Sitting here in my living room
It's early
Kids slumbering in their beds
Wife's at work and dogs are at rest

I've got my coffee and my phone
The television is on, but muted
Other than the din of the freeway
And the gurgling from the coffee ***,
It would be completely quiet,
Except for my thoughts

Yes!
They're a freight train
Steaming
Streaming
Barreling down some unseen track in my mind

Sometimes they come to a crashing holt
When the house settles or a dog yawns
But then they start right back up
Without so much as a warning

They switch tracks and rewind
Second guess
And remind me of something I forgot
They're loud and obnoxious
They're unruly and cacophonous

They slow down
They speed up
Shifting
Swirling
Swiftly and softly moving through me
And then spilling out of me
Out of my mouth into the air
Or out of my fingers onto a screen

Sometimes I catch them before anyone sees
Sometimes I let them hang out for all to see
Sometimes I wish I could take them back
Cast them back into the dark pit they came from, but I rarely do

It's quiet in my living room...but it's never quite silent.

The endless cycle repeats without courage as those whimper sentiments of non sense...The party of one goes on with grandeur as crashing waves erode your sand foundation...the undertow of life pulls you forward as you stand still...lessons learned become lost in the sea of happiness as the tide climbs slowly...gasping breath will soon take the place of music as the dance floor empties...the moon the sun...the sun the moon supplies the flashing lights which hypnotize the sense of time realized as fleeting moments. Fleeting?...How many times can we be awakened...Welcome to the ocean of Life...

The silence is the worst part.

Silence after the storm, when all is eerie quiet
and you wonder if it would be too cliché
to wander out and survey the damage, murmuring platitudes
to nameless neighbors

Silence in the night, as you lay awake
and the shock of a train whistle like a dying candle
echoing in your head long after
the train has gone

Silence when you ask them if everything feels wrong
and your breath won’t come in the hour-long seconds
before they answer you, it does
the world is falling apart

Realizing that I loved you, but was not
in love with you, was the worst
of all heartbreaks.

This path we all walk alone through our minds
Has the most comforting of hiding spots
Like the trees in nature all around us
We grow our thoughts
We branch out and reach for the horizon
We build up walls
To provide the shade and oxygen we need
To breathe
To have the silence we can only find within ourselves
To continue on this journey with a clear mind
We create ideas within this path
We travel on and bring as much beauty to the world as we can
And yet,
Sometimes the only comfortable solace we have
Is alone,
Just walking down this path

until your fickle skin
decides it wants my touch
i shall wait with extended fingers

65 years from now when my grandchild looks me and asks me
"Grandma do your cheeks look like they are falling and why does your backbone rise higher than the rest of you?"
I will answer:

Baby girl what they don't teach you in school is that the older you get the more gravity pulls at you.
Keeping your feet planted and your mind out of the clouds.
Life moves down instead of forward.

Bones grow frail and muscles shrivel up and weaken just like your ability to dream.
Dream of what you’re going to be,
"when you grow up" because,
darling this is it. I'm all grown up.
I am all I was ever meant to be.
My clay has hardened,
no longer able to bend and curve with the wind.  
Too weak to keep walking forward.

That is why baby run while you still can,
discover the world.
Leave footprints in every corner of existence,
because when you're as old as me your feet will be sore
and won't be able to venture deeper into the pockets of the universe.
Roots now bind me to this little house where I will keep moving down.

Gravity is too strong for me now dear. My skin has already given up. Succumbing to the mighty force. Falling away from my bones that lie hollow inside my cheeks engraved,with the memories too valuable lose after  lifetime.
So that when this world had
changed,
beyond recognition,
I will still hold inside of me the days that I spent in the sun .

As for my back.
Honey, the best thing you can have is a backbone ,
because when everything in this world in pulling you down,
you're going to need something
to keep holding you up.

My backbone,
a tribute to the years
I spent tiptoeing across
the coal beds of this life’s mighty fire.  But one day it will turn into a white flag of surrender.

That is when you know that gravity has won.
I will sink back into the earth
and maybe start again…

dear you, dear eyes
in your lovely sockets,
your presence is poetry,
an experience i cannot sculpt
into words precisely,perfectly,patiently:
pauses and punctuations, the words
i want to kiss into your mouth
and then tease with my tongue.

i seek solace/solar/suns,you dress my fingers with a
gentle grip and your scooping motions-
oh the waxing crescent moon;i see-
now i see clearly that the moon
is dark and round akin to your pupils.
once an abyss,no w a world beyondddddddd!
what blithesome business

i once thought the moon had a
face of a man and I still do but the moon
found its way to a face of a man I know.

stark silence, silly matters, subtly, just subtly
i find myself looking up/wards,wards,wards
and enjoying earnest pleasures in p
ain/eeling/inching/ulling, an unearthly joy found
between my bleeding fingers and my nails
(or lack thereof)

maybe the moon is alive,has skin,breathes and
sometimes talks/i know, i know it, i’ve felt it.
I KNOW IT as i,i, i

passively watched the blood moon;I’m
certain and I bet all my cuticles on this
that i know pretty pretty eyes when i see them
in a drunken fear fun fantasy falling falling

and i form your fluttering fleeting
shadow w w w wwwwwww           .

//

yoi were(as) meant to go when the sun comes up