I remember this movie when I was young
That moved me beyond tears
Ain't it funny how I still remember that
After all these many years

It had no stars that were famous
That it could brag upon
There were actually only four players
But very skillfully focused on only one

I remember the film was in black and white
Color would just get in the way
Of the true meaning of this mans story
And what it was they had to say

It was about a Confederate solider
A loser in his war
About to be hung from off a bridge
The film never did say what for

In fact I don't remember any words
Ever being said
That hits me now as being strange
More than it ever has

His hands were tied behind his back
With the noose around his neck
As they pushed him over the bridges side
To what I felt was certain death

The rope ran towards its deadly course
But snapped in half under the strain
Next shot was of the solider swimming away
As the bullets around him rained

He walked for days through angry woods
Till he came to a dirt road
Ahead of him a Southern Mansion
As the story it unfolds

On the front porch waiting for her love
The sweetest of Southern Belles
The love you saw between them both
No spoken words could ever tell

As he approached the steps with just two left
His love held out her hands
That's when his head snapped back as the rope around his neck
Reached its final end

Fashion this as liquor to give spirit to
a song in write.  Seen seldom to weigh
words at play in search, sewn
expensive for time spent in trust and
recite.  Penciling not for profit so
rhythmic this may show.  Find in the
presence to open and reflect our
woes.  Only prescription for
uncommon those in write.  A same
those who compose.  This on display is
the compromise of sheltered dreams
and the soul, of rhythm in gentle prose.


This is the allure of the jewel of
life.  Sent as promise a same a
wish.  Stem those genes and make
heavy this vision and prayers in
might.  These are our rays made ink, to
weigh the pressures of waves constant
in cycle, to detract from nature’s
Heavenly sight.  Lost we shall dream
and ever so patiently grow old ~ but in
heart live bold.


Rugs were in Persia mathematically
correct and with an Indian craft
colorful, Heaven sent.  Only captured
in a metaphor this day, so men do
master, so simple this way.  Simple this
as to measure the years past, shudder
away tears, for the river purifies our
passions commandeered.  So culture
our gardens to prosper and replenish,
in the green untamed, and natural in
wonder, behold.


Today we thimble a sew for tomorrow,
for our craft is spared only to simple ~
ness of editing, not journeyed journals
to an ever-changing composition.  
Perhaps unfamiliar this vest, this
life.  Sample the living, in books that
inspire.  Dismal I think the desire to
purify a pen in this heavy practice, a
dance an art.  Time lends a flavor,
marinating appealing to a fashion so
write.


Always calm to prolonged righteous
reason, modern making, yet captured
still as storytelling.  Uncommon
to cues, but refreshing at leisure, is now a
computer who makes simple what once
was wasted time.  Measures made in
this art are laborious, the passion is
for the pen, reel it in as your tool,
rations will in turn ~ give as a well and
nature and sow, the seed of the write.  


Refinement ~ un-forsaken, notes of
detail, must reinvent and inscribe in
ink.  The bank of intuition lay tender as
our diction.  Replenish in the soil of
our Native grounds to seed another
tool, the luxury of our lingo.  For
inspirations may befriend or become
uncharted if left in the cold.  Sold but
without a surrender to all integrity, we
will call for many souls to ship and
receive what Forefathers intended.  In
over our heads, over watering our
behaviors, half unknowingly over
diluting our mental treasures, is this
the liquor of life, all too fancy in
measure but it was the tea of rebellion ~
and so I toast ~ to a drink tonight.


Inherent as memories of a generation
now surely within time, we will fill the
promise within crafted lines, and
file away ~ many promises ~ many
revisions ~ many times.  In spoil we shall
not surrender our bounty of honesty
and wisdom, so gray in years we
mend.  Dent our self-serving self ~
respect, make and justify the wheel in
role common.  Like a beard in keep,
intention is relevant.  Surely women
refine makeup as to show beauty in
character.  Thus what we intend to
refine is an endeavor to unwrinkled
and celebrate the qualities of growing
old.  Time is of new defining, for the
times are naturally at all times in
ritual of change.


Memories to grace the gift of sight ~ are
the shades to carry our reflections
away.  One, who trusts and so cares,
lay in the daydream of light.  In a wish
sent salient, reference to eyes unveiled,
patiently as a seed shall ripen, the
flavors of life will flower in springs
day.  We hanger ~ thus shelter, the rags
made clothes, best when leather to
weather firm and tight.


