Tiny lion laid so low
Who cut your mane
Your glow
The brain-land took, synapses struck
then
lost you
and it your-self and soul

The savanna called home
smacked of a foreign land
we found you hidden and weaving
your paw-full feet
scratching
telescoping
your way through the
streets of castaways, vines, and fists
Catching you then in its
paltry honeycomb

What are those points of neurons
fabricating in your mind
feeding fears
with gesturing claws
devising and fantasizing
luring my felis Leo, oh sick cat
take our love
struggling to bridge the gaps

Companions you lost
drifting through the dust
of the city cement
and ****** watered drugs
in veins
used by demons
who take the souls of lions
are now in their own generation, generating
their continued demise
away from you in your living trust

Your crown of tresses matted in tassels,
we searched the grass and pavements
we feared you were lost.
adrift,
missing and gone.
Years past,
treatments were tried
you emerged
the clearing did rise
you could now greet the day
to the love songs you hear
sing them for you,
you are the love
     whose worth is waiting
Lead on

You
Your Highness, watching upon your hill
breathe slow
linger a bit
recognize the worth of time
know there is a strength
in delay
anticipate dear one
the sun rises
Standy by,
for the afterglow

Master through life
do not succumb
your homeland,
waiting
as new companions take shape
As long as there are
plenty of tomorrows  
upon tomorrows
to a pick a friend,
a quarrel,
a dandelion.
accept hope,
A day for Lions will come.

The moon did me a favor today

It didn't drag me down.

It made me look up.

Where else is future found?

Besides our
Hearts and Minds.

In the sky where you will find Birds.

And wings
With golden strings

Threading

An imperfect map.

I'm still looking up.

A Hero's face rises above the
bandage on his head.
Why do men need this sort of hero?
An innocent.
A flower of spring.
Do you not see the sunrise each morning?
Where is your lost soul?
In the ages of history,
learn thee not?

I thought
my thoughts
were bigger than anyone's.
Maybe I was bigger than anyone.

This served to isolate me
from the fact that I am small, not bigger and I am okay
with that.

When did it begin? Why would I need this mechanism of living?
Did it start at birth? Or when my cat died in our house fire?
Maybe...
When I lost my father to his mental illness? When he was taken away?
Maybe the ****?
When the trauma set in?

If I am a mass of cells, a living organism,
vulnerable to this world of others.
I need protection. There was none when little. Children need protection.

I developed my bigger-self by watching others. I learned to protect.

I learned to heal. I learned to forgive, but always, my thoughts
were bigger than yours. You didn't recognize so I appeared
aloof, angry, bitter, warming, smarter, friendly, volatile, politically correct, patient, intense, stubborn, caring, wistful, shattered and put together again. I was all over the map. I couldn't find my waypoint, until now.

This is life's way. Our vehicle is our thoughts.

I am not bigger in thought, in action or in self. I am tired of running away, of blaming, of being ashamed.

I no longer need protection other than from myself.

I am now relaxing in the part I could not have been taught. The idea that even experiences, over and over and over again, would teach me my lesson. You ask why people keep repeating
mistakes. This is our allotment. The price each of us pays.

It is my thoughts that save me now, wondering about my son, his illness, about my predicament
after years of hard work, unabashedly independent, procuring mindfulness, deliberating the Buddhist way, meditating on thoughts,
through a maze of my twelve steps
that I now for this moment am alone in.  My thoughts deconstructed. More connected, but not bigger.

My shoulders drop, my face unfurrows, my heart slows, a tear begins if I let it. I am released. I will not suffer further.

How can I tell you, I am not bigger any longer and I am at peace.

Millions of coins
Tossed into the air
then time stopped.
And began again, slowly
while all the sides
turned and flipped
side to the other side
The wind churned and
the coins landed one
way or the
other.

Birth was given
when they landed
In the order
that chance gave them
Until they stopped spinning.
The rain came
The water broke
the baby was born.
One way or another
How was the landing?
Chance and choice
Flipping coins again today.

