Night Words

Night panic, a cold white wake
brings things of magnitude that quake
and shake.
War, poverty, crime and deep, deep heartache.
Love could cure all that, yet
we won’t let.
Should I pay the cable bill or buy
eggs and bread and wine; and why
do we have so many pets
when we can’t afford the vet?
Will my kids get fat cancer from much too much
sun and Cheez-Its and sugar and such:
I should have enforced more veggies and s.p.f.
It wouldn’t have quelled or waned or weft
the art of living, and does the itchy spot on my shoulder
mean ugly death is coming instead of older
age from which one day I don’t wake.
I fake
pretending not to care how I love and leave this place:
I WANT to light the world with a flaming embrace
but the fire it scares
hot and bare
and smoke, it clouds hindsight
especially in the dead of night.
And time it flew: the girl’s off to college,
a quest for freedom and knowledge;
how can this be when she just learned to read, well
the boys I pray, all be good men who give, and tell
true words. Will I live to write them? They that mean
or might possibly glean
a spark of something, perhaps just for One,
or will daylight cause them to all be undone
chasing what once felt worthy of Muse,
blank page of silence the gift and the bruise.