Sometimes I feel her,
In autumn park— sudden rush,
Leaves rustle in wind.

I sometimes think
people believe
poetry is easy
as some ****** girl
who will swallow you
for any kind of fix.

They believe whatever
escapes their mouths
is poetry. They open
and out it pours, complete.

It is not.

Inspiration is easy,
just lines that leap to mind.
But to make a poem takes sweat.
It is a craft that requires
work, and thought and pain.
It means finding the exact,
right word out of millions.

If it simply pours out of you
and you do nothing to shape it,
it is just words and probably
not even good ones that are true
and will outlast your broken heart.

Dig in. Learn. Read. Practice.
Become a sculpture of words.
Pay the price for beauty.
It will be worth it.

My father died
before he could tell me
that your lungs fill
and you drown in yourself
as your heart fails.

My sister died
silent with the knowledge
that you taste the waste
your kidneys can't expel
as they slowly shut down.

My brother died
within the shell washed up
by the rolling tide of blood
from the bursting of
cerebral arteries.

My mother died
desiccated, emaciated,
her bitterness consumed
in the uncontrolled growth
of her cancerous sweetbreads.

One never lives
until they learn for themselves
the lessons of the lives
the histories and the deaths
of their inheritances.

As the day dies sun to west slants
my hands water the few potted plants
an evening dawns in melancholic hush
pesters my mood the cawing corvus!

The nose in the air polished jackdaw
can’t fathom why men break nature’s law
wipe out forests root out the green
then on the roof try to grow seedling!

Why at all shrink the men so smart
stretches of wood to build habitat
all the clever brains profound and wise
destroy wastelands to madly urbanize!

The corvus his eyes speak of dark scare
frightened beak caws how is unfair
denuding of trees in insane haste
leaving scarce space to build him a nest!

My heart beats wildly in my chest,
Danny seems unafraid, unfazed at
the thought of getting caught.

Snow crunches underfoot as we walk
toward the rusted hanging chain,
“do not enter” like a lone tooth
hung in the middle of a sinister smile.

The sky is clear with lots of stars,
my breath trails upward into
bare limbed trees…a breeze blows,  
frozen branches click and clack as
Danny moves quickly with the crowbar,

the chain is locked, but he doesn’t notice,
he slides the crowbar through the eye
of the large bolt and after 10 or 12 spins
the chain falls to the ground with the
padlock still attached.  

Jimmy drives the Impala across the chain
and Danny re-attaches the chain,
we all climb in and coast slowly from
the main road with only the Impala's
parking lights to lead the way.

We are headed into the deepest
part of the forest. It is after midnight
and we ride in silence, Jimmy driving,
Danny in front, Jeff and I in the back.  

After a few miles we begin to relax,
we are far enough from the main road
to avoid detection. The forest Rangers
never leave the main roads in February.

Danny pulls the tab on a can of warm
Old Style beer, takes a swig and sets it down.
He opens the glove box and pulls out
the water pipe, which I can smell immediately.

A sweetly pungent aroma, he pours
the remainder of the beer into the ****,
packs the bowl with some extra sticky hash,
and lights a flame…

        A little while later, 5 minutes?  2 hours?
        Jimmy laughs his shrieking high spirited
        girly girl laugh while re-telling the story
        of Steph vomiting in the back seat of
        his dad’s LTD, crushed red velvet seats
        smeared with Cheetohs and Boones Farm
        Tickle Pink, he told his dad he stopped
        to render aid to a dog who had been hit,
        and the dog died in the back seat while
        he was speeding to the animal hospital.

        “But why does it smell like ***** Jimmy?”
        His dad naively asked,

        “It must have been a homeless dog”
        Jimmy replied,

        and the laughter takes another leap,
        hits a higher level, hysterical,

        maniacal ..

There seems to be a correlation
between the seasons and my mania.
It doesn’t take much to get me there,
back inside a relished moment brought
into view by the changing of the weather,

the Winter sound of crunching snow,
my breath in the night sky,
the smell of the woods In February.

Spring brings different events,
Summer different places,
different friends and
different years, while the Fall
gives more of the same but
also more than the rest.

There’s something about its death,
the smell of the fall and the dying
that hits me most of all.

Its all entwined tightly In the grip of my
ever present demon and the plethora
of usual ******* he parades through
my mind,

but not today.

Today he made me smile.

Tomorrow he won’t.

But what would life be like without these encounters?
The spark of passion ignites that which is supreme in the patina of our days, of our years, of our very being.
It comes and it goes...but in going it hovers in a spangled irridescence just beyond the now and endures in this special place, until the day we die.
M.