Regret is (II)

Regret is
A daughter's name
Without a body
Not-mothers shrug
                        body
                        choice;
Insolent gaze that
Never looks away
Seeing nothing wrong.

SFFmuse is up!

Okay. Thanks to analog's help, the entire site is back up and forums etc. are working properly. Spread the word :)

Sffmuse

Regret is (I)

Regret is
restraining orders:
Someone else inventing
pet names for you;
Love I'll never know
child I'll never see -
the failure of words
to express anything at all.

Magic Was

Magic was the calling of names, getting
The little crazy kid to bawl, striking
The first blow, so we could beat
Her down snot out of running nose
laughing fists to break - screaming - and
screaming - Only, after, our children
Coming home, crying, faces stained with
Tears shame fear do we, older, wish
Ourselves wiser and quietly, helplessly,
Hate the child we once were.

Pretty Little Fragment

Can you make me believe
In your special brand of lies?
Is there a way to love and learn
Without need for disguises?

Song of the Mute

Mute dwarf
Hunched under the gloaming,
Eyes tightening under clear voices
Refusing to pretend he is not here.

Adult gazes avert, refusing to see,
A relief to the dwarf walking, wounded
Each time they ask who he was allowed
To live.

The children mock him as doppleganger,
One of them but not a child, laughing,
The Don't Walk sign a prison as they circle
Slow and sure.

Sticks, Stones:
Those he knows, but words always strike
Unprepared; so often he is glad for his silence,
Free from temptation to return wound for wound.

Dwarf crossing,
Gaggle of children mocking his lurched gait.
No one stops them, the pain a blur of tears
Held in check by a voice, of his father. Memory:

          -- There is no just hatred.
          Let that poison in, son,
          And you may never let it go --

Fingers spasm.
Clench, sudden smile a twisting wound laughing
Faces try to mimic and - then - stuck
That way

Frozen as he turns, twisting private pain dance.
The horns give his silence a voice, a scream,
Pain. But there is always pain, and not redemption:
Children. Silent. Staring.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR JULY

Number of poems written: 43
Average number per day: 1.38
Longest poem: 'un-just' (24 lines)
Shortest poem: Manifesto (5 lines)
Total wordcount: 2,630

[So it's a bit late. I just realized I hadn't calculated and posted it, well, today.]

After Bucking

I have left you a way to follow
Across the sun-drenched plains,
Scattered tracks through sand
And my voice upon the air.

I have left the way to follow
In the sound of your hand on my side.
I've dropped my shoes upon the sand,
A dream upon the winds.

States and Tricks

The limits to what we can do
Are only what we cannot --
For all that's not forbidden
Becomes compulsory, and all
And every boundary is liminal.

So Coyote may create and yet
Be reviled; for in Creation
One is judged by intent, and not
Only by outcome -- for why, then,
And who, did your god create you?

Going For Colour Coded Brains

I told you I couldn't stop
Not for God, or love,
Or the new diet plan.

They ads promised smarts;
I have to eat the red one
Last.

Dear General,

Terrorism was
Telling you I
Didn't love you
Even after you
Bought the ring.

Sometimes I hear you
Outside my cell door
Just breathing.

Quiet Destroyer 1.00

In my prison, which is our prison, we meet.
In a tomb filled with life, we make small talk.
We walk, and we talk; never rest our weary feet.

We each thing each other the prisoner here.
He, because he put me in this terrible hell,
I because a cell implies a jailer here.

The jailer holds me in, himself as well.
We are prisoners of each other's dreams.
We glean nothing from our doggerel.

Words. Words. Babble. We weigh them on scales,
Toss them slowly to each other warily, waiting
Hoping the other bites, says the wrong thing - fails.

It costs him, to hold me here. He, flying free
Thinking of me, trapped: Holding himself down
Under the ground: In his clear gaze, this I see.

Already we exchange places inside, as if fate
Was guiding me, tired hands offering me the crown
Will pretend surprise when I say: "Check mate."

Water

Universal solvent
Tears washing away
Guilt and forgiveness,
Blanking the slate:
Tomorrow's
A new
Day.

Quiet Destroyer 0.12

If Flux ruled the world, what then?
A stale, hollow, meaningless place.
A place of tights and men in suits
And no one wondering, wondering why.

If I ruled the world, ah! what then?
Something new: mad, bad, creative.
Something dangerous to BE.

A world of chaos and true wonder.
A world of madness wild and free.
A world of possibilities without end.

