I go for long walks at night

when the darkness falls like dead butterflies

when the shadows dance like dark tumbleweeds

when the silence runs deep like a chasm

between the cliffs hiding in a sunken soul

Last night, I walked to a playground

beneath the hidden full moon

as it slept behind clouds,

emitting a lazy white light,

and I sat on a swing and swung

my legs up into the warm night sky

and I was a child alone in the darkness,

flying and lonely

as the spring peepers sang their own lonely songs

duetting with my whispering mind

Typewriter poem day 2:

Pictures of Silence

There’s no silence like snowfall

When you can hear branches cracking

Beneath the weight of ice

When animals hide from the cold

And the white blanket is untouched

Trees frosted with frigid purity

The streets are silent when darkness falls

Hard like a crushing dead blow hammer

And the human world is locked

Behind closed doors of suburbia

Retired to their beds

Where some are locked in embrace

While others are lonely

Waiting through the unrelenting night

For what little relief the morning brings

My living room is silent in the darkness

As the children sleep upstairs

Dreaming of toys and candy

And the colorful things of childhood

My mind is silent

As I put my heartaches and struggles behind me

Give myself to sleep

And wait to see what the dawn brings

Typewriter poem #3

Phantom Pains

Something is missing

And in the gaping emptiness left behind

It feels like sinking

I can feel the wind blow through

The icy fingers of some lost love

Or maybe a dead parent, an ancient ancestor

A Scottish spirit or a dead French poet

Some love I never knew

Finding a home in my vast emptiness

Taking up residence and adding furniture

Rooms full of baggage

Covered with dust and cobwebs

and the emptiness gets comfortable

Kicks up its feet and leans back

On a sofa of shadows

And I suffer

And try to figure out what was lost

So I can know what I need to mourn

Typewriter poem #4

I’m Fine, I Really Am

My loneliness is a single teardrop

Not a torrential downpour in a hurricane

My pain level has gone from Mr. Yuck to sad face

I’m learning how to walk with one leg

To tie my shoes with one arm

To breathe without lungs

To feel without a heart

I’m learning to love myself

With my hand since there’s no woman there

In my bed, my couch, my life

I’m learning to be a dad without a wife

I only think of suicide 75% of the time now

I’m learning to go on with no future

To go through the motions when I’m paralyzed

To live when hope is gone

Water rushes over rocks

roaring into a white foaming waterfall

filling in cracks and crevasses in the cliffside

like water fills in everything

and Jesus said he’s living water

and I think that means

faith fills everything

the cracks and crevasses of our minds

it makes things real that we just can’t see

makes the irrational rational

makes futures from dreams

and like water it fills our minds and bodies

and starts exhausted legs walking

brings dead hope back to life

turns the old young

and helps us walk on water

Today I took the harder path

the road less traveled

with steep uphills and rocky terrain

and there was no one but me

and I looked down through the lush spring trees

and saw all the people

walking the other way

straight to the breathtaking view

of the town below and the two rivers

but I walked through miles of wilderness

I saw the way the light hit the bright green leaves

I saw valleys of emerald

and the ancient stone forts of history

and I still ended up at that same breathtaking view

but I couldn’t have lived with myself

if it had been easy.