Are you of perfect
Circumference for
A captain in the sky
Voyaging vagabond at night 'til morn'

Walking under the
End of season elms and sycamores
The branches as oars in water
Tilling below shadows come, shadows go, as you stay steady
For I was the water in a rippling stream and you were a solitary sturdy force above
Emulating my gait and gaze

Light hanging with every branch
Into my water
As you lay your supermoon
Beam into our futures
Until you come  again
Leaving your soup of hope in Everything you touched
Even souls

Where will the future be at your return
With hate or love,
Or something in between as a sturdy captain should, be there once more for all the visitors below
Beseeching you for navigation
From on high to below
Altruistic by sight, your perfect shaped stone in the dark of night

How to leave out hate
Say less and stand out far more
Carve your words with love

So many vacancies.
Vapid halls and streets.
No air. No hearts.
Vacant lands and souls.
Be a hand.
Be a thread.
Be a source.
Be love.
Be the patience.
The light . . .
     the empty chair.
Where you can invite someone to sit
Spend time.
Where each other can
fill up the world again.
Willingly wise, adopting time.
Fractures will fade
Patches of hope emerge
Color of
Grass
will grow again.
Sweet fragrant spring grass.
Practicing progress
For each season
A seat for everyone.

Corners of the heart
Where sorrow lays in blood
Loving kindness seeks

Dead Enders

Places we have been to
Places we compare to
Travel light years
In circles around us
Over time
Around and around we go
Spiraling through the self-disparaging
Thoughts we hack ourselves into
Until,  Sense-less
Dead enders.

So, unthread,
Unthread,
Unthread.

Unwind
Before your prospects
Leave this space.
Around and around we go.
Transcenders.

Start with self.
The others can wait.

Thoughts are just passing clouds for which to meditate.
Observe the world as the observer, not the taker or receiver.

Judges are for benches. Do not sit alone.
   Stand and walk into the songs of birds.
   Free within your self called home.

Nothing is familiar
I have no place
A stone in a field of grass
the wind bends the grass
the stone looks around
nothing is familiar only the ground

Nothing is familiar
Where did I go
what is to be done
Lost in the avenues and avenues of my  Mind
There is no strength to pick up the stone and throw it away
It would just be in another field of grass
Estranged

Nothing is familiar
not even who I am
unknown
The painted landscape has no shape, where should I put the tree
no familiarity
Scanning the clothes on the rack
I used to know they were me
I am no one now
Nothing is familiar in this estrangement

A mountain from a range,
Of such everlasting granite.
Carved over ages,
Shook from under footing
Like statues who will
Not wilt or crumble
Only to manifest
Into the space around it
Reminding me that as weak
As I feel, Inside of me is a similar
Persistence that won't be moved
By the capricious whim of man and imbecilic masses who follow.
I will seize your sharp shank and excavators trying to make me into something I am not.
I am a woman with equal rights
And dignity far beyond your pompous attempts to roil this robust range down. Your false statues will crumble when the mirror knocks at your midnight door. Here, look at yourself.

It started when people stopped bathing
Or showering.

Every day before they went to work or after their 5 mile run.  People just stopped stepping into their tubs
Or showers
To turn the faucet handles that activated
Cold and hot water to fall from the plumbing.

They gradually
Lost interest in hygiene. Personal cleanliness was ghosted.

Everything else mattered to them,  until it didn't.  Getting their kids to school on time mattered, finishing the work project by deadline mattered, visiting relatives in Montana mattered, driving to the store for groceries mattered, until it didn't. Simply ceasing soap and water on flesh.

They just stopped bathing. It's not that they were afraid of water. If near the ocean they would still run and swim in the waves,
Or jump into the pool at the Hilton. No they weren't afraid of water.
It was something else
So slow
And insidious that it was hardly noticed at first.

The domesticated animals picked up on the phenomena first.
They became anxious. They scurried, tried vocalizing. They sensed a lack of intention from their care givers. They sensed a lack of worthiness inside of their humans. The animals began to wonder about their own well being.
What was their future?

