To know the length of my shadow
Grows smaller and smaller each year,
Makes me pause in mid-thought—
Unable to complete the sentence
It seems I need serve.
I realize no escape is possible.
Fate has a way of convincing,
Even the most ardent skeptic,
We can only go so far
Before the last chip is cashed,
And we’re no longer playing
With the benefit of house money.
Each night, as sleep approaches—
If I’m lucky enough to find it—
I ask myself what have I done
To earn admission into heaven.
That I often come up empty
Gives me ample cause for sorrow.
And I think the time appears short;
I must learn to do better,
Should I expect a reprieve.
When the morning mercifully arrives,
I hear my friend, the woodpecker,
Drilling patiently, outside the window.
Is his work any different than mine?

Maude tells Claude it’s over;
She no longer has any use for him.
Their union is a sham
She won’t stand for anymore.
He can take whatever he pleases;
It’s of little consequence to her.
She needs to conquer the world
Without him lollygagging around,
Complaining about this, that,
And everything under the sun.
He’s turned into a flojo—
A lazy shadow of a man
Who lives off her welfare,
Spending his entire time
Entranced by the television
And the sound of his own voice.
Maude will move to Minneapolis—
Or, possibly, Cincinnati.
Perhaps, enroll in college,
Make something of herself,
So she won’t be a woman
Who never advances a step past
The man refusing to remove
An axe from her back.
Still, she must face Claude again,
Before she makes her escape,
Climb through the window
She’s left slightly ajar—
Slowly place one foot
In front of the other.

We’d like to think—
If we knew then,
What we know now—
We’d rewrite the book
We call our history,
Erase the tasteless errors
Spilling across each page,
And recreate a past
To reflect the present,
Whose future is cast
In never ending chapters
Of truth or consequence.
Why must it be
This need of ours,
To right every wrong
We could not foresee
On the crooked road,
Always gripping our destiny.
How possible is it
To heal the heart,
Reveal a novel story
From start to finish,
Unburden the guilty mind—
One crime at a time.

Struggle gamely with their beauty,
Fragile as pennywhistle thistles
Caught in a terrible wind,
Howling through their lives.
And what of the trouble ahead,
Disillusioned spirits seeking refuge,
Blinking out the truthful lies
No one cares to believe.
What shall become of dumb love
They hold in cold hearts
That can never open again.
All the pretty young girls,
Choked by fate they check
At cloakrooms in restaurants—
Where they pass on dessert
And feast on sorrow.

They say, on the morning news,
It’s the age of belief,
But, quite frankly, I appear
To be faithless these days,
Checking out of my life
Every chance I get.
Perhaps, it’s nothing at all,
A mere case of malaise—
Or what my friend, Fabrice,
Simply refers to as ennui—
This boredom of the soul
I am unable to escape.
And, yet, how convenient it would be
If I could simply believe
In anything, whatsoever.
I don’t need to entertain
A grand concept of God,
Or even love, for that matter;
These ideas simply burden the mind.
What I seek is nothing more
Than the evening breeze at my back—
Whisper of wind so free
It never disrupts the universe.