Beautiful fogginess obstructing dangled frost hanging loosely
as closed lips breath in and out for clouds to part.
Walking to nowhere is better than sitting somewhere, stewing in drags
of puffs, sailing to catch what can’t fall.
Familiar hymns frame memories unclogged, images too wet for drying,
form a circus of what played out, when youth swaddled threats.
Catching birds in flight, black wings provocatively storming grayness
perched low for righteous reckoning.
Stubborn traveling under heaviness of heart, leaving trails of dull red
from under you, footsteps grow deeper in the strength
of borrowed weakness.
From afar, moving heads turn and bow without knowledge of why.
Closer still, emphatic sounds from squealing beaks, tucked into electricity,
striking dramatized silence of the morning.
Aloneness is the power of one, surrounded by the chill of company
frigidly abrasive, sullenly comforting in the throes of emptiness,
opaquely imposing for those who can’t surrender to stretches of damnation.
Standing proud in the pitiful overlay of curtained fear that one step
could produce slithering grips of paralysis.
Implosions bite the way forward, while thoughts provide warmth
from brittle shadows, falling apart as you blow through heated lips.