If Flux ruled the world, the world would rule him.
Nothing would change; all would remain, stagnant.
He would be too noble and good to ever be real.
He would be too large to inspire others to be heroes.

The world I will rule will be free.
Even, I say - in the end - of me.
This I, alone, can foresee:

They will wallow in thought.
Thought is borne of guilt.
Not action, not Flux: Cowards.

They will run back to their old idols.
They will remake temples to the Flux.
They will honestly pretend to be sorry.

He will welcome them because he hates them.

Exorcism

To boot the ghost, a simple thing.
Spell, incantation, or weaving.
A few words here, a few words there,
Some props and it's out of your hair.
But sometimes the dead don't easily lie
Or rest awhile and then make a reply.

But all you need to banish them
Is some form of faith (even zen)
A few props, belief, and desire
And the ghost falls down into fire.
Or, if you're more kind, the ghost falls upward
To gain wings and a halo and a sword.

And who are we to dissolve them,
To undo their bonds of spirit when
They only wish to wait a while
Bound here by love or darker guile.
What scares us to speak the banishing spells?
What's above or below may not bode well.

But still we banish the spirits
Force what will be away to flit
Between the worlds lost and alone
Bereft of hope or hearth of home.
As if we, too, won't walk down the ghost road
Thinking these last moments are what we're owed.

SFFMUSE BACK UP

Only, hackers hit feathwebs and all the index files were toasted.

Announcements can be found here:
http://www.sffmuse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1623

The coffeehouse, here: http://www.sffmuse.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

The actual index files won't be back up until kitten and/or Robert do an FTP. Since the admin index files are down as well, I can't restore anything.

Just an update from this end.

The Eagle's Lament

They see me in the sky, flying so free, so terribly high
And they call me a hero and saviour and saint
But they never see the person inside me.

Sometimes I wish I could escape, fly high to escape my fate
People need heroes but all they've got is me
And I'm so scared because I've always cared

And the moment comes and is gone
So long, so much was lost
I feel I might faint, but I can't because
Heroism has it's own laws.

Once I failed you, and I pay the cost
An entire life undone.
Sometimes even heroes fail and crash
And burn and die alone.

I used to be someone, a hero not like everyone
The path of the hero was the one I had borne
But I made a mistake in a cruel twist of fate

Somehow I lived and they died, somehow I've never cried
People need heroes nor mortals who fail them
So they'll never knew how much it hurts me so.

An Experiment In Style.

The road is long to Heaven, but it's just as far to Hell
We make them both in our own minds
Trying too hard to be kind but they're both pretty hard sells.

The way is long to hope from the bastion of reality
All we have to fight with is our dreams
And the tender kiss of self esteem for things we'll never see.

Life's journey is silent, a path under all thrones,
We cover our souls from sounds and strife:
The path to wisdom's the road from war, this we have known

Untitled Piece

Roads wrap around mountains,
final ending the last song
of crickets. Mountains to hills
and roads to goat tracks:
There is no remembering,
only forgetting -- and dreams.

Memories, sallow-faced,
half formed whispers of regret.
And for what? The world is still here.
It will be here when we are gone,
is here even if we were not born at all.

This, too, is untitled

Sometimes it seems a miracle to me
That there's still things left to be.
After so many roads and so many ways
Eating up tomorrows and yesterdays,
We still have something more to do
More than being just me and you.

Sometimes it seems a curse that we
Will life forever but can't be free
Sometimes I want to reach out and say
"Why can't you accept us anyway?"
Does drinking blood make you look askew
Or do we violate some other taboo?

Most nights it's just silence; you and me
Watching rocks eaten away by the sea
And somehow all we seem to have is today
And I wonder if you remember how to pray.
I said we should stand and make our debut
You say we'd just die the death long overdue.

I tell you that you're so very pretty, so lovely
This night and you always smile and agree.
But we both know that we'll some day stray
For something new, and something to betray.
Our smiles meet, so bright, so red, as if on cue
And we bow in silence, whispering our adieus.

run c:/Buddha/enlightenment.exe

Modern Buddha, screen with forest background,
typing seven years, trying to code enlightenment
and, when not, get the record score in solitaire.

Mother, saying: "I never named Junior Buddha,
afraid someone would meet him on a road
and kill him," and no one understanding her.

So there is typing and retyping and edits and typoes
and an attempt, however frail, however vain,
to reach something bigger than life or death.

