Give me your hand Make room for me to lead and follow you beyond this rage of poetry.

Funky blues Keen toed shoes High water pants Saddy night dance Red soda water

Pretty women wonder where my secre… I’m not cute or built to suit a fa… But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say,

Your skin like dawn Mine like musk One paints the beginning of a certain end. The other, the end of a

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleev… to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies. Mushlike memories perform

We were entwined in red rings Of blood and loneliness before The first snows fell Before muddy rivers seeded clouds Above a virgin forest, and

She came home running back to the mothering blackness deep in the smothering blackness white tears icicle gold plains of… She came home running

Her arms semaphore fat triangles, Pudgy hands bunched on layered hip… Where bones idle under years of fa… And lima beans. Her jowls shiver in accusation

There is no warning rattle at the… nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer… Safe in the dark prison, I know t… light slides over the fingered work of a toothless

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of lonelines… until love leaves its high holy te… and comes into our sight

We wear the mask that grins and li… It shades our cheeks and hides our… This debt we pay to human guile With torn and bleeding hearts… We smile and mouth the myriad subt…

When love is a shimmering curtain Before a door of chance That leads to a world in question Wherein the macabrous dance Of bones that rattle in silence

The sun has come. The mist has gone. We see in the distance... our long way home. I was always yours to have.

I note the obvious differences in the human family. Some of us are serious, some thrive on comedy. Some declare their lives are lived