He drove his honkin’ ******* truck through a single line of beautiful geese making their stately way along the road to a place they needed to go.  Traffic stopped to admire and take photos.   But the **** in the truck had a place to go and he intended to get there by the quickest way possible.
That way included  jumping out of backed up traffic, mowing down a dozen geese and going on his way.  He left them there on a bloodied road in the midst of the shocked bystanders, who tried in vain to save a few.  But all had flown to higher skies, and the geese still lined up on the road could only pause to see no hope, and continue on their way.  They didn’t fly and they didn’t cry in terrpr or in pain.  They continued on their steady march with broken ranks closed up behind them.
And where did the **** in his blood soaked truck end up that afternoon.  There was no place that required a cost be paid in gander’s lives. There was no meeting of such portent that a dozen birds must end their lives crushed beneath his wheels.
Was it urgency or savagery.  The answer is obscure but may be clarified in time when Karma or authorities make him stand up to recognize the beauty he destroyed, the watcher’s souls he seared in wanton waste of God’s creations.
Knowing that such brutality and evil so extreme can live among God-fearing people, kept hidden until useful, sends a burning chill down through my very soul.
ljm

The curtain now has fully closed-
So why am I still on this stage
Declaiming words I never wrote.

Why am I in fancy costume, with
Heavy makeup on my face
To hide the wrinkles of my failings
And paint me as a thespian.

Cast in a play they say I’ve written
With a pen that's never touched my hand
And a last act that I’ve never seen.

I haven’t learned the blocking yet,
So I don’t know which way to move
Or which door I should exit through
And what will be my final lines.

As lights go down from the Interval
The audience regains their seats
To watch me in the final scene.
  ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
It’s over so I bow to scant applause
And no one comes to hand me flowers.
I stumble as the lights go slowly out,
And make my way from memory
To my dressing room down a dusty hall
Where I will take this garish makeup off
And walk home as the girl I really am.
                        ljm

Fifty years of heart and soul
Sweeping back the ocean.
And what was my reward
A cardboard house in a redneck state
And memories I can’t remember.

Fifty years of heart and soul
Climbing every mountain
Reaching for a prize
Tied to a string
That every time ****** it away.

Fifty years of heart and soul
Giving and not getting
Being first to lend a hand
And last when hands were lended
All the while pretending not to notice.

Fifty Years of heart and soul;
Could it have been an error?
Should I have walked the crooked road
Instead of down the righteous path
That left me stranded in this desert.
               ljm

An artificial crimson blossom
In the garden of God’s roses
I’m made of silk and wire and glue
On a slender stem of green bamboo.
Artistry makes me look real
And though I turn to face the Son
I can’t create perfume to offer
And I stand out painfully
Among the genuine creations.
Waiting for the Gardener
To notice me and **** me out
To die among the brambles
I tried diigently to escape.
              ljm

Scissors roam my hallways
Cutting through the spindly legs
Of things that want to harm me-
Things that wear a different face
Every time I meet them.

Hammers gather in the yard
That’s overrun with trouble,
Ready to march up and smash
The jagged rocks that trip me
And would ******* me forever.

Saws line the bedroom walls
Where nightmares lurk in corners,
Hoping to devise a way
To spring to life in daytime.
But the saws keep them at bay.

The scythe hides in the garden shed
Keeping watch for dangers,
Waiting for the purple moon
That signifies the time is right
To sally forth and take me.
ljm

A ******* bird watches over the days
As grain by grain the mountain slides away
He perches on a jutting rock
And sees the river’s level drop
While wind that should be felt elsewhere
Ruffles feathers just like hair

He knows that time will have to end
He has no further strength to lend
It seemed like there would be more time
And everything would turn out fine
If he could just maintain his post
And oversee the rocky coast

But watching will not be enough
Though he be made of sturdy stuff
It’s up to mankind to step in
If there is any chance to win.
Some brave soul must take the helm
To save the future of this realm.
             ljm

Reality is circling around, all sharp with spiky thorns,
For another go at my fragile little mind
That floats like an over-inflated balloon
At the end of a long and fraying cord

Fantasy comes like a hand-knit velvet shawl
To wrap my heart in peaceful comfort,
Protecting it from barbs and slashes
That would prove the dream unreal.

