deep within this hardpan soil
lives a seed of hope
fallen out of curious Pandora's
empty wooden chest of woe

awaiting millions of moist tears
to permeate its germane heart
beget its roots and shoots
of nature's salve for carnage

when all fury breaks bone
and spirit's frayed tether
life spins its gears of light
spawning will and grace together

-cec

Moving Nightmare

speeding down the way
the demos from demons run
winter car tires spin

-cec

a scent of roses fill this room
giving clues to summer's bloom
magnified through water's lens
thorns belie our velvet friends

a mouse once helped a lion's paw
who bawled to heaven with his pall
Hawthorn trees, appropriate name
sharp hawed lion with kingly mane

healing beauty eased its pain
as pity brooked the mouse's brain
a greater beast brought down to serve
the lesser mouse with velvet fur

a moral seems to lend its fragrance
as nature builds eternal rings
take this leaf, humbly snipped
as aphid clings to flower's hip

-cec

sidewalks blush with cherry blossom snow
robin redbreast ***** its hunting eye
black-cap chickadees flick forage now
seedlings wait for morning's warming sigh

winter hides to higher mountain's keep
gravity's cold rivers run riot
****** crows caw into forest deep
awakened buds drip dew in quiet

clouds roil vortices and thunder
break to sunlight's laser sculpted aura
spring released poltergeist toss und turn
nature remembers when it was young

-cec

not stopping here for long—
tin droplets of rain water
slivers of sun shine through
silver wood barn boards
while each suspended mote
hangs star like in still life
eyes adjust, just slow, to forms
silence is not really empty
wind moves ghostly
stable straw stiffly shuffles
startled shadows explode in sound,
muffled feathered wings, boxing
splintering spell into evening's hours

-cec

Here Linden trees with fragrance bloom
near Green Lake's lower Woodland
to start the season's summer chase
fauna, flora, rod and rake

with dancing light upon the waves
its power sure as movement
let's walk upon these winding paths
to stretch and feel pearl's ages

now fall presumes its colors fair
reds, yellow greens do govern
too soon to rust in showers frost
to swoon and crush in stages

beneath forever evergreen
there grows a solo fungus
its mantle spread throughout browned earth
digesting summer's progress

-cec

waking the absurd,
stark reality viewing
with moon's eye sockets
shadow formed craters,
in this wilderness of space
and time's relentlessness

detached, this eye's cornea
vision's blur into single thought
mortal being a shadow's shadow

days become hours, hours weeks
morning comes sooner every waking
darkness lays upon itself blanket worn

waking, the alarm clock turned (off)
a ray of light through vinyl blinds
comes, thankfully before another night

-cec

this feeling
bears no home in one thought
here in this heart it dwells
beating orchestral thunder
waiting its next tidal currents
bringing closer a stranger specter
paws impressed on deep forest moss
wandering easy with force and might
descending within a primal wilderness
jolting these foundations
in passion's yield

cec

rain lines pelt a glass window
looking out to a wet asphalt street
under a gray-scale bloated sky
where clouds push and billow

winter arrived with autumn's face
sad, with eyes full of years
these winds howl a lonesome veer
where sleepless trees shed leaves

above lie stones, below is rest
as grass imbibes through root
in morning's dark or lighted night
days colors are alike

winter arrived with autumn's face
a mask now cold once warm
while ina grave of earth's embrace
lie testaments of storm

-cec

It's going to go on,
for years.
T-cell hurricanes
eye these vital days
graft vs. host no more

no more crying (for now)
time stopped before a cure
when flowers, trees, rainbow birds
visited past autumn's hour
to gaze upon an empty feeder

a stolen picture of youth
pinned upon a naked wall
a serious face looking back
as though to say, "If I,
in morning wake, it's a good day!"

-cec

no ordinary love is love
plucked from a Mimosa tree
in pink with tips of yellow pollen
that charms crow on wire's talons
to leap in flight when no else calls
as though heart itself were sun

-cec

We
howled and howl at the moon!
you did not condescend
or turn into a hairy wolf
you talked of life and love
and how to mend steel tendons
How
we will miss you, not eating
withering away like fall leaves
while the sky cries tears of rain
your voice getting faint in the wind
as your presence like mountains loom
Grandpa
we who love you cannot bear
our thoughts are past sad
our hearts are heavy with losing
though you have always born
and reborn us in you

-cec

Honey from thyme ―
sun shimmies summer's morning
stirring the mind's hive to its labors
shifting leg's chores to the wing
in flight of floating aerial lines
to plot of pink and purple anchorage

no silk to swing upon its travail
dear bee, fueled by golden cakes
aviates air's curves and troughs
in one sixtieth of an arc degree
of its calculated tiny soul
as plot of pink and purple anchorage

then angles promenade in mid-day sail
their dance transmit the call
an exponential 'pas de deux' channeled
through ancestral ***** music
to nourish generational ascent
anchored in this pink and purple thyme

