Dementia (n) deprived of mind and memory.

Dedicated to Robert.

Step inside a white-walled ---- and struggle to remember why you came.

Feel your pulse quicken, the frenzied pump of ----- through your veins like so much poison.

Check your -----, time has arrived, but from what origin? To what destination?

This unease slips within your crevices of forget and is consumed as well. An open ---- welcomes.

Unable to identify ------- ; alive without interest in life. You enter.

The promise of forget offers solace, and you ------.

Diagnosed as a disease, your -------- may be the ultimate gift .

In Touch.

I wrote this one a while ago while on a plane. When I go to an airport, I always manage to buy the latest copy of InTouch or Cosmopolitan or Vogue. It's a weakness. I actually wrote this on the pages of an InTouch, which is why it's taken me so long to post this - I couldn't find the magazine until now.
It was a pleasant surprise to open up some old issue about scandal between Jen Aniston and Brangelina, and see the first familiar stanzas of this poem written across Kim Kardashian's face.

Glossed pages
Saturated with sensational titles
And aerosol faces

Bleeding botox
Bandaged by Versace gowns
With suffocating seams

Clawlike ribs
Reaching outward for fame
But never food

Miracle pills
To numb irksome emotion
And erase thought

Brimming shelves
Ambrosia for addicted followers
Such as myself

Seduced between
These glossed and bleeding pages
I am home.

One cycle of the seasons.

After I wrote this I realized, wow. I really need to write more uplifting stuff. I'm not a depressed person, so why is my writing always such a downer? Anyway. This one was actually inspired by one of my relationships. I try not to write about specific people, but I had to get this one out. It's pretty straightforward.

Last fall we began
as lost, wide-eyed children
huddling close out of fear.
And the cool, indifferent breezes of change
chilled you.


By winter they had frozen you through.


When spring arrived
and thawed you,
the flowers began to bloom.

Wanting to share in this brief beauty and warmth,
you forgot.

As the summer's heat wilted the flowers, I remained.

As fall set in, and change gusted again, you were not afraid.

And I will battle winter's chill alone.