too bright

The lights of the streets are too bright for the stars

To shine upon people of the pitiful pavement-

Artificial glitter, giving hypocritical heat

Behind fences, flowers are wrought with homesickness

As the screams of traffic and haste, going, going, 

Never fleeing fast enough to escape the concrete,

While untold millions stacked, piled vertically

Withdraw into similar scenes, absent experience

Painstakingly documenting the unmemorable.

Brown Leaves

Some trees have brown leaves that refuse to drop;

Stubbornly clinging to branches: dry rot

Through deepest freeze, crowning certain trees

Won't take to the ground; to be tread upon,

To dissolve into fragments, one crisp step,

To dance precariously no longer.

Will April see them hovering still?

Or will cheerful pink blossoms show them out?