Uncertainty in the form of wind begins to howl
And drowns the etude in cacophony,
Whipping up the desiccated leaves of Autumn
And stirring thoughts of grave endeavors.

Resignation gradually lays down the scimitar
That once set out to rearrange the world
And now is full of nicks and scratches,
So much heavier to carry than before.

Acceptance like a gentle winter snowfall
Settles on the jagged shards of effort
And the broken bits of unbuilt mansions,
Making it all calm and smooth and peaceful.
ljm

I was given Carte Blanche
To fail spectacularly
At unlimited endeavors
And I utilized that perquisite
With determined concentration
To the maximum that it allowed.
I’m waiting for my banquet.
And the silver plate award.
              ljm

Waves of depression
That have no linkage
To the phases of the  moon
Ebb and surge
In a rhythm that confounds
The metronome by which
I calculate my moods
And face the horrors
That bedeck my daily life.

Winds of malaise
Appear from nowhere
On an otherwise
Still day
And rile the curtains
That protect
My fragile fabrications
From the vicissitudes
Of living on.

Claps of thunder
Rattle all the windows
Where I cower
In my futile hopes the rain
That they portend
Will not become a flood
And wash away
All the tiny flowers
That my hope has planted
In the dreary garden of my life.
ljm

Starting from well behind the line
I ran the race as best I could.
I do not have the newer shoes
But I have legs both fast and strong.

I held my own through
The very first curve
And pulled ahead
On the straightaway.

But then the oval straightened out
And it became an endless road
So my advantage faded off
And others started catching up.

In fancy shoes
And running clothes
They gained on me
With every step.

Now in the middle of the pack
I felt the breath of those behind
Who wanted me out of their way
And nudged me over to the edge.

The tatters of my shoes fell off
And I was running barefoot
Over rocky ground that cut my feet
Not on the turf inside the track.

The race went on and I fell back
With with each and every painful step.
I was last of all the rest
As everybody passed me

The finish line came into sight
And though I had a painful limp
I struggled on to get there
The cheering was for someone else
But I was still a winner.
ljm

My great job had me in my heyday
The virus then cancelled my pay day
Now I’m sending out a grim Mayday
I can’t bear another away day.
ljm

The Muse who promised I could write
Has shamed me in a public way
By dressing me in Poet’s gowns
And nudging me into the light,

While all my songs are in one key
And the words I paint are common.

The shining glow of that first bow
Reinforced my fantasy,
Encouraged me to carry on
And offer up my skimpy soul

To those who know the Emperor
And what he does and does not wear.

Calliope assured me I could sing
(With fingers crossed behind her back)
And handed me a lyric pen
That didn’t hold a lot of ink.

She told the orchestra to begin
And handed me the microphone.

She promised hollyhocks and orchids,
And pillowy clouds in pale blue skies.
She said I’d write harpsichords and Temple Bells
And paint sonatas in the morning sun.

I held out my basket but it remained empty
I extended my hand, but it was not taken.

I stand ashamed at center Stage
Immersed in beauty I can’t create;
Red faced at my lack of talent
To even manage playing chopsticks.
              ljm

Gnarled words from crippled fingers
Inch their way across a crumpled page
Never sketching anything that’s real.

The burden of the thinning air
Makes casting sighs more difficult
And the wounded heart beats faster.

Yearning turns the morning purple
And the ache consumes the sunrise
While the symphony packs up and goes.

Letters from the alphabet form up
In arcane ways that somehow never
Say the thing that crowds all else out of the room.

Eyes that drip with longing blur
And try to focus on what’s left behind
When that tiny drop of blood is gone.
         ljm

We’ve given our souls to Facebook
We naively took the hand
Of those who offered us candy
Laced with mind controlling words.

And we, like sheep, converged around
The lies and obfuscations,
Believing everything was true,
Ignoring shadows in the looking glass.

Everything keeps changing
But it always stays the same.
Those who see the stop signs
Are run down by those who don’t.

Our lives are full of ***** dishes
And our dreams are thick with dust.
The sun comes up, so we feel fine.
Who notices the storm clouds.