Regift the promise, to harness the
wind and make words potent as those
before did without regret.  Today in
general we lean and conform on the
fundamentals, too disciplined, mirror
of stale literature.   Similar to wood
varnished but without the stains of
life.  First revision is not for giving,
only what is taken, luxury of
time.  Color your copies of the wood
you talk in and pencil in your
pressures to relieve the pain, simple ~
ness and cold feet lay sold, as buttered
bread to fill.  But imperfect, so
forthcoming, wills the literature of
today ~ finding promise in ceremony
by charting drafts and revisions to
send in message to those young in
read.  This voyage is regretfully gentle
as our host made monumental any
verse, so breathe within the soul and
hearts of men, to find new styles to
milk the mind of reason.  Leafs from
the tree of intuition ~ censure the
picture, sell in the filter of Freedoms
fight, not first drafts ready when
write.  


Battered but purely by pace and
meager beginnings, the wave of
procurement in the arts of linguistics
will saddle and shelter the idea
profound.  Don’t toss away the raisin
of a pen in hand,  for we lean to easily
in bits and bytes.  Promise of Heaven's
pennies falling in rhythm will sing
tonight.  


Majestic in find, common in ground,
gift a find, in leisure, in time.  Gather
they guard and uphold the greater
good, not to entertain but inspire.  Just
as ones soul is when right.  Humbled
in behaviors so chips in clever may
fall.  But poker face we have become,
once centered in earnest of essays in
rent, now owners of ideas
embellished ~ in verse ~ our native
treasures.  Second we charter the raft
of ideas in mend, to conceive works so
aspiring as the poets and linguists of
historic claim.  So riddled ~ so
mastered.  Surely a new discontent
shall offer, in a pebble of examples
met, but with practice and structure
our youth will pen.  


Demand must be patient, for
procurement in the arts of linguistics
will nurture and mother our future
Leaders to a discipline in their own
right.  Never forget the days of past
generations for they marveled in the
arts ~ and in rain it falls in our hands
~ to luster and defend.  Poetics are too
political if not in share.  Protection of
this is how Freedom was rung.  The
hungry will maintain its resolve and
rightfully so.   Riddled as sow ~ these
lentils, this meal, these feathers, this
ink ~ shall fuel the fire.  A dance in the
pillows of night ~ shall brush the painting
in the Autumn of ones days.  Flaccid in so
many ways.  


Glorified by the shadows of
protection, but only one day is stored
for this intention.   Freedom is in the
work engraved beside it, within it,
sharing we celebrate it, and our Brave
provide it.  Celebration comes by way
of duty and hard work, and is rises
high and early in the dawn.  Yes, on
the Forth Day of July.  Food and
pleasures are gifts for price paid by
our Soldiers and Agencies who protect
and defend our freedom and intelligence, and
calmly watch over it as we carry
along.  All under the calm watch of
Gods umbrella.  Future dreams are
blessed a same, for all under this Flag
by notion alone, seam and dress and
hence sail ~ with solemn truth.  Trusting
the winds of reason to keep us Forever
Free and on course to replenish the
soil, for those young in years.  Students
in the day dream of life are in the send
to allow their pen to charter this
peaceful but daunting Nation to one of  
peace and prosperity.  Willingly and
calm the lion stares afar from
American shores, Democratic in nature and
always reinventing in this idea we
call ~ the American Dream.

He came to her in the night,
Whispering promises in her ear.
She shrunk back, frightened
By the choice she would have to make.
But something about the words
And the sweet sounds
Made her heart pound and her mind race
With idealized visions.

She was not one to make mistakes
Or believe is what has no proof.
Except for that night.
Her body quaked as she took
His rough hand in hers.

If she were the drop of rain,
Pattering against the window,
He would be the hurricane
That blew the frame away.

He was a color, bright and loud
Against the soft hue of her pastel.
And if she were a flicker of candlelight,
He would be an inferno.

The flicker and the inferno escaped into the dark.
The former was stabbed with uneasiness,
Only thriving on a spark that warmed her inside.
She knew what she was leaving behind
And that it was the wrong choice to make.
Except something about it felt so right.

Each brush of their skin
And glance at his face
Threatened to take the regret away.
Through the hours of steady paced walking,
Her home became more distant
And she felt the guilt shrinking,
Getting smaller
And thinner
Until It
Was
Gone.

She had always been a flicker,
But maybe,
If the inferno shared his fire,
She could become a flame.

First draw me in with your glinting eyes,
And those flashing teeth,
And those beautiful lies.

