Friendships shimmer like lost
Blossoms of springtimes dead
Heat, suffocated by winter’s downy
Head, laid down to rest with all
Else that sleeps in the dead cold
Dark of life’s quiet, slow period.

All life flows south for winter,
Due south, like the birds, yet
Even my own guts tell me, in
Their revolt against too much
Drink, salt, sugar, time, stress, or
Not enough sleep, that even I
Must shut down some, go south
As it were, for winter’s true veil,
The one that shimmers like lost
Love, the horizon of ever-promised
Spring juice, summer love, autumn
Romance, all is lost in the dead of
Cold, dark, hail of the soul.

For now is the time, the time to
Rest, easy in the knowledge that
Even as the bright golden red
Embers burn, deep hot breaths of
Ice-tight hollow nothing seep into
Everything I see, the road slipping
Ever further into tunnel vision, that
False premise of a life well lived,
Even that small wish meets its own
Gruesome demise, just so, for as
We learn, as we grow, nothing is
Real, all transient, change is the
Only constant, just so.

This is not the hail mary, everlast
Cry of a lone wolf in the forest, but
Rather just another single beam of
Wavering light, another candle in the
Wind of life’s funny torrential downpour,
One more gust of harsh breath,
Hard-earned pain and empty night.

Tomorrow is a new day, will be all
The same a flow of inconsequential
Sameness, that disheartening fever
Of life lived to the extreme, an extent
Of what we living, thinking, being
Creatures call the ‘cure’, to boredom,
To loneliness, to frustration, just so,
Just so.

And still we burn.