as the sun sank into orange sherbert.

Your lips met mine,

and my arms were too heavy to hold me.

My spirit floated with the clouds,

and drifted back down in sunlit rays

to pick you up and carry you with me.

on that door, that ash oak door.

Just as I turn my heel to leave it closed,

the door yawns open, and pulls my head back,

as if it hooked my ear on a string, a silk string.

Inside the light is bright, but clouded,

and up above I see a ladder with angels,

but instead of the heavens,

I see the wrong wife,

frowning with guilt in her eyes.

“Whoa, what’s that in the sky?” The blonde asked the other, his mouth stretching as if he planned to drink the light in.

“I can’t see; it’s burning my eyes!” The brunette winced, ducking his head as he blinked repeatedly.

“But, man, does it feel good on my skin.” Stretching out his arms, closing the blonde his eyes with a sigh.

The brunette turned and looked at him. “Dude, are you high?”

“But look at all that blue stuff around it. It’s so cool!” He didn’t seem to notice.

“Hey…where’s the rain?” A third voice chimed in as she trotted over to meet them. Her eyes rose in the same direction from beneath red bangs. “What’s that yellow thing in the sky?”

each  like their hair long,

one ginger, the other cinnamon.

Both like sports fields

and shopping malls.

__________

Diana likes her hair short,

but she likes her hours long,

spent in a cubicle or an office.

She also likes a distance of 26.6 miles.

________

Jim learns to like his hair gray, then white.

He finds his home behind the microphone,

on a church stage,

or in a box at a basketball game.

_________

Dad likes his hair clipped twice a month

and he loves a couch in front of a tv.

Mom liked her hair the way we liked it,

and she loved places to put her feet up.

_________

I like my hair red and long

as the sun is warm,

as I follow its rays across the sky.

(I didn’t afford him the dignity of the view in my eyes.

I hid them behind my sunglasses:

my only weapons stashed in that car.)

“I believe you officer when

you say tailgating is the number one cause

of accidents in this area,

but trains and driving too

slowly are the number one causes of being

late to class.”

The green in the grass laughed.

Or actually, the sky fell.

Yesterday it fell through my ceiling,

Landing square on my slug bug.

Ice from an airplane experts said.

I say the sky’s playing games with me,

And he never said no tag-backs.

she’s an heir to a special part of my heart.

I know she’s alive,

but the distance that separates us is an ocean,

and it takes far too long to sail home.

My suitors are not but worries, anxieties, fears

that visit me every morning and every evening.

I know the moment she comes home they’ll flee

like dust in the four winds.

I fear she faces many trials and monsters harm in women’s clothing,

and that she will come home one day,

but I want her home today.

Five months of watching personality cult propaganda, five months of pacing around their cells, five months of losing time. Now time was theirs. Now the world was theirs. As for their souls, they had forfeited those long ago to the one Person the government could confiscate them from.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn’t dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

“Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it’s broken.”

He swore. “the shop’ll be closed in the mornin’.”

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

“Santa” checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad’s gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.

Some of my memories linger on the gold and ruby leaves.

Though my feet stand still on concrete floors,

My mind wanders through emerald greens.

My nose breathes in the air within this cramped room,

but I only smell the crisp air in the fields.

I turn my head, and I swear I feel the autumn wind

stirring the ends.

Soon my body will be reunited with my mind,

Soon.