted,
and my quiet time disturbed
by my cats

I mourn the soul I met last night.
With keenest eyes and poorest sight-
could see the stars but not the light.

God lays his quilt across the trees
and paints the ground with its leaves.
Each bears the color of its fruit,
some flamboyant - others mute.
Orange orange and lemon yellow,
ruby red and golden mellow,
macintosh with  pumpkin patch,
deep plum pudding and a dash - pistachio.
And though my eyes can't drink their fill,
the season offers greater still.
Such sweet aroma fills my breath
to wake my primal union with my
soul and senses one and all.
I love thee, love thee, love thee, Fall!

Truth is price and purchase,
burden and relief,
and Passage from endless fear
to finite joy and grief.

I try to make her see it -
this wounded child of mine.
Nothing is as it was
There's no reason for the pain, but
she is deaf until I listen,
rigid until I yield, all -
consuming until I surrender,
lame until I bridge the gap
and walk it back again

Education is the lube
for the toughest knot to undo.
Common practice pulls it tight -
for people think
that people think
like they do.

Alone in the desert
I long to be free and scream out the pain.
But when I think of it,
I hold myself in.
The burning sensation
will only get worse if I let myself feel it--
the depth of my thirst.

When my mother wore rose-colored glasses,
the world was always fine.
And if it wasn't really that way,
it'd surely be it time.
But then one day she took them off --
much to my surprise.
But even more the shock
when I did come to find
She'd worn the lens for many eyes,
and one of them was mine.

We walk the fence of self-esteem,
our faces toward the sun,
but never leaping there.
It's all we can do -
keep our feet on the beam,
And avoid the shadow's lair.

Sun at left, moon at right
Flanked, the gargoyle sits
With hollow eye in oversight
And globe clenched in his fist
Two of the same hunch below
Each of them the lesser
Face each other eye to eye
All to see the better
With keys to hell hung on his tale
And wings but spread to fly
The gargoyle's post is guarded well -
No spirits dare come nigh

My Father taught me plenty
Although he doesn't know it
He taught myself to hate me
To love, but not to show it
My father taught me distance
And the judgement it implies
He taught me to fear weakness
And the consequence it buys
My father taught me doing
To from my feelings hide
It is from him I'm fleeing
Though he has long since died

On the anniversary of my death
I remember pain
Such as I had never known before
Such as I had never known possible
I remember betrayal
Such as I had never known at all
I remember my soul consumed by fire
Not yet a phoenix, but ashes
I remember this anniversary
Inconceivable and unwanted
loathed even
At the time
All this returns to me
All this is in the present
All this is in the past
On the anniversary of my death