The Piper

Who follows the piper on the grayest of days?
When far off, the wind carries the notes that he plays
Calling those orphaned, forsaken, or lost amid tides,
Those who've been shunned, disparaged, or lied.

Lonesome notes drift then swell in their veins
In soft bleeding colors that haven't a name
An ancient but tragic story is told.
For those willing to follow, a promise unfolds.

What have they to lose in the gray spray of mist?
Where now the sinners and sailors both coexist?
So they follow the piper across moor and sea
Trusting, and trading their heart for whatever will be.

Pain

This is not a cut that makes me wince, a bruised muscle
that makes me too stiff to move in the morning, 
or a joint that sends stabbing pain through a nerve 
making me cry out in pain.  No, those are now nothing
in comparison to what has happened to my body.  

A fire burns deep into layers of skin and muscle
spreading like lava to places the scalpel never touched
searing white hot, a soldering iron held to my chest, 
and I slip into darkness.

Glass shards grind along every nerve, churning like waves.
My nerve endings scream when I cannot. Steel claws
rip at me, a beast sporting with my limp body and I have
no will to survive, only a desire to escape the cruelty.

I rise and fall to the surface without will, unable to see
past the blackness that everything is. Falling back into 
nothingness is surrender, freedom, not knowing, 
not feeling.  Let the claws rip at me, let the fire burn.
I will sleep, unaware, unconscious.

Buoyant

She is wrinkled, sunken,

In her chair with clothes

That hang on her bent

Eighty-year old frame.

And she is formidable.

Never tell your mother,
She says, if your husband
Or children cause you
Grief.  You will deepen
Her grief and yours,
Defending them to her.

She raised her children,
She survived a husband.
She knows.  Her stories
Have an underside but
The loss and heartache
Are almost missed in
Her buoyant laughter.