-cec

left the water running
a slippage of the mind
how long it ran through plumbing
quizzed a liquid block of time

how swift the thought had faded
with fluid cascade views
of an otherness that waded
into ponds of current muse

as a conversation bubbled
and the tangents went astray
leading to the very bobble
that forgetfulness betrayed

-cec

these spent hands still toil
digging in this drawn soil
watching a worm stretch
and pull, stretch and pull
soon dusk will slip in
moving with grains of sand
casting small shadow bands
over this garden tended
and overgrown with love
this bush rose red bloom
holding a waiting perfume

-cec

all the colors rule —
in long cylindrical forms
cast onto desks, holding cups
wood, metal, lead, black ink blue
jars of fluid alphabet soup
stirred with thoughts, dreams
dipped and scribbled on stave
or ancestral bones written
Here our tools, our daily read
stripped from stone wall stead
this savoir-faire to: Dear Sapient

-cec

when violins play
sound becomes a miracle
taken: from a cat's gut
horses' swishing tails
tree spirits and spine rosin,
flying into the air
climbing infinite heights
to land in patterns
on these confluent tarmacs
of hearts and music

-cec

but her heroics was tragically 1945
she found herself a martini shy of sane
cats filled her half full cup in a tiny house
with a garden of overgrown raspberries,
creeping violets, dandelion and shotsy-****

one story, split level bungalow blues
smoking cigarettes into chains
with an occasional store stroll
blind doctor visit, and neighborly chat
atop damp earth with subterranean worms

they found her dead in her chair
sitting out her physical existence
stains of her last **** between her fingers
the ash length not having fallen
in respect to her final perfect moment ...

-cec

Den of Iniquité Master, Dungcan Pmurt
belly hanging, button popping
sitting on edge of a sofa, sipping soda
dreaming of flames and fortune

-cec

by Walt Kelly (1913–1973)

The basest ball
   Of all the game
Is one that travels hence,
   O'er our grass and our gloves
      And finely, loves,
         The fence.

"The Jack Acid Society Black Book" by POGO as told to Walt ...

In a bracing wind of a wilderness pass
fly catchers', arc over this hunch-back hill,
close pursuit, with morning clouds
that hug these pointing pines, in flight

where tree line marks heaven from earth
silence staked in dissonant landscape
fields of stone, ascendant flowers
clinging lichen etched on rock's face

here moisture seeps as solvent
dissolving everything into watercolor streams
rushing to rivers of temporary sand bars
banks high near looming forest canopy

this path that leads from leaf to leaf
and no depth left un-plumbed
no height or chasm strangely met
will stem this force of "unfathomable wildness"

-cec

How each missive is missed
from you so long and long ago
this sadness only feels itself
in lonely thoughts of mirth
lost among years gone by
days hold hands with days
in endless chains of regret
endearments left pending
those antique roses near a fence
white and fragrant Victorian lucidity
an orange sun rising to morning's grace
as choir sings the beauty of  fortunes
bodies entwined as one vine of love
racks poor Cupid's soul in alarm
to launch a thousand thousand arrows
and bridge this melancholy sea
to find your eyes and pleasing face in welcome

-cec

there is a feeling of depth
found in a rocking row boat
hinting at a bottomless sea
where the unspeakable squirms
and light is a lure into stalactite teeth

consumed and digested by stillness
thought's bubbles emerge to rise
decompress on their upward journey
and break that surface once more
where we float as wet oars push on

-cec

"Of bodies changed to other forms I (sing);"

and dip an oar into a primal sea
to see a world more animal than human
pierce this shell of surface tension
to feel, smell, hear this bottom extent
being cast within profusion's briny flow

in slow evolutionary tides
washed up on shores of crashing sound
run aground through fur und fetters
tail to mouth food chain devoured
'ever preening in disguise

unmoored in a rolling mirror
duplicitous while moon howling
even Zeus took occasion's swan dive
to lead a baser instinct's anatomy
and shoot a swimming seed home

Dr. and Mr. mixed in a beak-er
shaped and shifted over geology's ago
flooding forms into molded forms
and yet scramble out and into breath
filling lungs unto this crested vision

"So mastered by the brute blood of the air,"


-cec

Through sheer curtain casts a diffused light, thread bare
wispy Wayang perform behind; parading shadows
as curious sleight of hand unveils today's vane weather  
past glass pane doubt at morning's province

that foreign sun filtering through clouds of grey
parting enough to blue where dawn begins and ends
while pocket-sized birds dip and dart across garden flora
fulfilling their native chirp charged larks

saline winds straddle mist to settle dew on green:
moss, grasses, leaves, do cushion a fallen limb
its clinging lichen, in common leap, adheres their bond between
each stegnon layer, iris, to the next

thus fixed in this fabric's fiber, spirits
decant Pandora's brew imbibed from age to aged
as staggering marionettes **** and stumble on stage
scenes unfold on scrolls of old, this day's mystery at midwife

-cec