We worship at the small blue square,
Heeding the Siren’s deceptive song.
We offer up intelligence
On the altar made of midnight tweets.

Sleepwalker-like, we stumble on,
Convinced there is no cliff ahead,
That what the Judas Goat proclaimed
Will see us safely on our way.

We put up photos of our meals
And morph our face to kittens.
We have a thousand friended friends
But not a one who knows us.

We’ve sold our souls to the internet.
It cost us everything we had,
And now we can no longer see
We teeter on the precipice,
ljm

Trying to sweep back an ocean of flames
With a bucking hose until the truck’s tank is empty.
You ride through choking smoke and grit
To sleep ten minutes on the littered ground
While the giant tank is filled again.
Then back to find the area that your water saved
Has burned again, and then enlarged
So for the third time you retreat -
The only progress that you make is backwards.

Beneath your heavy fireman’s gear
You’ve sweated off a dozen pounds
And that is just this week.
It seems like you’ve been doing this
As long as you remember.
The whole world seems to be on fire.
The forests should have been enough
But fate decided homes and towns
Were more to its demented liking
With a few lost lives to spice things up.

You join the men who’ve become your brothers
While the Earth is Mother to you all
As you battle that which would destroy her
And the lives of innocents who cower
In the shelters praying that their home
May be among the lucky few and
Still be there tomorrow night
For little Polly’s Birthday
Where the cake waits on the counter.

Hero is a tiny word that carries giant meaning.
It should be the middle name of everyone
In fireman’s gear who wields an ax or hose
To tame the beast of smoke and flame
To give us back our homes and future.
ljm

In a time of abject public folly
Where madness rules the western world
I listen to the nimrods prattle on
about conspiracies and subterfuge;
Of microchips injected into flailing
Arms held tightly down by Biden’s thugs.

Alice has managed to escape
The underground tea party
But Fox News is in the hen house
With a mandate for extinction
Of the bird who lays the golden egg
And ****-a-doodle-do’s the sunrise.

Resignation forms a blip in those
Too tired to carry on the jape
That sentences small kids to die
So left and right can pas de deux
But never dance together
And the final curtain starts to fall.
                                          LJM

Though some might like to wield a sword, a pen will have to do.
A row of x’s marks the spots where the ogre may be vulnerable.
We must with surgical precision find those areas and mark them
For eventual good riddance to, or at least containment.

The Chinese have a torture named “Death by a Thousand Cuts”
We must revise that to become “Death by a Million Votes”
Death to evilness and discord, to ego and self worship.
Death to everything that’s wrong in hopes to make it right.

For every X that’s penned in blue, another’s penned in red
The future hangs suspended in the pen with the most ink.
You cannot blame the other side, mere soldiers in a war.
Delusions are an easy sell to those with too much money.

If one is right, one must be wrong in this perverse equation.
The middle ground turned battlefield with multicolor bodies
Rotting on soil stained with blood both red and blue
As the exhausting siege creeps to its conclusion.

What color will the banners be when we wake up tomorrow.
Who will weep with happiness and who shed tears of sorrow.
Who  will try to analyze the reasons for the outcome
For those of us who have to live beneath those waving banners.

ljm

I’m a little short on Joy today-
Got lotsa Pain and too much Duty.
Seem to be totally lacking in Glee
And Overdrawn on Happiness
While overstocked with Misery.
My Contentment check is overdue.
Got too much Little and hardy any Lots.
My Merriment has been recalled,
Leaving only wheels of Gloom.
My Happy Place is in foreclosure
And my Spirit’s locked in Chapter Seven.
My hopefulness is now Maxed Out
And tomorrow is an I.O.U.
ljm

I don’t remember checking out
But when I came back that afternoon
Someone else was in my room
And all my luggage was out in the hall.

I knocked and didn’t hear a sound
Until I banged again much harder
Then I heard the rustle of approach
And locks turned as the door was opened.

My fists were clinched, my throat was tight
And I had vicious anger at the ready,
But shock drowned out my burning ire
When I saw who was facing me

She was very old and somewhat fragile.
Not the beauty she’d once been,
But dressed in jammies and a shawl
With fuzzy slippers on her feet.

