Beyond my life
There will be
A Ghost of me
Left behind
With nothing more
To say
But what I might ask
I would arrange
A conversation
To see what regrets weighed
Hardest on the mind
When all was over
To see the future ghost
Is to know
That I am limited to these moments
That I have
On this earth
Walking among the trees
The sand dunes
And the fallen leaves
These
Hills
Remember my feet
Walking past in great
Admiration
Of the wonder of life
The wonder of the Chicago
Over Lake Michigan
Industry and what it takes
But the roots remember
Every footstep
In a web of life
Unseen in all
Of it’s glory
Time undone
Wrung
In the slightest sense
Of night to day
To light from grey
This day
The hour hands
Work back
To see the mistakes
We made with a clear image
Of how to make life
Better against the grain
Of time
Crisp
Clicks
Cracks and snap
Of the footsteps left
Behind
In the history
Of time
Echoed into space
Along the way
And captured in the faintest of
Sounds
But drown
In a world obsessed with motions
So we hold on
To those we love
Before our footsteps too
Will be forgotten
Words
Sharpened
With stones
And iron
Creating the oar
Of an acerbic assertion
Pierced through the armor
Of ego and confidence
With one small wince
The house of cards
Will fall down
Am I to be propitious
The dedication
To craft
Detail and moment
Will that entail success
Or failure
When a dream is more
Dead than alive
For the majority of the world
Then what is left
Only the chosen few
Get the whole pie
While the rest of us
Settle for just a few
Variations
On an unpleasant
Theme
Over the words
Sung low and repeating
I hear the vicissitudes
Lurching from the pews
Of renewed loss of hope
In the caverns of light
Darkness
In the halls of good
Evil
Why these changes
Are forced on us like a
Placard on the ground
I await a new day
The breaking dawn
And bird sound
The stroke of midnight
In the city that never sleeps
As the sun fades on the final
Day
Of 2024
I rejoice quietly
With ebullition
But subtlety
Resilient
For in the night
Comes another day
Another chance
To say
I can do
Better
Ebullient
The times of the year
When Thanksgiving
Rolls around
Over the fallen leaves
And the fall sun
The days of life
That are lived
To just be happy
To just be
The divides
Magnified
By lies
But when the truth
Is spoken
In a hushed town
The sails are left
Empty
For the truth
Does not need to hide
The lies
Have to avoid the
Exposure
To our eyes
A Cup of Songwriting 