There are 1s. And 0s.
But which is enlightenment,
the one of the off?

Because Rai Rolled It, You See.

The world ended last night.
There was a media blackout.
So we were deaf and blind.
Without the talking heads, we didn't hear.
Without the cameras, never saw a thing.
The world ended, like that.
Snap of fingers, and gone.

They're holding a focus group.
Deciding on replacements.
Marketing and public relations.
General vote is for a theme park.

"Here was Earth, our planet.
Wasn't she something?"
Life does not end; no death.
A change of worlds, transformation.
But who we are never changed.
The world was born last night.
There were fireworks and free gifts,
Almost no one left their TV screens.

Quiet Destroyer 0.07

There always seems to be a flaw: massed files
riddled with abused children, lost loves,
wounds festering, faces scarred.
                                                                The
worst seem to hide their scars inside, and smile
too often. And these are allies, if not friends.

Perhaps an armchair musing, but no less true
for all of that. Perhaps a villain is just a person
whose flaws outnumber their strengths?
                                                                         Thus
a hero would only be the other way around, or rise
above them. Thoughts come, full circle:

And what of me? And what am I, that I am here? Eh?
What then? My faith -- the world is too small for gods
I believe, a flaw that is strength. Only human.
                                                                                 So
that is all I am, whatever it aspires to. I challenge Flux,
bring fire - hope! - to the masses, seeing no flaw at all.

Celluloid Dreaming

We offer life, we offer death
and the drowning of all dreams.
You say nothing's what it seems
But you still take in a breath.

We offer you up private smiles
And a dearth of singing bunnies.
You seek only simple funnies:
Never pause, and turn the dial.

There's no reason to be afraid
Not of the old gods you know:
You should know that this is so,
We're the first ones that you made.

Sffmuse Site Down

Robert is in the process of moving. As such, a bill for the site wasn't paid - we are assuming :) - and we're waiting for him to resurface so we can find out what is going on.

With luck, the site WILL be up and running again by the end of this week. Feath has been contacted, so I hope we can figure out what happened and how to fix it.

Some site members can still be reached on IRC.
Server: irc.worldirc.org
Channel: #sffmuse

- Alcar

UPDATE: The site HAS been re-reg'd etc. The host is just waiting on some monies, so with luck everything will be back up soon.

Kitten: If you find/read this, feel free to toss the hat around :) I won't be able to send any money for a bit unfortunately (dentist bill wiped me dry this month) but others might be able to.

Sffmuse

Starts Of Different Poems

Lost dogs and gentle sheep,
the sunset on your brow:
all this, and more, I never know
and nevermore shall keep.

Cuz I'm a lost cause
Gus tossed a rhyme cuz
Fuzz lime a cost cuz.

Crow-foot eyes black sparkle with a name,
Whispering winds sea storms subsiding,
Nothing is something is nothing again.

Ill-neglected work; falling sunline on windows
Cracking inwards out, silent shout prayer
Unseen. Unknown. Unheard. Unmourned.
Life - is control - of controllables
The letting go losing of variable.

Unfinished Fragment

I asked God what it was like to die
And he smiled and only said lies
He said it was peace, the heavenly host,
But never why so many become ghosts.

He said that we were born to die:
Far as I can tell we're born to lie.
We're born to live and hurt and try
To love and give and wonder why.

Scared of Success

What a way to advertise,
Sad way to get a better view.
What an excuse to be stoic,
God knows men don't cry.

Good reason to blame your Father,
Classic absentee parent of them all.
Good reason to give into hatred today,
But it's your fault you're on the tree.

Whoever heard of a holy man
Filled with holes in his hands?
Who heard of one dripping blood
And not some weird glowing light?

Seems a waste of oration,
To just convince a thief.
Seems a joke to promise Heaven
To just one before you die.

Heart Break

Every time my heart breaks
I wonder when if it will again
Each time it heals but not as fast
And surely not as clean as when
It first broke so very long ago.

Each time is a brand new wound
For my heart to discover
Any every time I'm cured to find
That it's never calloused over
And I know it'll break again.

And I know it'll break again
I don't know if time if kind
Seems some pieces are always lost
When we leave that pain behind
I don't know if I'll heal again.

Even if it seems to me these wounds
All broke open long before
The loss is somehow always new
And I don't want it anymore

It'll never be the same it was
When it first broke long ago
I don't know if it'll heal again
So I'm leaving it scarred like so
And It'll never break again.
Yeah, It'll never break again.
Never break again,
Never again.
Break again.
Never again.

