Reluctant Prayer

Disappear phantom sleep--
slurring your fangs
toward the real,

slip beyond all fear--
be gone while you swirl
in my thoughts of steel.

My eager wheels burn
their fuel, but still
they plume like smoke

and all you do is slip
around me magically, poof
around hope, a rope.

The images burn in doorways
haunting prayers like doom.
I laugh in spite of blood

even though you fill the room.
Angels wings be on me,
white light burn my way

and my hands grow together
without the urge to pray.
I understand my fingers;

they call out like sun
pointing their golden daggers
to a day yet begun.

Lint

I am the silver ball in the maze guided by your quicksand hand, turning tides twirl, trying to eat us with their bellies of jellyfish. We are safe in this guided path though the walls shiver when we crash our soft fingertips into their rivets. I am the silver ball warmed by your cupped hand, your rescue was inevitable. If you keep me in a shallow pocket,I may fall in the gutter so push my down in the corner of a long and deep one and I will make friends with the lint, then you can take me everywhere.

Pull

Like the little grounds of coffee
you sweep away
or the sand pulled in by the sea

I am small and time drifts
steadily.

Wind at my back, soft voice
of my people pushing me

and others pulling.