unceremoniously

Throw me a bone
Romeo's cover has been suddenly blown
Just when he was gaining
on the great unknown.
Unceremoniously.
But it always seems to go round that way.
At least it tends to sound that way.
Here, where the deer and the antelope play.
Long ago
Was it me or you practicing
'Turn To Stone'?
For endless hours sitting all alone,
Unceremoniously.
It's a pity that I never thought to pray
For the deer and the antelope
In Mother Nature's transcendental way.

Home, home on the range.
Wonder why normal feels so ghastly strange?
Wonder what Romeo would have had to say
If not for Shakespeare standing in his way?
Unceremoniously.
Throw me a bone.
When you are gone
I'm gonna turn to stone.
I think I'm headed for that great unknown.
Sure as Poseidon sits atop his fishy throne.
Beneath the briny sea
Unceremoniously.
I'd sing his praises night and day
Where the squid and the jellyfish are said to play.
I ask the questions in a million ways
But the answers always coming out the same.
Home, home on the range

don't call me

Don't call me oozing doom

from your musky little room,

floating in a languid sea
of mucous and anxiety;

with persuasion's barrel

leveled squarely at your brow

don't call me like you done before,

don't call me that way now.

When sirens are wailing 
of low pressure systems staring down 
your hastily assembled
bag of supplies
and you're feeling like less than a
speck of dust in some
handsome stranger's eyes,
maybe then you will know why
you should not call.

After each and every venue

has been brazenly detoured,

till correspondents and old stand bys

have indelicately demurred

and every solitary safety hatch
has been otherwise secured.

Don't call me,

Don't call me,

Don't call me.

Forget my address
And my face
Forget the path that leads you
to this place.
Erase it from your memory
Forget it all
and please don't call.
The consequence is far too dear
and too predictable, I fear.

Don't mistake me for a tympani
next time you take a beating.
I know you've heard this all before
But for my sake it bears repeating.
Not in a while,
not even now and then
no, not if you are bleeding.

Just simply do not call,
don't call to me again.

O, please, by now

you must know how
this roundely will end.

Don't call me or
so help me...
You must take this to your heart
as a warning
Or as a threat
But this one thing you must remember
This one thing do not forget
Don't call me or, so help me,
I will come.
After all is said and
all is done,
don't call me,
if you call me
I will always come.

construction

Like the wolf in a fable I've been
grasping at straws.
You built your brick castle
on a long lost 'because'.
And so now who's afraid
and, well, who wouldn't be?

The wind is still blowing
but best save your breath.
All that huffing and puffery
scares the children to death.
And so now who's afraid,
and, well, who wouldn't be?
If it weren't for you,
if it wasn't for me.

So how does it go now
and howdyado?
Will I ever know now,
if ever you knew
that the way to the end
is the way it begins.
and if you'll believe, love hides
multitudinous sins:

That one of omission,
the one about pride.
I envy the one who
keeps nothing inside
and who follows their passion,
who leads with their heart
in irrational fashion,
forsaking all art.

So vacate that fortress
of thatch, twig or stone
but you better be ready
to go it alone.
For the sheeps in the meadow
the cows in the corn
and so it has been since
the day you were born.
But where do you go now
and howdyado?
If it weren't for me,
if it wasn't for you.

after all

you are the dissonance
in my harmony
the apathy for my ecstasy
the secret I can't share
the circle 'round my square

you were too early
for my late
the picket fence
embracing my garden gate
you are the need that would not want or wait,
my need that will not wait.

you are the sunstorm
in my endless night
the happenstance
to eternal plight
the wrong within my right.

the very thing I'm searching for
the silence answering my call
there you are and there you are
no more
I'll never find you after all
I never found you after all

No Choice

You leave me with
no space in which to turn myself
around. There's you in every place
I've been and everywhere I'm bound.
Declare myself free
only to see I'm with no
conceivable choice.
You've left me no choices.
You leave me no voice.

Some children make do very nicely
with what they have got
While others get by just as well
with what they have not
I'll be the informer for the
latter leads who can know where?
and so I'll choose the former for the ladder
leads into the thin and infinite air.

Like the lesser of evils
or the greatest of all of our fears:
to be loved or not to be -
all passion or pageantry -
and all the eventual tears.
Needing and wanting you so
and to know I'll be left as I am, alone.
there's only so much for which
one, although innocent,
 may falsely or truly atone

We're just wasting our time,
treading water in order to make
all the dearly departed so proud.
and where did it get us
for laughing or crying,
for laughing or crying out loud?
We're already played by this game
And the rules forbid changing
or challenging fate.
There's no going back to when,
if I never saw you again,
it would already have been too late.

Some folks could make do 'oh-so-nicely'
with what you've got.
The others would do even better
with what I have not.
You be the reformer and the
ladder will lead who knows where?
I'll take the former - the latter
just leads into the thin and the infinite air.

You leave me no spaces
in which to turn myself
around. You're in all the places
I've been and everywhere that I'm bound
Declare that I'm free only finding I hadn't a choice.
You left me no choices, you leave me no voice.
You left me no choices, you leave me no voice.

at the beach

In scenes where she is drowning
he is a life guard, though his figure
doesn't glisten or tower above the sand.
Sunglasses punctuate unremarkable eyes
that search the sea and stare.
Always he anticipates those cries,
at first like hungry sea birds,
calling above salty waves of despair:
the flailing and confusion;
the kiss of life and the compression
that forces the exchange
of unholy water for blessed air.
But he is neither such - the savior
nor physician, and heals not a soul,
least of all his own.
Returning to his post he forgets
the before, the after
and the in-between when
the bather is mostly content
to lay upon fresh, dry towel,
read her book
sipping raspberry tea.
Then is when he is simply
another pale old man,
tracing the tide
along the lost causeway
with his emotional amnesia in tow.

simple song of love

Days, even the best of them, well
it seems as all they ever do is pass -
like clouds across the pale blue skies,
or dragon flies,
skipping, over blades of grass.

But the days we've spent together
will never leave me.
The days we spend together
will never fade away completely.

Love, I don't know what it is
or what it's supposed to do.
All I know, all I ever know,
is how I feel when I'm with you.

Suspend your disbelief
for just an ordinary day.
Suspend your disbelief
and let defenses fall away.

You've gone about as far
as sleeping can be taking you.
Better now to find a kiss,
the one that will awaken you.
Better now to find a life,
a life you can awaken to

And the days we spend together
will never leave us or lead us astray.
the days we'll spend together
will never fade away.