Dances and Songs

Every dance holds a bit of dream,
Every song a sacrifice;
Always saying things we say we never mean
Busy -- pretending to be nice.

Every hope carries it's own hell,
Every love the joy of loss;
Always knowing we have more to sell
Bodies -- the breaking of all laws.

And when every image is fractured,
And every word is sad;
Only we can hold to manufactured hopes
Dreaming -- someday we'll be glad.

Desire of Longing

The heart of the skeptic is a longing to believe
And the bitter swallow of a bitter pill at a world
That does not offer anything worth believing,
Offers no proofs that do not rest on faith
And substitutes revelation for bare reality.

The Astrologer

The stars that predict do so
For all that live and grow.
A simple thing to admit:
There's more money in pets;
Star signs of dogs and cats
Are where the wealth is at.
People fork over lots of cash
For a bit of balderdash
And will pay more and more
For the pets that they adore.

Phones Take Pictures Now, Too

Sometimes wanting goes deeper than knowing,
leaping down, not diving, our lone wanderings
splashed out over TV cameras, spapshot moments
if a picture was worth a life, a thousand words could be
summed up in a sound byte; we are forever watching
phone batteries die with never enough time to say
we love each other (or even ourselves) hoping
this time will be different, this time we will tell them,
this time we will mean the words we never say.

A Conversation

cocooned in lifetimes
we remember what we knew
finding the reality at the heart of dreaming
we whisper to strangers
we think we know

enmeshed in longings
for unbroken yesteryears and says
we whisper mindless words of adoration
muffled by pillows and damned
with faint praises.

The Dirge of the People

It is said that a white hole spewed him into our universe,
Pinnacle of perfection, the souls containment of a star,
Born to be a hero, a most singular goal for better or worse
He mounted the storms, sole aim salvation from our pain.

Captain Flux, where have you gone? We look into the sky
For light brighter than the dawn, a hero come from afar.
For decades your glory has shone, hero that would not die,
We don't have to be heroes, we said; you were there in our stead.

Captain flux, do you capacitate, do you understand your wrong?
O Captain, our captain, too terribly bright, your heroism a scar
Do you forgive us our hate -- you were too real, too good, too strong!
You are too good and to our shame we know you'll never blame us.

[Based upon: Gemm's Captain Flux poems]

Metroids

Pem written and deleted,
no longer hymnal to
lost catchphrases and memories.
The life-sucking metroid -- found,
in the world of google-fu
and you tube, and the memory,
almost matches the reality:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uU4CjRMJtHI
Why this should be so, I do not know.

Frosh Week

The ghost that haunts the halls isn't really a ghost at all
Moving, dancing, flowing through, into and under walls.
A ghost is dead, not part alive, the memory of old shame:
Driven by despair & other things we do not care to name
Seeking only to end her pain by making other lives a hell.

Country Song

And the good Lord knows I died tonight
In a hail of fire and ash
And I don't know about the Lord,
But I think I was right.

I died from fear of Hell and Heaven's burning light
But when my body turned to ash
I knew my time had come at last
For I had seen a sight.

For I had seen a glowing cube, a full four sides
It was, and it seemed to me
That the time was nigh
For the truth to be all right.

And I was told truth and lies, and many things beside.
The time cube spoke and I could see
The future present past
And all the gods and all the worlds
Were lies that could not last.

Time cube of time is four and I fear for my own life
For the educated stupid come
And they'll done kill me wrong
So the Lord knows I'll die tonight
Yes, the Lord knows I'll die tonight,
All four cubes of his sides.

Love, True

I always find myself waiting for you
Watching your lips for words
That you never say, hearing in your smile
Things you never mean, and
I am lost in a sea of yearning for dreams
That will never be real, but
Isn't that the point of dreams? So I watch
And love only from far away.

Ponderings

I

Even the untrappable can be trapped,
even gods brought down low,
even stars turns into only balls of fire,
even wonder can pale, desist, and die.
Words. Words. Words.
Nothing is stronger, nothing greater --
Actions speak louder, but words are immortal.


II

It is only by burdens that we achieve importance:
The weight of freedom is only a hindrance.
"Thought is born of failure" - and what of that?
Only actions are real, what we are, what is.

Here

Here --
the dreams I have squandered
Down roads I never wandered,
There's no one left to wonder
That lightning follows thunder.

