Snow Moon wakes to black winter sky deaf and blind flies full body bare to longing stare he watches on the earth below restless lust grows sets him afire with base desire he hungers for her pale, chilled skin to plunge within her cold, cold dark and leave his mark ©2023 jai minute
Image by GooKingSword from Pixabay
crow arrives on nighttide
feathered aphotic revenant
slips in the window
while she sleeps
burrows its sharp beak
into her seasoned flesh
and tears at
the most tender morsels...
doubts
insecurities
fears
savors the sour flavors
of being hurt
of being fooled
of being played
again...
she learns not to sleep
stays ever vigilant
lest crow
swallow everything
her pride
her independence
her reason
her life...
in the morning light
she sometimes wonders
if crow is real
is a force without
or instead
lives within…
a black cancer
of bone and blood
cawing chaos, while
beating sharp wings
within each breath
scraping claws
through fragile capillaries
frantic to escape
its self-made
prison...
©️2023 jai
Image by Angel Milostan from Pixabay
‘neath snowy blanket
old home slumbers peacefully
dreams of coming spring
©️2023 jai
haiku
sprawl in a wrinkled, uneasy bed old demons and new share the covers they jabber and snicker, toss and turn chase away forgetful sleep eyes on the shadowed ceiling I wait for sunrise… pour a cup of bitter, black coffee greet the ghosts of past friends and lovers angry and accusing in their stony silence tears slide down surly cheeks eyes on the cold, damp floor I wait for sunset… pace dingy, dark, shuttered rooms regrets, fuck-ups, and what-ifs gather lamplight glints on gunmetal gray what you sow, so shall you reap eyes on the bore of eternity I wait for death’s release ©️2023 jai
Image by eberhard grossgasteiger for rawpixel.com
home in my memories sets monochrome monochrome walls, roof, and floor—my home gray, the kitchen where my family prayed prayed at a table of weathered gray old photographs of yore yet sparkle gold gold that never tarnishes, nor grows old love cradled me in a warm, velvet glove glove worn by Mother, fashioned with love safe, was I, in that time, in that place place of antiquity—nevermore to feel safe childhood long gone, now rotting driftwood driftwood littering dead sands of childhood ©2023 jai mirrored sestet
a child knows nothing
about the consequences
of the many roads
she will walk in life
until the end
when the last road is chosen
and for better or worse
she arrives at her destination
old, with no more roads left to walk
she then ponders
those fearlessly taken
the ones passed by, unexplored
the hurtful ones
paved with nails and glass
and she realizes that long ago
she lost her way
too late now
she knows, over and over
she picked the wrong roads
always in a hurry
she veered left on a whim
right on a wish
and only has herself to blame
for this damned dead end
©2023 jai
Image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay
cold comes
but also goes
for some
oaks hold
naked, yet proud
brave, bold
death claims
the weak and old
…life’s game
©2023 jai
musette
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
wrapped tightly
in rusty barbed wire
the caged heart beats
listless and erratic
an out-of-time clock…
tick-tock
cruel thorns stab
draws tainted blood
that drips poisonous and black
down constricted ribs
forged by shame and blame…
plop-plop
©️2023 jai
Image by Birgit Röhrs from Pixabay
The sun is just peeking over the horizon when I tell Maryanne it’s time.
She gives a quick nod of her head before taking a sip of coffee. “I know…gotta get the taters in that ground tomorrow.”
“It’s gonna be a good day for it,” I add. “Weatherman says it’s gonna be in the seventies with sun all day.” I head for the back door.
“I’ll be out soon as I finish my coffee,” Maryanne says.
I stop by the shed and get the shovel before heading to the garden. I’d just been digging a couple of minutes when Maryanne joins me. She’s carrying the hand spade for the fine work.
I dig down about a foot—that’s as far as I’d best go with the shovel—and lay it aside. Me and Maryanne drop to our knees and start digging more, me with my bare hands (I ain’t got a light touch with tools) and her with the little spade. And soon I feel something, push my fingers in a little more. “There he is,” I say.
Maryanne tosses her little spade a row over, and now we’re both using our hands. I hear her muttering under her breath, prayers, I reckon, ‘cause I hear “Lord” and “God” sprinkled in amongst her other fervorish words.
By the time we get him uncovered, Maryanne is laughing and crying at the same time. She tenderly brushes the dirt from around the closed eyes of our only child, Cain. “Ain’t rotted much, has he Tom?” she asks.
I work Cain’s shoulders free. “Don’t look like it.”
“That’s good,” she says. “Real good.”
“You want me to do it?”
“No, let me.” She begins working her arms under our boy’s body. “He’s so little, I can manage just fine.”
And she’s right. Cain was just three when he died last August. The hardest part of all this was getting him planted in dirt that hadn’t seen rain in pretnear a month.
When she has both arms under him, I take Cain’s hands and cross them over his chest and steady my wife as she rises to her feet.
“I’ll put him over there by the tulips,” Maryanne says. “Aunt Hassie said to make sure he got sun all day long, and a’fore dark, he’ll come back to us.”
I have no doubt the old witch is right, and tonight, Cain’ll be tearing through the house like he hadn’t spent the last seven months in the garden. After all, I seen it happen a’fore—with Maryanne. She’d died birthing Cain. And I’d planted her in the garden like Aunt Hassie had told me to, and come spring, I’d dug her up and laid her in the sun.
©️2023 jai
Image by Duccio Pasquinucci from Pixabay
youth is a fickle mistress
batting her clear green eyes
whispering in your ear...
I will stay with you forever
naively, you believe her
slug through the weeks
and months and years
thinking she will always be there
you live your days for others
instead of yourself and her, while
work and family obligations
mindlessly gorge on time perennial
time you should have spent loving
time you should have spent living
time you should have spent just being
time you should have spent with her
until one morning you wake up alone
she has left you for someone younger
leaving you old and worn out and used up
no good to yourself or anyone else
you see her out with her new love
and grow angry and resentful and hard
hating her for abandoning you
hating her for being happy without you
then, slowly you come to realize
that she did not leave you
you left her, long ago, standing alone
crying, ‘neath the glow of a fallow moon
©️2023 jai
Image by Victoria_Watercolor from Pixabay
On the Fringe of Darkness 