Urban Mysteries

The streets at night are never dead;

They may be empty, but the beat

Of echoing footsteps, and the heat

From long-left tires means instead

They twitch and burn in infrared.

The day is always incomplete;

Only the lamps can make the street

Become itself, when it can shed

The humdrum ordinariness

Of the commuters. What is left

Behind, and what emerges then

Is a beatific, beauteous mess.

I hate the daybreak for its theft

Until the dusk brings it again.

Spies

I have I will admit some doubts

About the whole affair. I know

I don't know all the ins and outs

Of how this sort of thing should go

And so I might be eating crow

After all is said and done

But when I think about it: no,

I think ends as it's begun.

I cannot be the only one

For whom this story stinks to hell

And when the race is finally run

I think that you'll all know as well:

The truth is but a little seed

That may be ground when there is need.

Ruby

I do not have the words for how I feel

Sick is insufficient. So is bad.

The more complex terms no longer seem real;

So much for all the learning that I've had.

Feeling you tremble as you try to stand

Destroys my appetite and drains my spirit;

The way you flinch when I stretch out my hand

Not because you do not want, or fear, it

But since you cannot even see it coming

Breaks me. I do not know what to do.

I try to feed you; you're not even gumming

The teaspoonful that I laid out for you.

With every step your blood drips on the floor

What will I do when you have lost this war?

Wash

I am beyond imperfect. This I know

With all the certainty of wind and rain

That lash in warning on the windowpane

And promise spreading: I am weak. I show

My weakness with each slip. I try to grow

And force myself to stretch against the grain

Hoping intensely that the frequent strain

Will make me better. If is, it's slow.

And so I watch myself be what I am

Wishing I were not. I see each failing

Magnified in memory. I try to rise

Above my flaws. I overflow the dam

And watch those failures wash over the railing

With sad, exhausted, and determined eyes.