The winter has frozen my tongue
It lays limp like a dead fish in my mouth
I haven’t had much to say these days.

I let my hands do the talking
Carving castles out of cardboard hearts
Paper dolls that bite when you cut them
All this under the park bench
Where I last saw you
I haven’t had much to say these days.

My eyes turn gray and blink
Green again black
A stone drops in the water
And feels something it won’t ever admit to.

Brush my hair, brush my teeth, brush the world off
With the shrug of one pink shoulder
My castle collapses at the shore
and I stare at the woman who stares back at me.

Hands lay idol on her sunken chest
My voicebox empties itself in the wind
Fish flounder and rock my soul to sleep
I haven’t had much to say.

You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
For the answer is:
Silence.

I have been accused of writing nothing but depressing lately...One has to wonder what there is to write about when one is not depressed. Failed relationships and hardships fuel my creativity. Obstacles become blessings in disguise…..renewed creative urges, stacks of manuscripts, paintings, ideas and late night coffee drinking sessions. The irony of these accusations is that I am not an unhappy person, I just like to exploit the bad times for artistic purposes. Ha!

Your weekend gardening
Takes more than housecleaning
It takes garbage to the street
And a bonfire in your living room
After twenty-six years
Binding resolutions are in order
Commitments that you made to yourself
And forgiveness for those you didn't
Reconstruction in your bedroom
Fumigate your mind
Two hundred steps to the left
One complete turn towards your right
It takes climbing up Side Streets
And leaving those roads less traveled
Less traveled
Find five doors to open
Close all others
Your weekend gardening
Requires strength, perseverance,
A blowtorch and bleach
When the pain sets in
Set a tombstone on top
Force flowers to bloom
Then lay to rest.