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A silent night.
A world asleep.
A hearth unlit. 
A solitary figure.
A soul adrift. 
A heart wandering. 

The home, 
a catalog of emptiness: 
empty stockings,
empty chairs, 
empty cupboards,
empty rooms. 

The world outside, 
wind worn bushes
ice-kissed trees, 
muddy footpaths
rain-drenched streets,
a sky indifferent. 

Wind whispered tales 
of forgotten joys, 
of loves lost,
of lives wasted,
of promises broken, 
of dreams deferred.

A world in stark contrast 
to the warmth and cheer 
that should fill the air. 
A reminder 
of the fragility of joy, 
the transience of happiness.

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It's not insults or slurs,
not the easy-to-spot kind of disregard.
No, it’s the sideways looks,
the half-smirks at meetings
when I talk about something
I’ve spent years
learning, sweating over—
my brain wrapped tight around it,
like a secret
I had to earn.

They nod like bobbleheads,
and then
some young spark, fresh out of training,
tosses out the same idea,
but shinier,
like it came out of a new box,
and they eat it up
like they just discovered fire.

Middle-aged guy—
yeah, I get it.
I’m not the underdog
in the story anymore,
not the fresh face,
not the one who’s got something to prove.
Just another cog
they’d swap out
if it weren’t for the decades
I’ve spent spinning.

And maybe they’re right.
Maybe I’m not new enough,
not loud enough,
not hip enough
to be worth
anything more than a guffaw.

What they don’t know—
what they’ll never see—
is how many times
I’ve kept my mouth shut
when they’ve been wrong,
how many times
I’ve swallowed the bitter pill
and smiled through it
because I thought
that’s what grown men do.

Bukowski would’ve told them to shove it,
probably.
But I’ve got a mortgage
and bad knees,
and I’m not trying to be a hero.
Just trying to keep the lights on
to get through the day
without screaming
in the parking lot.

They say the system’s broken; 
maybe it is.
Sometimes, I wonder
if I’ve just been
standing in the wrong line
this whole time.
Too tired to move,
too old to care.

Waiting in the cold

Morning arrives cloaked in gray,
an indifferent haze that presses
against the windows, whispering,
Stay in bed. What’s the point?
The cold bites deep—
it settles in the bones, the mind,
where it gnaws away at warmth.

I move slower these days,
as though wading through syrup,
each movement agonizing
each task a mountain,
each hour a foggy expanse with
no glimmer of the distant shore.

Still, I light candles
and watch them flicker in defiance,
their fragile flames
casting light powerful enough
to remind me— that this darkness
will not last forever.

There is the coming spring,
a promise buried beneath the ice.
I hold on, even if by a thread
because I know 
the sun will soon return
to warm the corners of 
this heavy heart.

Sometimes I leave these things way too late… but I got some words on the page so… here’s what ya get today.

Tired

Eyes closed tight,
but my mind hums, restless,
chasing thoughts like shadows.
The bed, too soft—
the night, too bright.
I wait for sleep,
but time slips away,
quiet as a snowy night. 

Let There Be

The page stares back at me
its emptiness more presence 
than absence.

The pen hesitates—
or maybe it’s just waiting for me.
An occasional flicker of
something that dissolves 
when I look too closely.

Words in my mind,
scatter like dust,
like sand in the wind.

I can’t see.
I press harder,
demanding sense,
demanding beauty,
demanding anything to fill the space.

Perhaps the struggle
is the poem itself. 
It will not be forced.

I’m left with the weight of trying,
the ache of creation,
the intense insistence
that something will emerge,
even if it doesn’t.

Shiva

Sitting here together,
we settle in,
the air warm 
with something unspoken.
No rush here, 
no need to 
fill the spaces—
words wander, in 
their own time.

Your calm voice, 
a steady thread,
weaving new stories.

The kettle sings-
these warm cups,
like offering gifts.

We drink slowly,
each sip, a
silent shared vow.

No rituals here,
only the ease 
of your company,

Silence rests like
it’s always belonged.
When it’s time
to move on
there’s no leaving,
only this stillness,
this quiet tether—
a true friendship 
steeped in time.

Invitation

Sunrise,
casting its reach
on icy puddles, 
shimmering,
fractured mirrors, catching
a thousand rays of gold.

This brick wall, 
tired and weathered,
glowing, is a canvas painted
rusty amber and rainbow corn shades,
its cracks holding light, secrets
whispered but not lost.

A shaft of sunlight slips
between bare branches,
illuminating a frost-laden spiderweb
stitched across a fairie window,
once invisible, now gleaming,
momentarily precious.

Shadows play longer,
stretching thin across the ground
as if reaching for something
they’ll never quite hold.

On days like this,
a quiet alchemy of cold and fire,
the world glows, radiant, 
inviting you to notice.

Arrival and Departure

Brought in screaming
to a sterile room, harsh with fluorescent light,
no map, no compass, no stars—
each of us arrive.

Weaned from the mother,
we reach—
for the bottle of milk, sweet and pure,
then soda, fizzed with false joy,
then whiskey, heavy with regret,
then pills, silent as snow.

Taken out screaming
to a shadowed box, chilled by the weight of earth,
no map, no compass, no stars—
we vanish,
contextless as the wind.

Pandemic

Days roll into days,
the thread of time unraveling,
and hazy grey pervades all things—
the sky, the ground, and the hearts of those who once carried laughter like lanterns.

Sanctified and desecrated,
the sacred and the profane blur
beneath this veil of grief.
Even sunlight dims,
its brilliance muted,
as if afraid to intrude
upon the solemnity of despair.

Nothing is immune.
Not the towering pines once swaying freely
nor the rivers that carried hope
in their timeless currents.
The world breathes out sorrow,
a fog from deep within,
wrapping every corner in a quiet ache.

Yet, beneath this blanket of sadness,
something stirs—a pulse, faint but steady,
a whisper that reminds us
that even in the haze,
the earth turns.