Once you start with a variation from normal,  from routine,  from tradition,  the pendulum swings.
The people didn't realize what was happening. Then it slowly dawned on them over time.
They didn't feel needed.
But kept it a secret. The secret necrosed from the inside
Out. They forgot that connecting to one another
Was vital to survival. Their silence could be deadly.

The forecast on the radio
I didn't need.
I felt it coming
In and through the threads of my light sweater
Tickling my skin so my arms embraced
One another.

The barometer falling
As are the remaining Ash leaves
Of yellow, like canaries rushing about
Certainly saying goodbye
To the past
As they must
When the wind picks up.

Hurling chilly
whips of wind
down
The East canyon
Announcing its arrival
I think of my warmest coat
And how long I'll have to wear it
As I sit on the porch in my shivering
Bare feet listening for what is to come
The seasons change
How will I?

Who are you today?

I am
hurt by the fact
you can deceive and love so perfectly
at the same
time
Frightened
by your sublime.

Who are you today?

I know not
who you are any longer.
I do not know which person
I would be talking to
or living with.

Get back to the spirited,
kind and trustworthy constant
that you
once were
before you strayed off
Before your dis-ease
You have a Constant
Like a star,
a knowing
Unwavering
        Please find him
And hold on
as if your life
Depended
on it.

He died without warning.
Lives fractured
From failing
Air bags,
Ten in all that
Deployed, did not protect.

It happened
Pleading to un do.
On a sidewalk in a fetal position, pleading.

Nothing, no money
Millions or more
Will ever bring him back, but hate takes up residence in your soul, burn until you can't move from the scar tissue.

He would not want hate. He would not want you in this state.

I see it so in every
Red fruit garnished
On the Serviceberry
This year
Three years after your death. I hear his echos, it will be ok.

It's all I have to give
Watered by tears.

The sunshine melts in from the dark.
The summer sunflowers start their  morning yellow glow.
From the dark of nights despair and suffering.
The light of questioning wakes up,
I begin to ask why the pain?

Did I, or do I have the capacity to be optimistic of my will? Over matters of the past?

Shame, denial, self- soothing, trying to escape emotional pain through all varieties of addictive responses to life.

Understanding this new target for my heart, mind, and body gives me optimism of the will while
knowing
there will always be suffering.

I ask myself, what is my capacity? As the light rises in the morning I feel more air to breathe in.
Aware of the air inside of me whether in dark or light, carries some vessel of hope
to help ward off the strength of suffering.

I am not the wave. I am the ocean. The womb. Conceptualize
the possibilities in this morning dry landscape,
before abandonment. Conceptualize having what you need. Ease and compassion enters. Possibilities move through with ease and healing is within reach.

The capacity to heal needs warmth like the morning globe of light.

Helping a child with a mental illness and co-occurring disorder such as substance abuse disorder. Our little diamonds who grow up with a broken mind.

Diamonds are in the rough. How long does it take to mine a diamond?

If you as a parent do not have any tools, you will have bloodied hands and feet  and never will you get to where your child can shine without the addictive source.

Diamonds are found in many ways, but to communicate with the diamond, the ore around it is crushed and milled.

Diamonds repel water, but are drawn to grease.

Expect to get down and ***** when helping your addict, but DO NOT, go into the pit. You will be of no help once you are in.

Held like this
A cupped hand of water
held still
that not a drop
enters gravity's pull.

Held like this
The hens egg.
Rounded palms together
without allowance of pressure
that would crush the shell.
Frail possessions.

These are days she remembers beyond all vicissitudes she faced.
Not jagged. Not stewing or careless.

This untainted moment
of protection
for something that will give back.

A drop of water
becomes a cup that was
dry as a bone.
The egg becomes
a breakfast feast
weary of starvation.

Hold life like this. Prudent,
tender and earnest.
These times she keeps
for consideration.

Disagree with me
Ever which way on a tree
Branch follows no one

I Accept The Call

Collect call from Salt Lake County jail
If you accept,
Press 7.
Seven is a lucky number.
Not feeling lucky today
He is in jail again
For violation
Of Mental Health Court.
I accept the call.

Jail for mothers of sons
In jail, I imagine being like
Steel wombs, without the mother.

