Night Runners

Tonight, running in the dark
labored breathing and the stars
are out, and I mean bright,
but before I can enjoy them
I realize they're blurry
and start worrying about
all that I'm losing again.

I try to run faster, push harder,
stepping in a puddle
I never saw, cold water
enlivens my foot
and there's scurrying in the brush
to the right,
squinting through eyeglasses,
I label it a rabbit.

It darts forward
stops,
waits,
repeats...
maybe squinting at me
wondering what the hell.

14

It's her birthday,
fourteen,
and she's sure it
has everything to do with the arrival
of the first warm Spring day,
and that big orange moon in the sky,
and I would swear before God
that it's true.

Ray Price

Iron and Wine and Calexico

Schmoozer

Psychiatry certainly has a name for it,
a billable diagnosis and
medication at the ready -
probably renamed and repackaged
and making somebody a fortune -
but let's face it,
this stuff is subjective
unless of course
you
are the subject.

You carry this human skull around
everywhere you go, and to tell you the truth,
it's more than a little off-putting,
and don't think for a minute that
everyone hasn't noticed your stiffness
and how you stand so awkwardly over there
by the door.

Which maybe is better than
the last time, when you sat at the table
and you and that damn skull tried to
respond to the small talk directed at you.

When you started to speak,
hot, black, liquid tar
came bubbling out of the eye sockets
of that ghastly thing
and some kind of putrid, acidic bile
drooled out through the gaps in it's teeth
corroding the table cloth and
causing the other guests to,
gradually and tastefully,
excuse themselves.

You two do that every time.

The Seeds in Someone's Living Room.

Gotta get me a cape like that.

Winter Scene

Winter waited for the first of March
to show up, just as I was getting up
to lock the door.

I must admit, you've transformed
this brown, tired place into
the Great North Woods.

The tree branches hold the snow,
fog settles around the hills,
picturesque, certainly,
but there's a darkness.

It's no winter wonderland,
no pixies or frosty snowmen,
something heavier

As if you were out in it
trudging, exhausted,
light fading and the sweat
of your labor cooling
causing you a chill you know is dangerous,
but secondary to the solemn
menace of wolves
howling close,
on both sides of you now.

You'd like to leave behind
some sort of message,
but you run out of fluorescent
multi-vitamin fortified urine
half way through

LO...