A Red Ghost

The sun, one of the rare gods

Worth the name, source of the heat

That woke life up and the burns

Lives shield their cells from or die,

Hangs on the edge of the day,

Low near the end of the year,

In a blurred smear, a red ghost,

Like a piqued god prone to sulk.

We’ll wait. We can wait for it,

Who work best at dusk and dawn,

Who draw with ash and earth. We

Know the god can’t stop our ends,

Nor stop then on the next turn.

It’s quite a world we’re caught in,

Where the heart of power and fire

Can’t do a damn thing but burn.

Lean on a Crutch at No Set Time of Night and Knock on Doors

We don’t want to read or watch,
Not now. We want to write. Well,

We want to line up, find ways
To fit in a good, small place.

You know, it’s weird. We come back,
Each time new bits, fresh black lines,

But most of us are the same
Old words you’ve known years and years

And if we weren’t, who’d read us?
Ah, good point. Who reads us now?

We are not the part of us
That’s new, that is just this once,

Nor are you. If we are us,
We are the same that came through.