There are no pillows
No pleasant toiletries
No longer do I worry about
How long the refrigerator door
Has been open while he looks for
"Something to eat" in his bag of commissary.

There is no mama's kitchen.
No sofa to pine on.
Your laments only echoing
off cement.
What is your excuse this time
For violating the rules
At your new mothers home
You must know by now
There are no soft goodnight words
Just the stained metal
Slamming closed

May you keep your sanity
While doing your time
And remember the words
Radical acceptance
Practice balancing your
Emotional, rational
and wise mind
Maintain focus and resolve
To never, never, never give up.
I'll take that call now
I accept.

If ever I grow small
Consider me still useful
Uncrippled color

There is a fragrance
Remembered in its bloom time
Lilac yet made whole

Many things going on around you.
Clothes hang on chairs, littered
Like valves of the heart hang
By cords in diastole
Waiting for blood
What do you care about?

I have too many clothes.

The liver
Is a mother
It takes in the bad stuff
of the body
    (the **** that no other *****
No other person wants)
Clean things up
Sometimes, the liver fails
But, it can grow new tissue too
Mother's are resilient
So, ya see,
"it is always something"

Where is your Ok line?
Lay upon the asphalt of your tender life?

Does this line fall straight or
Wander like a rivers ebb?

Does your OK line look away from Native children of America forced to give up their language with a safety pin in their tongue?

Or does your voice remain silent, letting white paint on black dictate another's worth but your very own, into the hands of righteous power.

Does your OK line follow blindly with conformity from false prophets who seek to control your mind making it easy for you to turn away from suffering?

My OK line seeks for equality, self-determination, and soothing suffering
With my voice and pictures that will never be silenced in a democracy but will be sold to the highest bidder in a dictatorship.

How silence kills and you suffer less believing you are somehow more disserving. You are as equal as the stone stuck in the sole of your shoe.

Remember the discomfort is equal for all. That's the OK line. We are equal; stone, thorn, blade and heart. Bleed, but bleed less in company of a powerless generation who votes the OK line towards freedom of choice. None will be free from our last breath.

Today I need you
One line of words mistaken
Remember I live

One more before I go.
Into the wilderness of parts and dreams. A happy send off in the cool morning.

I will be back in a new form perhaps, a more rounded crown of a tree, after years of pruning.
A "wild and precious life" with untold horrors, spoken dreams, and wandering caravans of thought.

In yellow abodes loving kindness which is yours. Maybe it will seep in like a root gives to it's leaves. Traveling through twisted currents. It's fragile rose petals. Short lived. But remembered.

Everywhere you go
Every where you are promised
Every where you land
Is not for a slab of steel
But are places you imagined to be
Only in your mind

You are where you want to go
You are where you lead
You are all the broken plans
Intended to lift you high above the land
You are air, as light as your intentions
As strong a wind, as your heart can stand

For there you are
Three times over
Where you must be
As you wait on this drifting sand
There may be another path
Just wait long enough
To take a stand

I felt it
When I spoke
To the judge,
For my son,
Years of shell work
Encasing fear and sanity, cracked with each glance, falling away. Everyone listening.
I was left lost
Like a snail losing it's shell
Mushy and vulnerable
A Pulpy mess.

Was it enough
That I said
Or too much.
So much was left out
The Russian Roulette admission
The thoughts of jumping 15 floors from his hotel
So many letters making up words and paragraphs upon paragraphs
of 15 years.
Throwing out a gun
Into the city trash.

How could I be anything more than a mother
Who let the saving flatten her out of existence. Incoherence and pulp.
Will it be discarded
All that effort
To keep him alive
At my expense.
Is that what mothers do?
I'll never get to return. Life doesn't
Let you.

Head can now explode
But my hair rises black
Higher than this
Feeling inside like
I am,
         Screaming
         the sound could send waves
In new directions.  
Capture or let go...
They both make me feel
          Insane
Unable to do anything else
The roar is paralyzing me
Get me into the black hole
       already
I need the other side
Rage-Light, flashing
      You would be blind by now
But I see too much
       Scratching out your eyes.

