Hungry Ghosts

I am the hungriest of all ghosts.

My appetite is like a raging beast.

Ferocity and weakness live in the same mouth

yelling for help,

cursing when it doesn’t come.

Nothing fills me up. Nothing

sustains me.

Only moaning and the sound of a dry wind

bring me in

to this place of reckoning. This

Battle ground

where hungry ghosts fight shadows and whispers

is familiar.

I have been

here before. I was as lonely then

as I am now.

I consume and consume and nothing satisfies.

There is blood in my teeth and on my hands

and no one understands the urgency with which I seek satiety.

Greedy, hungry ghost.

What hurts the most is the

is the heart that lies between

the large belly and slender throat.

The Stone You Said You’d Protect Me From.

You have cast a dark veil over my dreams and dashed my hopes against the stone you said you would protect me from.

But I trust You in spite of all that time has brought to light.

I trust You beyond the raw fright of growing old.

See how the wind picks up the dust and rushes like a dervish

to places I’ll never know?

You point and promise that You have so much more to show me,

and I believe You.

I trust You when you say stay calm, that it will be light soon enough, that the desert will bloom and everything will be born anew,

My prayers have become smoke curling around candlelight,

A delicate grasp on ephemeral hope.