She didn’t hear the words I said
And seemed to not see me very well.
She smiled a very gentle smile
And asked what she could do for me.

I told her she was in my room
And I had scads of things to do,
With projects to take care of
And chores that needed seeing to.

She stepped aside and let me in
Where I could see things were a mess
The furniture was rearranged
And my stuff stacked up in a corner.

I pushed on in and desperately
Searched for my deadline-diary -
There were things to not mess up
And errors that I must not make.

But nothing seemed where it belonged
And I could not remember where
I put the most important notes
That got me where I had to be.

The elder lady tried to help
But searched for words that would not come
And bumped against important things
That rocked and tumbled with a crash.

Beside myself I spun around
In desperation and despair,
Looking for something to grasp
To tell me I was not insane.

I turned to ask the Granny’s help
But couldn’t find her anywhere.
Like smoke in wind she’d disappeared
Even though the door was locked.

Exasperation then took hold
And I flailed around in circles
Til I caught a movement in the mirror
An stopped to take a better look.

I stood before the glass and gaped.
The dear old girl gaped back at me.
How did she get inside the glass
And where had my own image gone?

What happened to the visage of
The super-girl who juggled knives
And kept plates spinning in the air
While never dropping one.

The knives, I saw, were on the floor
Underneath the sagging couch.
The plates that I had kept aloft
Were neatly stacked beside the kitchen sink.

Astonishment became dismay
As I tried to reconcile
The me who went to work this morning,
Primed for conquering the world,

And the someone I came back to find,
Not certain where I left myself
Or even where to start the search
To see if I existed.

Bereft of thoughts and lost among her words
That float around and won’t be caught
I puzzle how this came about
And I don’t know the answer.

But I can not avoid the fact
That it’s my face in that mirror.

ljm

So some little sawed-off *******
Gets himself a big boy gun.
He’s got a plan to make people pay
For every slander aimed at him.

He takes a walk on a crowded street
Looking for a likely victim;
The harried mother, the overdressed man:
Who will have his bullets.

How about the couple in that car,
Fun to shoot through a window.
None of these quite fill the bill;
This is the wrong location.

The only spot is back at work
They don’t know he’s angry.
He smiled when treated like a dork
And they deserve his vengeance.

He enters through the double doors
Walks past the guard while smiling
Strolls into the head-man’s lair
And shoots him at least fourteen times.

He saves the last shot for himself
But this time he miscounts
And security men now pounce on him
And hold him til police arrive.

Hauled onto a cop car’s seat
He has but one regret
Not that he didn’t **** himself
But that he didn’t **** more others.
          ljm

As sere as the Nevada
Moraine surrounding me
My pen drips dust and sometimes sand-
And mud if wetted with my tears
Of longing and frustration.

The winds of war are howling
As the universe turns inside out
with all the wrongness being done.
Mother Nature has picked up her skirts
and flounced away in fury
That is costing endless lives
And devastation planet wide…
While my pen seeks its navel.

My wit, became a brilliant crayon
In realities now scorching sun,
Leaving Rally in a melted pool
Instead of banners on the wall.
It turned my fingers crimson.

Where the splint or plaster cast
To support the flagging wordage
As it dribbles from my pen and
Seeps away into insouciance
While the darkest corner of my mind
Cries out for help and world salvation.
My pen’s, become a giant sieve, stained
By what’s poured in and through,
With only dampness left behind,
The stuff that mud is made from.
       ljm

They advertise Jergens Lotion
As a product that
Softens and smooths
But they can’t know
I have an emollient
Much better by far.
Your gentle voice
Softens my roughest edges
And your tender hands
Smooth out the wrinkles
In my soul.
     ljm

My little plot is
Shared with nothing else
Alive and growing.
I struggle
But I somehow survive
In a sprawling field
With all my many brothers,
Each with their own
Similar sized space,
All reaching for the
Seldom falling drops
That mean we live or die
In this Mojave land
Of blazing sun,
Where nothing moves
But two-hundred car
Container trains
Pulled by four orange engines.
I am the King of
Thirty-six square feet
Of gravel, rock and sand
Nothing that intrudes
Will live for very long
Because I put my roots down first
And any rain that falls
Is mine.
                 ljm

TRADE IN

I hate all this business
Of trying to do
What I want to do
And hampered by a
Creaky old body.

