Four Reasons Why

Before we knew it, it was fall
The sharpest leaves, like chips against the walk,
The great balloon of sunshine in the hall,
And pies as large as heads that never talk.
Before we knew it, it was cold,
The winter creeping up our backs inside our shirts,
The damp, eclectic brush piles growing mold
And fields on fields of frost and trampled dirt.
Before we knew it, it was spring
The pungent odor of the cracking seeds,
The bugling bark of elk deer echoeing
And pulling up of strangled weeds.
Before we knew it, it was heat
The summer came like one red bubble
It bust and ran through dry, chalked streets
And disappeared in emerald rubble.
I would say we lived in all of them
But who are we kidding?
We think we've harnassed all of them
Though they ignore our bidding;
And we are but casting them on and off
Like jackets.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Dreamers

The rain falls like memories,
Its brightness is a cure,
Thin pebbles splashing in the road,
Thick paintstrokes far and near.
They bear the weight of greater dreams
That never dared come true;
Put faces to the people that
Had faded in the blue.
Looking out a window at
The dim and flooded sky
Some idea burns the heart
And fills the watching eye;
Perhaps the past has yet to be,
Perhaps it is today
Perhaps the nightmares in one's sleep
Are but a storm away.

Five Habits of the Lovelorn

This day I met you, lovelorn,
Blood dripped down your leg
Your eye was dim with life, love
Your back with broken wings.
I told you I'd forgotten
You said you never would
And all the sun is rotten
Of all the things we did.
Sweet summers, sweeter dying,
Tears struck with streams of black;
The wintertime is crying
With flowers that it lacks.
If we could catch the rainbows
We might recall the sun;
But we are but the puddles
When all the light is gone.