The minute hand is slowly creeping
as I sit here late at night, unsleeping.
While outside a bat keeps on tapping
at door glass he's softly rapping.

T.V. on for background noise
(news denoting dreads and joys)
as pen awaits something to write
in Carolina late at night.

Unnoticed, soon my eyes grow weary,,
then drooping lids make sight grow bleary
......
........

Glacial sweat creeping down the back of my neck
trickling through my senses
penetrating my reserves.

Brittle nerves fracturing with the strain
Try to scream nothing emanates
I’m mute.

Racked and shaken
On my knees
Gripping on for safety

Catatonic with dread
As foot steps draw near
Cold blade between the ribs.

Is only because
your brain is so wired,
Despite your ailment
You are bright
While others not ill,
Are so much without
Depth, love and insight

Because our brains are integrated
And
Cast at birth
While in the womb
And
The mom knows not
what she is thinking about
Of the loveliest new arrival
or the tomb

And

Her thoughts get transplanted
In our infant
yet to be born ,
developing mind
Where can then anyone,two
Identical kind of brains ever find.

(Lyn) Charlatan
Dedicated To: Lyn Waters Ratzberg
(anger poem for workshop)

It seems I have given birth to a bastard child:
poetry...

I draw no conclusions make no comparisons, there is no
exit, no escape
from words that usher in the sublimity of the empty page.

I must be a magician, I must have cracked the Da Vinci code,
I am the virgin without the announcement and with no Lord
and Master, a Ronin warrior, I break open your seed with the precision
of a surgeon conducting an autopsy on herself, the pain is a useless
circumcision on a phantom appendage,

My breakfast coffee tastes like drying mud.
I sip and choke and cough, my eyes all tears.
Last night was fun, I wish I could recall
Just what the hell I drank; sure wasn't beers!

Baby Biff Maverick
lives up to his last name,

he's quite the wiley rascal
and, may be difficult to tame.

He's determined, and relentless
to win every game he plays,

using the element of surprise
against cats, set in their ways.

That's how it is with my other boys
two neutered, full-grown, males;

they nearly jump right out of their coats
when he pounces, on their tails!

He's a little ball of thunder
truly exuberant, in all he does;

by TS Eliot.

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Elongated shadows cast
An ice cold chill
upon me is cast

Night birds cry
Foot Falls in the distance
Making the earth
Tremble and quake

Glowing eyes from every tree
Voices whisper
They're following me

As I trod histories ground
There is no shelter
To be found

From these haunted woods
Sanctuary I seek
In answer to my prayers
I hear a shriek

hold the ache
in slim fingers
like a swimmer
streaming arcs
the brittle surf
the bird lark caught
in the net of clouds

these sandy shoals
of bitter lacerations
racing reason
tracing rhymne

and the forest sighs
while the eye of moon
shutters through the
dark limbed limbo

and in the kelp

the great swaying forest
you bury your treasure
my wayward heart
Its yours forever
till the years grow dark