It ****** me off
When something hurts
And gets in the way
Of doing the things
I had carefully planned.

I want to complain
And go pound on God’s desk
And ask him for a refund
Or at the very least
Refurbishment.

I haven’t got time
To fall down in pain,
I’ve got hills to climb
And rivers to swim.
I can’t do that if I am crippled.

So dig out the warranty
Read the fine print
See how to get
Some replacements
So I can continue
To conquer this world

As the force of nature
That my Mama loosed            
On creation that
New Year’s day
Eighty-three long years ago.
     ljm

Hello to **** America
Goodbye to the gentle folk of Ukraine
Goodbye to all hope for a Palestine
Hello to hatefulness and thuggery
Hello to self service and ego
Goodbye to seven Commandments
Goodbye to honor and trust
Hello to the end of the American Dream.
ljm

Pity the Easter Bunny
Vice President of Whimsey Land
Hero of Farmer’s gardens
Mentored by Santa Clause

Guardian of the fairies
That trade coins for teeth
And Proctor for the hoards of elves
That keep the world exciting.

Still owning all his lucky feet
Through cleverness and speed.
Nephew to Uncle Whitey
The Star of Underland

Pity the Easter Bunny
His ears are drooping down
His cotton tail has lost its fluff
And he’s too sad to hop.

Pass the pity towel around
To mop up all the tears.
His labor will go unrewarded
On a scale that’s not been seen before.

All those eggs to boil and dye
Chocolate selves to pose for
All those candy eggs to hide
Baskets to be woven.

All those chores have been checked off
All the preparations made
Everything is set to go
When a germ calls off the holIday

What do you do with Jelly Beans
Stacked up to the ceiling
How much sugar can a bunny eat
Before he’s diabetic.

Pity the Easter bunny
But stand six feet away
We all feel cheated for
The loss of Easter day.
ljm

How many times must the helping hand
Be bitten, slapped or pushed away
Before it never reaches out again.

With motives pure as a newborn’s eyes
I offer everything I can to help
With what I can’t afford to spend

And hours I really shouldn’t take-
And every time it is a sham
And all my help is nothing.

All I want is just one chance
To save a life or make the day
For someone who is sinking

And without hope of aid or rescue.
But it never seems to go that way
The homeless throw away my blankets

And tell me they can’t eat my lunch.
They take my funds and skulk away
To add it to their horde,

While I beat up my aching bones
To earn enough to try again
In eighteen hour workdays.

Is there really no one out there
Waiting for my caring grasp
To pull them from a certain death.

Is there no one disadvantaged
Who will bless fate for the coat
I’ve taken from my closet for them.

Is there no life that will change
In the minutest way because
I strived with all my might to help them.

This is life’s unkindest blow for me-
That I’m denied the hero’s role
And every hand I reach to save
Draws back and turns to walk away
With laughter echoing across
The distance to my downcast eyes.
ljm

Pretty girls get listened to
No matter what they say
The beacon of their beauty
Draws all eyes and ears their way.

It makes no difference what they say
It doesn’t have to make much sense
It only needs to be said to you
And it tears down your male defense.

Pretty girls can change your mind
No matter what your morals.
They make you do some things you hate
Without too many angry quarrels.

Plain girls, on the other hand,
Have a tougher row to ***
Attention passes over them.
They disappear like snow

They may put forth some  brilliant thoughts
Or words that sing with beauty
They may be models of success
As they go about their duty.

But no one really hears their voice
Or sees what lies within them.
They live their life in second place
As it’s the prettiest girls who win
                  ljm

The shiny apple looked delicious
But it was high up in the tree
We jumped to reach it but we couldn’t
We found a ladder in the field
And carefully climbed up it
The rungs were covered with thick mud
And got our hands and clothes all *****
But we craved that shiny apple
Hungry as we were so long
Reaching out through tangled branches
It was in our grasp at last
Careful going down the ladder
So as not to drop the prize

Now time to take that first big bite
And oh how sweet the juices flowed
We’re stealing an admiring look
When suddenly we spot the worm-
It’s bad enough to see it there-
But what remains is only half
And something tickles in our throat
Will we fling the apple far away
To retch and spit and beg a mint
Or stay and eat around the worm.
ljm

As close as the wind that ruffles my hair
As distant as the sun that warms me
She orbits the world I made for us
In dreams of family that could not hold
And spilled our happiness away.

