Happy Halloween

hollow cavity,

the rot of ages could not enlarge,

then and now no heart to know compassion.

I was that murderer, that blank stare,

the beast inhuman that villagers burned,

the tale parents spun for truant children,

the terror at night, her eyes wide and sightless in the dark.

Headache tonight

Solitary note, digit hovering

ever over ebony key.

You can descend only once

and change is known.

A new and common-sensed wisdom whispers

that Silence, my former comfortable companion

is not music

nor never music was.

What rut one makes.

Any errant wheel but senses Familiar

and the precipice of Same’s a silhouette shadow.

The mold once poured, and sunsets dried,

remains and reminds.

But wait

Caution’s a coward yet keening the unknown note.

listen

The Sound will surely surface.

Like my clock?

Digital tic of Time pass in silence.

Sound surfaces on creative whim

or clatters in descendent insanity.

Unspeaking electrons ever buzz into unlit obscurity

infusing numbered lights that count last to eternity,

but first to shrill bleats

waking to morning coffee,

prayer,

or nothing.

This world expanse wrapped in stucco walls

it weighs and waits

rages to calm and back to rage

placates that blind guide

bares the fruit of the barren.

Until the dawn unlike another.

New comes to creep.

A scarcity of grey brews crimson red or amber brown,

at-first-unfavored-light,

you crest a rounded line

and rounded self,

blind the already bemused.

Smell like tincture wraiths cloy a curry tint,

wrap and warp my milquetoast memory and

backward fade to vibrant Dream.

Taste buds - hills on mouthy Mars -

rouse and breathe blue.

Seen silk will find scratch of common cloth,

like augury, atmospheric gender set opposite a thickset thumb.

Look up,

ubiquitous ceilinged cellophane,

Poke and Prod,

Sound will surely surface.

Don't be hatin'

August and September air

is blast heat to chill promise.

The outside year fades and

I feel the tug of hot cocoa,

the at-hand switch to thick sweater.

A layer of Winter fat will soon pad

but not now. The Summer swimsuit reigns.

I inhale only imagined change.

Today, leaves yet live green

and park tables still fill at noon.

But how the haze hangs in the air,

the cool hint of bite in a breath,

discomfited lungs insinuating a

precipitous fall of molecules

delving to unexplored reaches.

No longer the hot air loft,

the far-gazing heights -

a heft in my chest is missing -

and the absence
is sweet and solid promise

of holiday trinity.