notes to myself

The rolling black foam
muffles the clapping icicles
hanging from the lips of the deceased.
The starlight funnels into the churn
turning the cliff walls incandescent.
This begins the holy vacuum,
the descent of the sea-salt song.
It expands like a horn bringing dawn,
seeping into the cracks and folds
of the rolling black curtain
enfolding the dark and darker coast.
That was where I felt the foam at first.

--

I miss my girl.
She was more than good to me.
She saw the cracks and stuffed
them with glitter and glue.
I don't know what to do.
It's all I can do to stop
breaking. Shatter
me and let grains of sand
roll like a wave of sadness.
I can't handle the custom-built harness.
I'm slipping straight out
because my weight is slipping.
The cold weather is holding me.

--

It all faces upward.
The stalks in their upward growth,
the yarn unspooled journeys north,
the eyes of hope cast toward the north,
the spikes of sorrow impale me on high,
the broken ice and wind is taken
to the ballet of north-wind heartbreak,
it all climbs that upward fervent slope,
and nothing is worth climbing back down
for a mouthful of dew
that turns your teeth into violent craters.
Hard work gives a snow-capped wing
to those staring at all the grey up there.
So much grey up there.

--

The darkness encroaches also.
Hanging on to a frayed rope,
dangling from the hope of an escape
into a dark humid tunnel full of
light and stars and sailing mercury
nothing short of anarchy of the soul
leaves the wounded heart yearning
for infinite cold searching for
an angel of gold
Providence extending warmth
to the border
bringing us over to sea-pastures
of dealing with it.
Of living for sake of life
and giving for sake of strife
in the twilight of love and loving,
aye, I cannot be stopped from moving
towards the sad unanswerable mystery
that locks the misery in completely.

I wish I had the good sense
to fear death and all its hammers
hammering upon my soul
and beating bloody the flesh
of the fatigued
I could guess at the sense of upward
if gazing downward
did not produce a sensation of
sleeping.
All I see are specks on the floor.
And all doors are useless to me.
If only we could be free
from the terror of living for sake of dying life
Constant dying lying life.

-

When I woke
my hangover spoke.
It's time to make coffee,
do the laundry,
align the letters.
In the throb
of those first few minutes,
I could not think of anything
worth saying to myself
except that
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

--