Perihelion when illness strikes
And action smothers need for words
Aphelion at most other times
When lessons learned from
Other teachers rule her sky.

A comet with a gleaming tail
She blazes through my firmament
On schedules that I can not know
And I can but fulfill the needs
That let me revel in her glow.

Longing does not change her course
Apologies do not prevail
Mute obedience is required
To catch a glimpse of what I’ve made
As she flashes briefly through my life
ljm

Hell was supposed to be beneath us
Somewhere way down low in the cosmos
As far below as Heaven is above.
That is what I learned in Sunday School.

If this is true why is Hell not staying home
And minding it’s own business.
Why is it suddenly appearing here
In all  its fiery fury.

Poor Maui, California, Australia and Peru,
Spain and even peaceful Canada
Have been blistered by Hell’s wrath
And struggle to rise up from the ashes.

Have we thinned the walls between Hell and us
So flames can now escape their containment
And let us see what might await us some day
If we cannot change our direction.

If we ignore the planet we were given
And we avoid the rules laid down
If we assume there will be no judgement
And we can worship just ourselves

We’ll find that we’ve left the gate standing open
And the welcome mat for Hell is in place.
ljm

I seem to pass by largely unnoticed.
My foot leaves no marks in the sand.
I carry the burden unassisted
And do not receive thanks in the end,

The things I create are admired
But too often my name is detached.
I float through the view of so many
Who don’t recognize that I’m there.

A zephyr, a whisper, a phantom,
A shadow that fades with the Sun;
I’ve been and I labored and managed,
But few people know I was born.
ljm

The sky looked like rain but no rain came.
The wind made a visit instead.
Fine grain sand swirled in the vortex
And dust devils ruled over much of the land.

The dark clouded sky promised thunder
And lightning’s unexpected flash
But none of that transpired and we were perplexed.
The weather diverged from its script.

The temperature fell by nine degrees,
As a gift from munificent currents,
But we were confused, unsure what to do
In this new land where everything is different

ljm

The only child at the Easter Egg Hunt
Lacks a big enough basket
To collect the bounty all laid out
Across the rolling lawn

Those who were not allowed to run
Look sadly from outside the fence
Their empty baskets tossed aside
In hopelessness and envy.

Who painted all those pretty eggs
And who decides who gets to run
Why can’t those other little hands
Collect an egg or two

They can, you say.  Here’s two or three
For each of you, if you applaud
The Golden Child who smiles at all
In sympathy and pride

And tells you you will likely never
Be the one they choose to run
So be content with your two eggs
And never let your green eyes show.
ljm

My little brush with small dustpan
Is called a Table Crumber.
But I do not do fancy meals
That worry about bread crumbs

Instead it often sweeps behind
The Kitchen cupboard baseboards
For all the bits that fall that way
While I’m preparing dinner.

The standard broom is way too big
To get into those corners
To find the crumbs and bacon bits
That fly off of the counter.

So while its job is alternate
And not in fancy settings
My little brush is valuable
A fact Im not forgetting.
                             ljm

If your Daddy was a Pop Star
Two Gold Records on his wall,
A&R men listen when you sing.

If your Mama was a Movie Star
Getting an audition is no sweat,
Just say your name, and you go in.

If your Dad was in I.A.T.S.E.         (Pronounced "eye-AT-see)
You know you can get in too-
Just learn a little of the trade.

If your Mother worked for Disney
There's a job there for you too
Unless you have no skills at all.

The Moguls talk diversity-
But that is only for their casts.
It's nepotism for the rest.

It is no longer who you know -
It seems to be who gave you birth
If you think you'd like to work
In that phony place called Hollywood.
                                       ljm

The Bluebells and the Hollyhocks
Continue to elude me.
I reach with aching finger tips into
The gardens of my mind to find them
But only Dandelions bloom amid
The Snake Grass and the Milkweed.

