Instead
Something weighs heavily on me
Life is so long
I feel short of breath
There is a movie at a late show
I'll walk to it slowly
Maybe I can stop and catch my fleeing heart
Lay down and rest
Watch the old movie inside me instead

Voice
These hands of plunder
They take from me in life and death
My soul, my soul that yearned for so much
The wealth was in my dreams, my hope like a shiny jewel
These hands of plunder robbed me of this
Greedy, the Hands robs from you and me
Hold tight! But in death you are no more
Yet a voice eerily echoes in delight in this our lasting soul

Sane
I saw a man wasting away on a cold autumn day
The drugs in his veins were highways to what was sane
Early snow flakes fell into a thin linen on an old street bed
They covered him
I walked and thought hopeless:
There were no drugs in these helpless veins,
But as all men, I had highways to what was sane

Return
A man was dressed in black. His overcoat weighed heavily along his shoulders. His fedora, the crown pinched tight, was pulled low against his brow. He slipped into darkness. Alone, he felt a cold wind and was certain what he wore hid him from the night.

There was another man. He too was dressed in black and slipped into darkness, alone against the night. With their fedoras pulled low they walked in near blindness and bumped into each other.

"Are...aren't you Square Corner? one man asked.

Both men walked quickly away. No words were to have been said. The rule had been broken. The game was over. One man felt free, the other sad. The overcoat that weighed heavily on his shoulders was no good, the loser thought.

Along

To an urging fog I give emptiness to its nothingness. My desperate hands go round. My shoulders turn. I feel no freedom, just alone in the waiting of time. Perhaps what surrenders first are dying eyes? This fragile, mortal self inside an eerie fog; that urging, cloudy voice says to lie down is to know peace. But I am too young to sleep in your eternal night. Let me go and see the morn. I shift and walk straight. Only my pleading heart is old. My mortal steps hurry along.

Happy
I don't need Chicago balconies like shiny, wavy smiles
I don't need Army Navy stores torn and tattered as ragged Ole' Glory:
The blood of soldiers
The stain of sad, segregated streets of black on white
Nor the L that loops round dying buildings, sidling closely
Then recoiling against the rumble of what?
The decay of old men whose broad shoulders bend against windy tongues
I don't need Chicago, with its smiling balconies
But you call me often as if I were a wounded soldier
You call me to victory!
I'll surrender in the end. I will return. Happy as a man can be.

Drink
I'm off the road now
It is late evening, the long summer sun is setting
I sit wearily on a grassy knoll
My canvas pack rests beside me
I must find a place to sleep; where I can unravel a thin blanket
Then when the morning rises, I again rise to the open road
But in this moment I will drink from a setting sun
Watch a dying light play on black tar that stretches out like long legs

Spirit
I walked into a cold place. It was late autumn with a large window open to a chilly air. The lights were gone, the bedroom stripped bare.
"This is where it happened," a female voice said behind darkness.
I didn't know her tone, nor was I scared.
"This is where it happened," she said once more. "Years ago, when your spirit was born, I was a soldier's girl awaiting his return."
I looked for the voice, but my eyes were too human to see at all.
"This is where it happened," she said. "He came home from war. This is where he came home from war. I can say no more."
I closed the window to make her warm and left her darkness there. But inside this curse there's an autumn wind...as an angel's soldier on my return.