I went forth with cloak and cowl
To tarry where the night things howl
Where shadows 'fore the moonbeams fled
And night-dreams with the darkness wed

I hear your voice,it's taunting me
Beside the foot-path by the tree
A whisper,tremor,thin and low
Calls me pleading,I will not go

What do you seek,both night and day?
Forever coming here to pray
In hope somehow this penance may
Wash your soul from sin away

the chill of the night gives me goose bumps.
my skimpy attire no longer cools me from the hot, burning, sun.
the fall of the night, the moonlight diamond white takes the sky.
i didn't bring a sweater or jacket to protect me from the chill of the night.
now i stand here with my arms folded across my chest, rubbing my cold skin, trying to create friction from my hands  to warm my frigid arms. 

I remember chasing fire flies
way back in my childhood days
beneath the star-strewn southern skies
then, still unmarred by urban haze

After supper in late spring
when the heat of day had gone
listening to the dryflies sing
we'd dart and dodge on the front lawn

Once caught I'd put them in a jar
twelve or fifteen, even more
as train whistles drifted from afar
and bull frogs croaked from near pond's shore

In the middle of the night, awake, I watch,
but not the world.

It's as if I'm waiting for some poignant phrase
to align me with the stars ...

have you anything for me
if I run up the middle will I find what I need

it's always on the tip of my tongue
could be right
but more often wrong

Exhausting,
waiting
for words to bring me life.

the mirror........
you stand right before me
in admiration
of self emulated beauty

the giggle is spontaneous
and
genuine

then you break down into a seeming reunion
now you dance
after a refreshing perfumed bath

weary rise
patina soft

and light falls in
sideways

evaluation
all consideration
costs

turn mists to humid
sunrise

The curve of night
is sleeping

and beams of stars
have gathered

where happiness
lived

Inquiry by RW

I cleanly left the rectory.
I pray for souls which burn at me.
I flagellate till flesh turns free.
Dichotomy. Dichotomy.

This angel takes which road for now?
Unsure at which his knees should bow
A servent, supplicant or cow
God show him how, God show him how

A burning fills his abdomen
inside a hunger deep within
a boy pledged past to be nomen
a roaring djinn, a roaring djinn

the glow sham
curtain dreams
are sliding

drawing a breadth
where livid light
will splice

ocular transmittance
these image jaunts
fall like random whispers

snug up the buckle
suck a breath
and swift away the false
premonitions
cacophonous limp

slender wrist twitch
thrown care

from the edge of that bony hip
but I baby
dont scare

how you love
black thick
a stare of night

calamities tryst

The ghost of Ben Jonson draped itself across my troubled dreams last night
buying the rounds in a strange pub, blue mermaids and bagpipes on the juke box
angry in his critique of my style
"abandon excess and ye kill yer muse" he raved and waved the glowing green absinthe in my face.
Crazed I staggered and swayed as I pushed to defend my pace reciting odd rhymes in iambic pentameter to impress this specter of gone days
with both rough hands he grabbed my face, intent eyes pleading as he begged "use thy own voice boy"

You try so hard to be someone
then you forget what you've become.
Your day job is a constant frown,
your diadem, a leaded crown.

You strut the streets with oppulence,
yet are not paid your recompense;
you lie, you cheat, just to get by.
alone, you're broken, and you cry.

The world's a stage, but not for you.
You cannot ignore what is true:
You are a broken destitute,
at best, a mental prostitute.

Why wither, when you can regain
the treasure that you still disdain?