There's a gaze that doesn't censure
Under a smile that's a lure,
Lips that never called me liar
Saying, surely we'll go higher
here.

Smithing

Winter sunlight soft and grey, in the snow to walk awhile --
Flakes drift into caverns left by footprints shapeless to man.
Ice on the trees sparkles, beguiles, the air reminds us of our span

In silence the world is empty -- free all things that matter:
We are ghost voices in the air, fading tracks in the snow.
Marring death with silent laughter while we possess nowhere to go.

Post-Gendered Stress De-ordered

giving up fucklings
things to make us whole
twitchings devolve
paroxysm of mirth

you are so far away
that
i am afraid to come to you
{i've never told anyone I know your name.}

i wonder what I lost
to get this far. you tell me
it is nothing (and you laugh
((especially when i cry)).

it gets harder to separate from fantasies
i used to dream of somewhat better things
i know but we have to lose what we know
to find it and learn it anew.

my therapist told me that.

before the accident.
i said it was an act of liberation
not love, being free means
not being happy.

i never told you anything.
I just kind of hoped you knew.

Haiku

Transcendental is
Peanut butter, banana --
One sandwich, one bite.

Atten Shun

There is a way of seeing
not inseeing, nose pressed
to glass -- world glittering,
grinding, shredding pieces
honeycombed together caressing.
Breath-pauses between words
-- and! -- below, dancing the song
stranger weave together
hunting answers to questions
none dare to ask or dream.

Interesting post of the day...

Via Making Light, I ended up at this fun article about the christian right meeting the RWA*. I'd always (well, recently) wondered why m/m pairings weren't common in romances, given their prevalence in slash. Fun to find out that they do exist, though mostly as ebooks. Was one of those nice "aha!" moments that makes up for not having been able to sleep last night despite attempts to do so.

* Kate Rothwell's blog (not just the relevant post)makes for fun and interesting reading as well. Have added it to the list of blogs I look at every week or so.

Updates,,,

The fourth volume of the Shuck Cycle was finished, though it ended up a novella and not a novel. The main premise of it had turned out to be too close to my 2004 nano and it just petered out and I had to force the ending, rather brutally. I suspect that I may do a novel about Dan someday, and use The Long Way Home as a giant character bio instead.

The novel did stress a few things: I can't do the same world easily often. I need to branch out more, probably because there are too many other ideas jostling around in my head and begging to be written. And so, I am going to write a YA trilogy next. Partially because I once decided to never do a series. This one is even going to have chapters in it, for the love of all that's holy.

The basic premise is that three teens end up fighting a secret war against alien invasion. The novel is largely about how they deal with that, how their community deals with them and the very human cost of wars. The rough outline in my head at present leans towards a tragedy borne from redemption, but we'll see.

Shows

A true magician distracts audiences from real magic.
A gesture of the hand, a few glowing balls, and there
Are pale faces captivated, eyes unseeing the wonders
All around them. So people see magic, and not magic,
All the tricks of the world and none of the wonders.

Vampires

All vampires share
one trait: not blood,
or sex, or beautiful bodies --
just souls, the souls
of accountants bleeding
people dry, seeing prey
as other see numbers,
seeing hunger
where others see love.
And never, ever, balancing
their own checkbooks.

Quiet Destroyer 0.01

There is a redemption in energy.
And so, the villain of the piece
Sitting behind curtains, ignoble breast
Scattered with potato chips,
Plots another doom for the world
That scorned his terrible intellect,
Tried to crush his awesome dreams.

Humankind will forgive their saviour
For being alien, for being Other --
The Flux is not something understood.
But genius is never forgiven, forever a brand,
Showing them they could do the same,
Taunting them with promises of things
They could have been; and so he plots
Ruination for a world that could not accept
The light of Reason, forsaking for salvation
At the hands of Flux, and mysticism,
And a fear of their own potential.

'Un Just-'

    Un Just-
spring       when the ground is corpse-
cadavered the little
small SSman

chuckles       low       and glee

and peterandpaul come
tumbling into showers and
behind sheds and it's
spring

when the ground is blood mud-brown

the queer
hungry SS man whistles
soft       and       low
and deathcoldspasms are dancing

from camp-end to camp-end and

unjust
spring
and
    the


           goat-headed
SSMan       whistles
just
to
see

Jot Notes

Enlightenment means realizing
it is not something to be attained:
to be free from it, and desire for it,
to realize you already hold this state.
Already enlightened, we cannot
find anything in our minds that was
not always there for us to find --
the result of looking in any mirror.
Having nowhere to hide is knowing
I am not, but I am -- it is not finding
Answers to questions, but finding
Questions to fit my planned answers.
What we think is what we prove.

