Childhood's Monsters

Beneath my childhood bed myriad monsters
lurked nightly in darkness, hidden horrors....
Oh how simple was life for the young me,
life's monsters confined in space and in time.
Mushrooming they've colonized every inch
of my insides now, of the world out there,
blending in when need be, profess honor,
ones that look like me, ones in modest robes,
in Kiton suits, fatigues, dirty tatters...
some even capes!  Who to trust when I've known
monstrous hearts in some, some their monstrous brains?
But monsters live too inside chance and fate,
deep in the deafening hush of the world
where air, with or without you, keeps its form,
the sun's forever sun and the moon moon,
childhood's monsters gulped as if breaths in storm.

Compassion

Compassion is not time
that passes without looking back
Or confused air
once a breeze and then the storm
It pours
not as water that freezes in the cold
It's not the sun when concealed
by darkness of a mindless cloud
Compassion does not cower
like fire in the downpour
Is not seduced by alluring words
Will not crumble beneath untold
unfelt sufferings of the world
Compassion can never be known
but from the experience of breath
through the revived reborn field
of heart that softly beats—
despite the ravages of time
howls of dolor
despite springs of agony still unhealed
and shattered memories that keep order
as fearful guards blocking the roads
despite the snoring snow-covered wolves
and homeless feelings running for cover—
having felt an openness and softened care
as if the city of heart is much much bigger
as if it's a room that welcomes and can hold
that and the breath and has room to shed a tear
as if the heart is vaster and warmer and wiser
beneath the damage and the falling snow
as if the heart is patient enough to wait
for blossoming spring and fruits of summer
But these are only words! 
Who could really know
why this time the breath had beamed with joy
returning all content
up to the mind from there

Protecting Pain

Her wrinkled ground of psyche bears
the throbbing spoor of savage wills

She seeks to gather fearless strength
and build from hate a bed of spikes

It's not the light but shades she wears
reposing on protecting pain

Her skin was charred and she was shamed 
for all and naught and for her weight

She sighs as though an offshore wind
and arches faced with faceless void

She loathes herself as storm the breeze
and dies at sea as squalls abate

So fear and hate coordinate
in a harrowing harmony

Alone on a Stormy Night

A yellow bulb lit 
Under my lone bed—moonlit.
Monstered-light thunders!