Then hold me down and steal my breath,
And keep me submissive,
A weakling at best.

Then leave me alone and rip me apart,
While selling my soul
And breaking my heart.

And keep building me up and beating me back,
And show me my faults,
And be what I lack.

But when white flags of truce Color our skies,
I'll look down on you love,
with contempt in my eyes.

Look. What do you see?

I see Black.
But it's not the color Black.
It's emptiness and void.  
It's a heavy heart and a tight stomach.  
It's gasping for air.
It's heavy limbs weighted down with the burdens
of everything most people will never understand.

It's the feeling Black.
The feeling of being lost in a cold dark alley.
The feeling of being unsafe.
Feeling like passing through many different scenes unnoticed
and not necessarily wanted.
Feeling overwhelmed with negativity to the point
where all muscles give up and goals are unreachable.
Feeling the absence of hope.

I see Black.
And I feel as such.

My uncle insists that he accepted God into his heart
when he was six years old.

His daddy was a preacher too,
his momma stickthin red-headed submissive
and lovely
he remembers them as lovely folk, but he was lonely.

Art did not exist back in those days
neither did color television, sometimes the sunshine
raised too much hell for babes to go outside.

He was lonely, he insists,
he knew that he did not belong on Planet Earth
if the universe was a legitimate thing (nobody knew
for sure in those days).

He decided to believe in God like his daddy
at the promise that Jesus would ride him on a rocket
ship to Mars or Heaven or something
after his body staled,
but I argued that he must have wanted to be dead

sooner than his time
because space and Heaven are really great things,
he must have wanted to kill myself for them.

I did not believe him until he told me that
mental hospitals did not exist back in those days
else they would have put him in one.
Somehow he turned seventy last week, still breathing.

May 16

I bit into the apple’s core one last time before
tossing it out the window. It was just before sunrise
and I was the only car traveling down the misty road
at this early hour in the morning.

5:47 and I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee. I was still
invigorated, restless at best. Sleep had run miles from
me this past eve and all I could do was act in response
to it’s disappearance.

I made my way through the curves and foothills,
pulled forward by the sweet smell of a fresh rain.
After all, it was the first dawn that the sun grew
his color, climbing the source of the sky.

My tires rumbled along the gravel as I slowed to
a still. I was greeted by lyrical birds: red bellied,
brown, and blue. The soft grass felt damp under my
toes, but it was cooling, comforting.

I could smell the sweet hay which was so skillfully
being churned to mulch by anxious, hunger stricken
horses. Whinnies bellowed in rhythm from
the depths of the stable.

I tightened the saddle around her silk coated barrel
and latched the supple leather to her muzzle. She was
hypnotized too, I could sense it. That early morning fresh
leapt forward, exerting her muscles into a gallop.

We ran as one contingent soul stamped with the power
of a strong spirit. The subtle breeze that tickled my nose,
now fiercely pulled at my attire, blowing breathes of
chilled mist down my skin.

My eyes watered as I filled the space between us with joy
and bounteous laughter. Those few seconds—we slowed down.
They become moments of eternity. We were both free. Her
breathes came in strokes, fogging our trail.

We raced against time to meet the sun. Hurling through the
trees we exhausted all innocence. Leisurely breaking from
the strenuous expenditure of energy we waded through
the clear creek. It soothed.

Greeted by the harmonious rays which shined
through the tree tops, we un-mounted. My legs
unsure at the stillness of the ground. I sat on
a tree stump, she grazed.

Our eyes became fixated on the reflection the water
mirrored back at us. Her eyes pierced the depths of the
pond’s surface and so did mine, and meeting us in the
middle was the sun, filling the gap between our faces.

They moved in back in 1956
New lovers, New breath, New life
A New house. Yellow and white shutters,
The lake in plain view, sloped lawn.
Children came forth, grew, left
Dandelion seeds on a wind's ride.
They planted a tree in the back
It grew as they shrunk. The wife died.
Dad can't stay on his own, we must
Find him a home. We're too busy, Susan
and Bill just had a baby. Put him on a shelf
In the closet. For sale sign comes up.
Old money young couple in a Black SUV.
The white shutters should be blue. The yellow
Is an off color. This tree in the back simply
Won't do. It blocks the view. It must come down.
Memories rot and rust and are painted over
The stain in the carpet where she spilled her wine
That one night when they had a little too
Much to drink, they fell into each others
Arms. Rip out the carpet.
The tree must come down.