Riding the air
In dark morning
A steady current of rain
Descends
Upon everything
The fir tree
The house roof
My dogs fur
The empty Ash tree
The fallen leaves
Brown, red, yellow, orange
The bird feeder catches the water As does the bird bath
The puddles
The street
The cement
My head

My ears hear each
Multitude of patterned drops
In apparent chaos
Reminds me of the brain
The synapses in my brain
Circuitry, each drop a connection from
Dendrite to dentride
Messages of the unknown
Of falling to earth
Of vulnerable life
Unprotected.

The unhoused, in the cool soaked air of December. Will you remain blessed?
Will you spread your joy in the patter of rain to those who bare the rain in their skin, on their dampened clothes? Adding a chill.
Will today you find some without a home
Bringing tarps, blankets, source of heat, to those who listen
To the same rain
While they shiver
And you stay in your glow with your tidy wood burning fireplace. Stay comfortable? Risk giving for giving sake. What floods of love can you share in December rather than giving to
Your precious family, the left overs, the excesses
And give to charity that make each day another day for breath in rain from the heavens. I choose the rain. I could be the one in
The open now, soaking as I pen these words.

Hoping words of love, neutrality, non-judgement and altruism be the "church" we reside in. Drop by drop.
Over a hundred different sounds of rain brought to earth by gravity, in my receiving ears, and the tiny sparkles of light reflected upon the  light from the street lamp shining upon concrete saturated by this extended morning rain.

Going on a rock tour
I'll leave you with the beats
in the ground.

Still, I will play for the crowd
Like I know what I am doing.

On return
Will I be home
Or was no one listening?

Cowering in corners
On lead guitar
And solo drums

Today my son
Is to be sentenced
To prison. He
Lives 23 hours a day
In a jail cell, he will move on
Steeling courage few of us
Ever have to experience.
Consider your luck.
His mental illness
never to be a crime.
Will there be light for a prism?
Where he can turn to
Other pathways
Less dark and Forge
Himself into the open
Blue sky and all the rainbows
From here on out.
On the outside we are blind
On the inside some
Are given true sight.
I cry for a rotten system
In mental health care
We own. You might
Want to pull up some buckets
For all mothers tears
Knowing the best we have
Is incarceration. How is that
America? Tired of blaming anyone but yourself?

The autumn moon was receeding
At 5 AM this morning
Riding the wave of seasons
Wind stirring in a constant dance with the leaves

My cold mug of milk set upon the wire table outside
Under the Serviceberry
So I can pet the dog.

Kinetic shadows on the table
Wisped and whipped over the mug
Laying upon the white liquid
Thicker than the reflected light and dark. Boundaries that can't be bought.

Did the shadows, could the shadows, penetrate the surface of the milk?
Going deeper in where I can not see
To a place furrowed low
Perceived, yet not seen.

Is it a place with a soul
Creamy and still
Unmatched like time, marching or halting, that
which we can not ever hold?
Shadows on milk do not sink.

What is between schocking red, earthly pink, and plummed purple?

Life. Grass. A trembling leaf. Force of green.

Silent stars reside
In the blue milieu
Continuing their stellar constancy by day.
They are there like my love,
silent, unpretentious, patient and kind. Trace your finger along the sky, like a constellation connecting the dots of your name to a safe, congenial and forgiving place to call home.

Maybe your name will meet with mine in the night when the stars return, walking across the expanse of loving kindness that is within your reach. See you tonight dearest one. Just look up.

Please me here
Take from her there
Give to him always
Without a dare

I am sinking.

Soft, slow and Brave
She Raged.
Walking forward with fear in one hand, love
In the other.
She let love
Lead the way
Soft, slow and Brave.

I woke early
Enough to meet the stars
Like diamonds in a mine
Or apples on a tree that never fall
They weren't there for me or you
They just are.
A man coughed
Walking up the sidewalk
In the dawn
As he passed by my house, startled me
While stargazing.
I am reminded
There is now,
then and there
I am reminded to let things flow
To Let things go
As the wave does
When encountering the ocean, disappearing into it.
What today is your humility looking to?