I fertilize my reverie
With verse from other poets
But the lyricism of their words
Is acid on my longing
And my tiny little shoot of hope
Begins to wither, and it dies.
ljm

If you’re gonna pass laws that force women to
Birth and raise the babies they get knocked up with
        Make those laws also include a neonatal paternity test,
        After which the father has his income attached
        To the tune of seventy-five dollars a week for 21 years,
        Adjusted for inflation.
Then Enforce that law every bit as rigidly
As you enforce your new abortion bans.
         It takes two to make a baby, after all….. and
         Fair is still fair, isn’t it?    In what Universe?
                           ljm

The tiny river in the gutter
  Flows inexorably  on
   Crossing over two wide streets
    In it’s determined journey to
     The storm drain in the cul de sac.

Rocks impose no barrier;
The river simply flows around,
  Creating little islands in the stream
   That make the water ripple in the sun.

The small end of a cigarette
  Becomes a tiny  boat
    I watch it as it sails along
     On a journey to oblivion.

I follow to the storm drain grate
  Where the falling water makes no sound,
   As it slips quietly down the maw
    To become part of some other flows.

Will it end up at the Waterworks
  To be freshly cleaned and sanitized
   And pumped back through those miles of pipes
    To quench thirst at the kitchen sink

Or will it join the other storm drains  
  Making their winding pilgrimage
   To join the nearby Colorado
     River and begin the trip again.
                                              ljm

My mac has had one too many nervous breakdowns and is headed for the hospital this afternoon.  I expect to be without him for 2-3 days while they ream out all the boogey Men and Trojan Horses. I hope it doesn't take any longer. I'm uneasy when I'm away from HP. This is where all my dreams are safely stashed.  Please leave the light on for me.

TractabilIty has led me to disbelieve most everything
I’ve ever learned and caused me then to set foot on
A road that will surely lead me nowhere.
I listened to the honeyed words and ate the candied lies.
I turned my back on what was genuine and real
And chased a paper moon across a tinfoil sky.
They told me they were helping me to find  out
Who I am and what I really should believe.
They said that they could fix the world
If I can only help them.
I heard a small bell ringing In a corner of my mind
But they assured me it was nothing real and
Only an illusion.  And I gave in and followed them.
They told me who to vote for and all the reasons why.
The tiny bell became a klaxon, but I tuned it out
And walked their walk and talked their talk
And marked my card the way they said
And dropped it in the ballot box.
Along with my IQ and common sense
And my opinion is intractable today.
ljm

Fictitious love was all you had
You offered it like it was gold
But it turned green in my warm hands
And all my happiness turned sad
It wouldn't do much good to scold
For not becoming wedding bands

With desperation dripping off my chin
I scurry around this way and that
Trying to catch up the herd that
Knowingly is leaving me behind

I trip on stones I couldn’t see
Through all the rainstorm on my face
And stumble even further back behind

With need that pushes hunger off the list
I strive for things not physical
But nebulous and indistinct
That shimmer in the distance
And are always out of reach
         ljm

The Christmas lights have all been taken down and put away.
The chilly night is poorer for their loss.
The rain that couldn’t bother to be snow on Christmas Eve
Now lurks behind the clouds that hide the stars we never see
And wouldn’t know the names of, if we did.

The gifts have been exchanged for sizes that will fit
Except the one with blood on it that must be thrown away.
The thank you notes have all gone out to people far away
Who love us more than those next door who say the words
But hide the truth in cloaks of duty and necessity.

The paper hats and party horns were taken by the trashman yesterday
While we write elevens in our checkbook for the year
And contemplate the quicksand that encompasses the wall
We have no ladder tall enough to climb, or transport
That can whisk us to a top that’s not in sight.

Walking tall on stilts of hope, our balance is precarious.
We were not in the Rose parade or even on the sidewalk.
We still can’t see beyond the wall of hate that locks us in
and wobble ever more and more as we pace the perimeter
Looking for a door or gate and finding only bricks and mortar.

ljm

I don't want to spread any gossip, because I'm not that kind of person, but once someone on HP ghosted me, but I'll never ever tell anyone who it was, and you must never tell anybody that I told you that. Pinky-promise me.
                 ljm