we wish you well
pain can be overcome
by composing poetry
as you do friend
i only hold your morale high up
upon the bamboo tree
some day
one day
we all have to go

why bamboo ?
ask me
its straight and unbreakable
like thee
so be happy
like me
I died in 1977
AND
came alive
just to read your indelible poetry
my mind has so been branded
by
thy poetry

VIGIL

I follow the day as it comes
and acquiesce to its limitatons
My will gives in to existence::
the body is broken beyond all prayer
the mind languishes in defeat
and the soul cowers in its stillness
too fearful to be discovered.
I keep a silent vigil and wait
while the hours go by
wondering which will be mine.

The age of miracles is gone
and faith has fallen into myth.
Where is the Christ I knew.
Where is the bliss of Heaven's Hope
Who has betrayed human kind.

SILVER LININGS

Silver-lined clouds and rainbow rains
buttercup fields in West Virginia
days when my heart felt another
safely sleeping in the womb
the sudden death of being born
and the sudden birth that death brings

I am number ninety three
named for my gestation vat
where I first came to be
and then was decanted stat!

A tube was then run down my nose
a direct route for all nutrients
to my stomach tasteless fluid flows.
I know no taste, I know no scent.

At two cycles they replaced one eye
with a telephoto infra red lens.
I guess it hurt, I didn't cry.
Emotions deemed the worst of sins.