Feeling like a stylus on a premium LP
Can't lift up too slow or slide it
Fragile bone dust
Be slow, be quick, be ready
Scratching is not an option

Feeling this way again
Second-hand turntable
Treated as a diamond or replaceable
How is it, my friend

The stylus feels old
Not sure if the sound is reaching you
Enough to bring you
Out alive, on my knees
Scratching is not an option

Feeling like a stylus on a premium LP
Can't lift up to slow or slide it
Be slow, be quick, be ready
Scratching is not an option

Feeling this way again
Second-hand turntable
Treated as a diamond or replaceable

The stylus feels old
Not sure if the sound is reaching you
Enough to bring you
Out alive
Scratching is not an option

The human appetite
To **** the pain
to not experience any
dis-
comfort

The human appetite
to run a-way
far,                      away
are
seeds planted from our
footsteps

The more we run
the bigger the
plant,     thump!  says despair
the hungrier
we get
the greater the ruin
in our run

Don't avoid
the burdens of
engaging lost plans, find again
your A,B,C's, a friendly classmate, your sister
or others.
Other Wise,
the human
starves its self
in a marathon
by sealing off mouths.

Alimentary,
Leaving one, you, her, they,
them,
in the
hunger cycle
to feed
then.  crushed
left over a lean-to void,
And endless hunger

Elementary words
     Don't avoid
pain.
          I L.o.v.e and Y.o.u
It requires a handshake
a' la carte,
Indulge in
nutrient rich
Appetites
The elementary
   remedy is not in
the crash diet.
Come home now.
Ring a bell
Your table is set
I am here
It's time for dinner.

Dropping the arrow
Flung to the centering heart
Blood remains untouched

The day after your
death it snowed again. I thought it was spring.
The cosmos created crystals of water as it received you.
Welcomed as another star
to the vastness we here
on earth can not know
but with our feeble telescopes.

This day after your death
I want to protect anyone else
from leaving. I want to cling to
every thing I know. Yet my tears
are evidence of everything I do not
understand and never will. You are the mystery
now John, my brother.

My mind will not
absorb your death as readily as my heart.
My heart seems to hold and let go
because it needs to, in order to survive.
My mind wants to greet my heart
but it just keeps snowing. Dreams
of despair.

You lived your recovery
like a man none other that I have seen. Lend us your strength, courage and wisdom
while in our sorrow. Fortune allowed us to witness
all your strengths.

You shared your weaknesses
so readily. I am stronger because of you.

If you are there please comfort those who have less strength. You were a pillar for so many. We still want to lean on you.
I feel so weak now
the day after your death.

I will stay for today

Tomorrow has me
Already

I know not where I go, hence

I hope for splendor

And the spark off a

sparrows wing.

Out of the darkness
I claw and rise to see
There is a forest inside.
The green surrounds me.
The sun's rays splatter
Me awake to my open body.
I let in the light
I lean into the forest
With the trees holding me up
- as I tilt to fall
Reinforcing my stand I forgot
- I was a part of.

The green has grown so strong
Like the blood that sweeps away
Inside of me to a rivers tune.
I don't want to leave this place,
Fearing it will be taken beyond
Or that it was never mine.
Reinventing this woodland
That has always been inside.
The pine, the wind through the branches, the owl winks.
It has always been here with me
Compelled to germinate
Waiting for my return.
I lift up my head and the sky
- Is so blue.

This wasn't the train. It scooped you up to a different destination. Birds of splendor followed along
Out the window
Winding in your path of grief. Be ready for the station waiting
To greet your sorrow.

The platform is not clear. The mist hides the light then becomes a flow of water you can reach and touch. Become aware of the grief but don't move towards it. See it instead in the palm of your hand. Dip into the water cupped in your hands to cleanse your sorrow.

You will have times of freedom. Embrace all feelings. Let them fall into the stream of water. You will lighten. You will see more color as the mist dissappears.

You will see the light between the leaves of the trees. The sounds of song birds lifting you up with messages for you alone.