Over time I shift Major to minor tonality From the storms that breached And the rising sun while everyone's asleep A bitter and caustic critique Can be sung so sweetly Between the folds in the sheets Under a helmet at speed Or late at night over a bottle of whiskey With Sleepwalk on repeat Funneled through a string of lights The biting air and rising exhaust The kindred spirits steadily lost Comingled with the exhaled smoke Perfume that reeks Or the cedar chest opened with a creak Full of worthless chaff Childhood casts Potentialities long past When the sun comes up my inspiration fails "Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more? In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away."¹