A girl from the north country with eyes deep as the  Great Lakes (if the Great Lakes were green).

Writers in numbers too great to mention.

The truth and those few who have the guts to tell it.

Contrasts and textures like white wine and black satin or the brown and white of tan lines.

Burgundy, my favorite color.  Strong coffee and good bourbon. Garlic and spicy foods. Yuengling Lager. Pall Malls. Evan Williams.

Classic movies. Indie movies. Movies.

Mozart, Warren Zevon and Bill Evans. Beethoven's late Quartets. Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. An endless list.

Lingerie (but not on me). Women in hats. Women in dresses. Long kisses. Women with souls. Women with brains. OK, women, though very few good ones seem to exist.

My sons. Tibetan art. Champagne. Apple computers. Cats. Space travel. ****.

Quantum Theory. Buddhism. The Tao. Burning Bushes. Shiva and Vishnu.

Ghost driving aimlessly to see what I find. America is mostly off the interstates and mostly dying.

Young people who listen and know I'm real and like them..

Blueberries: food of the gods.

Breaking any rule I think is chickenshit in any way possible.

And so on.

Mind lost,
me following suit:
the land is barren.

The click of my pen
is all I can hear.
Indistinguishably mundane shrubs
and patches of itchy grass are all I can see.

So I walk—no I run,
trying to escape a wasteland
only feeding me desire.

I run, and I stop.
Hanging above my head
is a beacon of hope.
A fragile gardenia, white and pure
hanging from a bushel a thousand feet tall.

I reach my arms up to the gods.
I fail.
I am inspired,
so I sit, and I write.

Night falls, then dies.
Light returns,
morning birds following suit.

A crimson monster flies above me.
It stops. It sees my flower.
He loves my flower.
He mocks my inability,
snickering at my bare, ugly back,
wingless and base.

Aware of its power
he takes my flower.
Lost in a field
I give in to the hour.

~fin

It is a joy,
allow me to say,
to watch the sun as it goes down
and watch the clouds continuously circle around.
Stop and take a breather from your hectic life to appreciate the creation and its might.
Because even if you think you're big and tall, it reminds you of how small you really are.
Watch the trees as they blow with the strong wind and the leaves as they rattle and fall.
Take a second to realize you really do have it all.

By the time the nuclear bombs blast
Peppering the terrain in every corner of the world
We'll be so weary of the world
We'll bow before the flash bulb shock
And thank the Holy Law of Physics
For delivering us from it
A place where compassion requires too many limits
Where looking out for number one reveals
Number one is a right *******
No better than number two
Who won't be satisfied until he's number one
We've seen too much with our eyes
Too many times shown the weakness in our values
Trust no one, least of all yourself
It's only the grace of wonder
That keeps us from slaying each other outright
So it can't come soon enough
Christen AWACs the new Enola Gay
And load them with enough warheads to take out the coasts (for starters)
Give this cursed species a good dose of radiation
After the flood
God said he would never again annihilate man
So the task has been turned over to us
Those of us who love truth and justice
In their undiluted form
To wipe the Tarmac clean
Set back and wait for the poison rays to tear us up from the inside out
O, to be the last man standing
The one who gets to say
"Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Amen"...and then fall to the ground
Exhaling the last breath of God
The singularity the last thing in his field of vision
None of it mattered
None of it meant a ******* thing

Forgiveness is something I give too much,
It forced people to use me as a crutch.
As I pushed people away,
It brightened my day.

Away from the drama, away from the pain.
Never left me grasping for anything else to gain.
My life is so peaceful, most of the time.
Loving to be by myself, isn't a crime.

So often, I struggled to find the words to say,
Never had I thought i'd see the day,
Where my struggles were few and I could be myself,
Not around anybody else.

Oh, but it is *****!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a *****,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly *****.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a ***** dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color-
of certain color.  They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe.  Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.