as our letters age

my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing

practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost

soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that the sparked them into action

oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...




Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am

Sit down
With your four wall surround
Pour a glass of wine
Cut your sightlines
And breathe
Tension leaves

In this city that fosters neither kindness nor pity
Bunker down and take solace in its anonymity

Time will reflect all that you went through
These lifetimes linger longer than they were meant to

Roses are Red
Blood is red
I saw a dead body
lying on the bed
The stench of Iron
Right in front of me
Smelled of beautiful ivory

i met you
as the leaves fell
and the sky turned grey

the world grew cold
as my heart turned warm

i missed you
as the leaves grew back
and the sky turned blue

the world grew warm
as my heart turned cold

~
Love's only weakness
Is also its greatest strength:
It defies reason
~

I used to walk
Down the street
With a smile on my face,
When I was young,
And foolish.
When the world
Felt safe.

thank you
lover
-
for the
reminder
-
that no
longer
-
are they**
stronger
-
than my voice.

Oh my Prosperity,
Oh my Serendipity.
Oh my Destiny,
Oh my Honey,
Oh my Austerity,
Oh mother of my Posterity,
Where are you?

And when you left
I overwatered all your flowers