I Died on the Train to Philadelphia

I hugged the mid-Atlantic coast

Embraced, by white December tide

Over frosty tracks to Philly,

In an empty train, I died

I saw my world in shades of grey

Ever darker; white to black

I died en route to Philadelphia

With Boston to my back

My final thought was the harbor town

The boats were frozen still

Anchored by the elements but,

Moved by human will

I couldn’t tell Heaven from Hell

But from somewhere came a scream,

“We’ve arrived in Philadelphia!”

And woke me from my dream

His Charlotte

A letter for his Charlotte,

A tribute to their time

A record where emotion rests

Where birches commence

The climb in the valley passageway

The portal to her peak

The wanderer’s printed testimony

Serves warning to the weak

Charlotte, come below the clouds!

Is clarity worth the cold?

Love delivered from such a height

Returns, one hundredfold

The Grave I Dug

Into lone; done out of love

To dull a once-sharp pain

I sat inside the grave I dug

Admiring the rain

My broken spade on either side

My frame was muddy wall

Riddled roots that I could climb

If I were six feet tall

It was perched upon the pile

Bare hands had displaced

As long as I keep smiling

She’ll never be disgraced

Rampageous, Who Are You?

The room down the hall
Electrical shock
Both faces beckon
Knock knock knock

Rampageous, who are you?
Or back where you came
How can I know you
And not know your name?

Abstraction

Despite third place Susan Blinks

made America proud

on that Australian “g’day” in 2000

The Collaborators

What, 2 seasons?

Not even worth a year (where I’m from at least)

Wetheral thinks they’re

their own civil parish, but money

can’t move them out of Carlisle

I got a ticket on the Great Wagon Road

Sorry, I was just blazing a trail

On I-81 to visit my bud

The Trial of Henry Kissinger?

Like scraping paint flecks off a Picasso

It’s for those who stir pots (boiling lies!)

Jeanne Wakatusi Houston? Oof

Internment camps didn’t happen here

Remember?

Arleigh Burke Class destroyer…

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous

Poetry and Wikipedia don’t mix.

Die Leben Der Anderen

It’s a sight to see; insanity

Reality second-guessed

While judgments of lucidity

Are all but second best

Had I a glass to view inside

Pity would understand

To wander blind is will denied

In a city of the damned

Conversation’s art elapses

When portraits come of word

When sense is lost between synapses

The remainder is absurd

My high-dive is on the shallow end

So I can perch and oversee

And ponder when I could pretend

They’re more insane than me

Winter Road

When winter came early and summer shook

I took the route a deer had took

Dead ahead downward with my back a hunch

The only sense, my footprint crunch

The only path my map would show

The only path that flew through snow

I followed timelessly nature’s trail

Through hazing cold of a bitter veil

When all but denser green was found

My hands shone whiter than the ground

I turned around and let weather trade

Then started on the path I’d made