Breath I
I rest on this bed of souls
A hundred years of lost lives
Breathless in time
I wonder nothing, slumbering into the eternal night
Awakened on His bed of souls
I, like a hundred lives, breathe easily the morning of life

Breath II
There are times I wish to God I believed in His blue sky
His wilding rivers
His roaring winds
The prayerful passions He stokes as great fires
I wish I could believe in what is His Goodness?
But I despair, anxious till under an autumn moon, a crisp air draws up my clouds of breath
Perhaps His breath rises along with mine
I wonder to God if this is true

Time
I hear the sounds of muddy soldiers
Awakened I am at night
Under a silent moon and sleeping star, they march
The empty eyes
The white skeletons walking, the smoky battle of fury behind
What of these clean streets of time, emptied by a sweeping breeze?
These answered soldiers marching to that young man's call
Under the silent moon and sleeping star,
The deathly bones of skinless men
Awake I see what's left in time: their muddy sweeping lives

Dream Ache

Zigman Zibanski awoke with twigs grown out of his ears. He pulled at them in fear. He pulled harder and harder but the pain was too great and he let go in exhaustion. He awoke once more. For this wasn't reality at all; it had been another dream gone crazy.

That night he went to the One Lucky to drink. He kept secret from his friends, these strange dreams. But beneath his laughter he was afraid he could never let them go.

Scorn
I beg in haste sometimes,
Too fast for this world
I beg in haste for forgiveness
For food to fill a belly worn inside out,
This repentant soul, threadbare by guilt and scorn
Unfasten me in slowness, it heals all wounds in the end
So they say?
I know I beg in haste sometimes,
But I'm bleeding deep inside
Nourish me with a gilded hand
Gentleness in sweet caress
Brush me aside and I'll beg no more
But a repentant soul I'll never have
An ex-beggar's grief will weigh on me in guilt and scorn

Low
It's round midnight
I got a headache, cuz I'm all alone
I'll call Julie, but she's married now
I'd only wake the kids
There's my old friend Charlie Little,
But Drink killed him long ago
I guess when you're all alone, you're alone
When your head hurts like broken aspirin, you're alone
Lay down in pain, I will, and sleep in the space between the years

Ikiru
I hold an old picture that turns into sand
It sifts as Kodachrome to a bucket below
The photo is gone,but the reds remain
I take the bucket and tilt it into a children's playground,
sorry for the things I've never done