Most days are like an empty worn
Out house
On 1300 south block
It sees all the wealthy
Empty from the lot of Costco to it's front door. -If you pay heed.

But no one pays attention
Or spends on empty houses
Those with front steps or beds to sleep in
Most walk by thinking something like,
That house did to itself.
To get to where it is.
But they would be dead wrong.

It takes years for a house to empty out
Because of neglect from all sources. For misfortune, no matter all the life inside.

I imagine this was a yellowbird house so proud to be built.
People, a cat or two, maybe an obedient dog walked in and out
Someone cared enough to put a roof on. It thought complete.

Some people are like empty houses. But, people bleed, they cry, that get torn down by so many things. One thing in common though, houses and people are eventually demolished if no one cares.  Time that waits for no one.

Someone may crash into your car of goods as you exit the fancy box stores that make you think more is better. But then your son collapses at home from an overdose. You had no clue he was on ******, did you? What were you paying attention to?  He dies from brain death. He hadn't even reached 26.

At what was your yellowbird home will now be remembered as the sound you heard of your young son's thump as he hit the bathroom floor as you readied for work.  

Split in half. Someone dies. You didn't plan on being an empty house now today, did you?

So, what will you do about it?

Seek to study, exam life? Rebuild, reprioritize?  It's just time. What have you got to spend? Time the only true currency worth its weight.

What jungle is unfettered
Unrestrained online
Lifes imaginary heaven,
Amazon, Bezos breadline.

Like a god itself
It keeps on giving
Whatever hour
Whatever click

And I can give back
What dropped sour
From the branches

Monkeys ******* returns
Peeling ripe bananas.
Never lost
In this jungle Savannah

But God will be there
Fulfilling your need
Even if not needed
You land softly in greed.

There's his mistress,
Whole Foods, eager
To take your return
While you walk
Feeding their ledger.

Then you wake hungry
Again a trigger is tripped
Stumbling to a screen
Ill-equipped

Forever, until you stop.

I'm coming back as a tree
I could leave now
For all I care

The tree is an Ash
Sturdily bends in
In the sharpest winter

Breezes blows the boughs
The waves from the Pacific Ocean
Are jealous of her cadence

I'll take my leave now
I've seen all I need to
When you hear the wind look up

I've returned
Rooted, alive, without a care
Let the cages of birds freely fly to me.

Follow me
To the inescapable
Matter of shadow
Unerasable
Shivering to escape
Your footsteps
In the sun.
Shape shifting
Always there
Tuned to you
Even as you lay
In the grass
Of a park
Where children's voices
Have their own
Wave length.
Your history of insults
You carry around
Year upon year
May feel absent in the light
But your shadow is
Inescapable.
Like your hand in
The pocket of your purse
******* the seam
Is vulnerable. Tend to it
This Place you fear.
There is no war.
Come out. Reach.
Dance with it.

Ambiguity
Seven Times
Maybe one and two
Or many verbal words
Scatter our grasp
For sense and meaning
A puzzle thrown
In the Air here and there.

Here these words
Are pieces unconnected
Even as the word, THE,
Can take us to "the" beach
Or to " the" room
What you bring can
And Might
Be your rescue. Maybe.

You are here.
In the dark or light
Where one can't be defined
Without the other
Just as the meaning of you
Lives never in just one place
But resolved
Simultaneously ambiguous
This is your beauty.

I looked up
This morning
Before
the globe
Of life lifted from
The dark horizon

The passengers
In the sky
Began to announce
Their arrival
With frosting
Dressing the gray floaters
Tipping a hat to the mistress sun

As do the yellow roses
That glow in the darkest
Of green along the
Fence. Next to me.
Waking up.

One only knows
The presence of the days beginning
By these clouds
These flowers
And the black capped chickadee
Announcing all clear
See-see dearee
All threats are gone.