Walking the Corridor

Tone Deaf My voice breaks In stereo And there you sit Staring at a screen Glazed eyes averted  Avoiding my gaze Hoping that I will leave  What to say? What to feel? Who could know  Without thinking  But nothing moves  Behind those eyes Just automated blinking  Did I avert Did I deny When at your door Pain knocking  Summoned you To say goodbye As spirits began walking  Or did I speak? Did I assuage? Did I attempt? To stall dismay And thoughts acquired  On days of death When brightness fell away  That I did  That I've done  That I gave And now you rue My hour of need When shadows loom And I reach out to you.        And I reach out to you                      And I reach out to you                             And I reach out --  J.M. Rogers      ...

With the Dew  A mist gathers Round your old chair  Hiding the cushions And the impression  Where you sat I can sense it there  Through the haze But your weight now rests On tired shoulders  Pulling down, down, down As the air grows cool  For that moment is here Just before sunrise When the fog settles to dew Upon that familiar  Resting place  Droplets, droplets droplets, soak Into the worn leather  Swelling and staining it The cushions expanding  Until your imprint is gone  Save that which is left Upon sagging shoulders  J.M. Rogers 

Flash  Another one has gone  Vanished in a flash So many grains in the hourglass  Filling urns up with ash  Some will say to be stoic  But how can they grasp The weight of forever When nothing here lasts. JMR

Drizzle The rain has come,  To pluck her strings The rain has come  O' how she sings... pitter, patter sputter, splatter dripple, drain, and clutter, clatter. Oh, how she sings.  JMR 

Transitory  Gleaming Mother Chasing a pearl Across dark pools Of waveless night  Ever closer Fingers unfurled For the jewel In stellar flight Silver offered To grasp a world Beyond the reach Of lunar sway But no token Of Mother's purse Can tempt a breach  From charted way JM Rogers

Dusk I watch the trees Turn to silhouettes  As another day retreats Up comes the thought  Of losing track  Of falling further East  The West is stretched  Beyond my reach  The light rapidly fading  While up above  The black peers through  Blue tides swiftly abating  No Us and when  No We and will No They and then No wait until ... Only stars, stars, stars, Each one so far ahead. Only stars, stars, stars, Above my leaning head.  J.M. Rogers

Sitting Trapped within your private cell A hell of your own making I sit and wait till all is well Or until the time for leaving  Choices, choices, choices,  They are why you're ill  And yet you can't stop shaking When someone tries to tell How to stop the grieving  How to slake and quell  Those voices, voices voices, That chorus of the pale You hearken to their shrieking  Clinging to your shell Forever tied to gripping  The cage in which you dwell  While chances, chance, chances Slip through your fingers, frail The minute hand is raking Dead leaves over the nails  J.M. Rogers

Sundown  Where can I lay my head tonight  These sagging bones This rattled soul  All held together by the hope That morning will mend What dusk has rended For love, once lifting  Now drags me down  Until hunched and stooping  I recall who I was -- Before, before, before,  And how poorly I slept  During those years, When love was absent And logic held anchor  Leaving my dreams to carry  Me up and up, Until morning brought the fall, How I waited for dusk  In those dead days,  For nothing living swayed me  To dream while waking,  Then you brought the sun Upon your golden petals And raised me up to see That I was tall and fair, Not crippled and pale,  Or so I was until sundown  Tall and fair and dreaming of life                        ...until sundown.  J.M. Rogers

Lone When I'm alone Tis a company of three  For me, myself and I,  You see Will sing a song  In sweet harmony  Of Whitman's words  On growing alone  Which one can only do at home  In the company of the lone, lone, and lone. J.M. Rogers