Sara's Manifesto

Sex is important! Without sex
You couldn't have more sex!
You can't really be happy without
It & Chastity is the only sexual
Aberration that's really icky
Because it's not natural!!

Manifesto

You die for a cause you believe in;
I'll die for the last smartie, the last
tootsie roll, the last potato chip:
You die for your gods, and I --
I will die for mine.

Knowing

I don't know who I am,
Stuck doing what I can
I wonder what I lost
Before this life began.

Wondering at the cost.
Wondering what I've lost.
Staring up at the sky
Thinking about Faust.

And again it's do or die:
No one to tell me why I try
I feel so lost but still I am
Stuck here without reply.

Experimental Piece

While standing in that empty place
That didn't seem to have an end
Only then could I say I know why

The oceans are calling to rivers, to streams
To come home to the place where we belong

There's never enough tears to fill the ocean
Never enough remorse to flood the land
But there has to be a way to say I'm sorry
To you --

Oceans are calling, waters are saying, singing -- Oh
Come back to the water and you'll find your release

But between here and there we're standing
Everywhere and nowhere, nothing to say
Only wanting to come back to you.

And the ocean is pulling, fierce as tides and drowning
And it's calling us, calling us, calling back from the end.

Marching Band

And the band played on
when the trumpets blared
and the angels came
they just marched and sang
as everyone screamed: "Come on!
come on!" and ran to the shelters
from their bombs
and from their gods
but the band sang on, said
they did this because they cared
and as angels fell with flaming swords
and people died for less that words
the band played on.

The Truth

The universe is not a friendly place, my child.
It is not fair, nor a place your consciousness shapes
Like a dream: it is real, and Reality kills all.
We have no escape, no recourse, no way to hide:
There is no Enlightenment that we look for,
Insisting we can find it. There is only madness.

The stars do work; the astronomers understand
At least that one small bit of infinity. But they
Are not there for us, but for those who were
Before us and will again when we are dead and gone.
When the stars come right and the Old Ones
Walk the world once more, we will see
That all our religions and pretensions were just
Hiding from the universe, from the reality
That we are alone, unloved, unimportant.
We can only hold back the darkness,
We cannot defeat it, not forever. They will return.

Names of

It is very late, the clocks that tocked
only tick, the wind is whispering names
of God, the hundredth one a lovers kiss
against an earlobe, teeth nibbling
but not biting; the promise left barren.

Birthdays

The point is reached, sometime,
often after youth is discarded,
left behind for better things,
where we no longer celebrate
and only mourn or mark
the passing of dreams, of memories,
of who we thought we'd be
and, now, can never hope to know.

The day stops being special
when it comes every year
and you keep changing but, somehow,
the day is no longer sublime,
merely dross, merely a reminder
of all that that never was.

Sadstorm

The march of worn truths on worm roads:
We went this way before,
The ghost say, soft and slow,
scare seen under their own heavy loads;
Voices entreat, implore, but
Youth marches through snow.

Monster Song

The monsters sing under my bed
Of terrible things never dead;
Of things lost and things they've gained
And smells that can't be explained.
Each night lying alone in dread
Listening to claws scritch and shred.
They tell me they're entertained:
By my fear they are sustained.
Each night It we the bed spread
Hoping by dawn they'll have fled.

Custody

Made the papers, our voices screaming
Children in a sandbox,
Echoes of two:
"Mine!" "No, mine!" tugging
War over the most precious possession.

Neither of us wanted the kids.
The judge said: "Who takes the dog,
Gets the kids as well."
So I hired a vet to put them down,
Confusing our kids with mutts.

The second judge called me a bitch.
And Henry got the dog anyway.
The dog didn't seem to care
Either way.

Power

Power without knowledge is
Shadows deprived of light.

Power lies in deciding truth,
Parcelling out the stories told.

Power is not force alone --
Strength merely a matter of luck.

Strength is measured only by restraint.

Riddles

To believe something has no answer
Is to ensure you do not find one.
To believe there is an answer
Does not mean there is one.
All our striving comes down to this:
The invention of reasons and
The certainty they must be found.
Pattern seeking is pattern creating
But the floor remains pale, empty,
And offers up no answers.