shall i mindless words
form into function, wander
forward without thought?

lead me on, then, muse
hushing unheeded warnings
of writer's folly

i who have no/thing
to cheer on, no one being
caring close enough

yet hundreds, thousands
read, call, respond and react
to fresh-cut poems

both sweet and pungent,
taste vaguely oriental, 
smell hints of five-spice

as american
as melting *** and quatrains,
common meter, rhymes

cheeseburger and fries,
routine, familiar and
to each their own taste

flavored by flowered
blossomed imaginations
of poets living

and dead, whose poems'
lovely bones breathe still haunting
my quiet spaces

and take tangential
leaps ricocheting into
inspired lunacy

skeleton crews man
poetic voyages, launch
flights of uncertain
direction, take reason to
illogical conclusions.

We're both aware that I'll be first to go,
but don't think for a minute that I'm done
with life and time.  Although end game's begun
there's too much left, too many things to show
the daughters, sons, the grandchildren, and you.
The few uncurdled dreams we still might grasp
and reach, the promises that will not lapse
expired, without redemption will come true
in what years we have left.  Let's make our plans,
adapt to new realities, accept
the finish of the roller-coaster ride,
dismount regretfully, again to stand
on solid ground, content to know we kept
what fragments tired love and peace provide.

I think that I have never known
A hashtag lovely as a poem.

You were never much
for the soft word
or sentimental touch.

God alone knows
how you survived
those early years,

the unwanted hands
of the man who
should have fought off
the boys who would
maul you that way
many years later.

The elders blamed
you, a three year old
child, a seductress;
sent you and your
older sister off
to pervert another
tribe in Oklahoma,

and exiled your mother
for having the sheer
audacity
to raise a stink
about your treatment.

Small wonder you married
a white man;
smaller still the wonder
that he was white trash
and proud of it.

You told me once
that for all the bluster,
he was gentle with you,
and how you needed that.
Ambivalent
about love and ***,
you taught what you knew.

When you found the knife
your daughter kept
under her mattress
to fend off her
older brother's hands,
you taught what you didn't know.

You would be horrified
that the horrifics above
would be published;
after all, every family
has blood on their sheets
that should never be
laundered in public.

The droplets of blood
on your childhood sheets,
sequestered
for half a century
poisoned you,

and ate away
the delicate fabric of love
with which you bound
old wounds.

Your faith, your Truth
allowed no special days
save the day Christ died;
so today is just another day,
excellent and fair.

You forgave us our anger
without fully understanding
why we were angry;
it's taken years
and bitter lessons
to discover
what a difficult
gift that was to deliver.

The last memory of you:
You turned to me
as I pushed your wheelchair
along the sidewalk, and said,


I never thought it would be you, here.

I've known you only as a quiet child.
So many years in passing spoke your name,
And hearing it would bring a fleeting smile.
I've known you only as a quiet child.

You're now a wife, a mother; all this while
It took for me to stake a father's claim.
I've known you only as a quiet child;
So many years in passing spoke your name.

This is no life,
Ev'r being invisible.
Our shadows know each other not.
Every night we arrive here,
At top of hill, under owl's secret bow'r,
To ****** her ancient, solitary reign,
Near imagin'd tow'r.
We dance around our fires,
Some singing, a few braying,
This is our noon-night dance.
Some great secret hidden among the folds of the hill.
We here, we shadows, are a rather strange coven.
We come here to feel,
Every individual among the hidden.
We all are numb before this hill,
We radiate sameness in the fake world out there,
But here we are as different as the Moon from the Sun,
Our two personalities no longer clashing.
As the little sparkle of freedom,
The untainted, dark-light finally shines through,
As it spreads and ensnare our senses,
We feel,
We feel the light-heat soothing numb limbs,
We feel the heat-light caressing strange, blue hearts.
And here we are,
Fully, finally, awakened.
                               -MoonFirefly

My left hand has poerrty
My right hand doesn’t know about.