I walk the stones each Sunday
I leave flowers as I walk
Not for certain people
Just in case the spirits talk

I left a rose for Eleanor
Gone 100 years
Just to let her know that
Someone still sheds tears

There's lots to learn while out here
Walking through the stones
Listen close to all the voices
That aren't as silent as their bones

There are soldiers who died fighting
For freedom they did die
From the beginning of our country
Who now beneath us lie

They fought the revolution
Some fought in Vietnam
Some died lost deep inside themselves
Now, folks don't give a ****

There's many here of children
From the old orphan home
They found them buried out in back
So, there their spirits roam

The grass is kept up nicely
Though the stones are left to rot
I try to clean them up a bit
I guess I'm all they've got

I started out just walking
Now, I clean the stones while here
I give them the respect they miss
I can feel their spirits near

So next time you're out walking
And you want to stretch your bones
Bring a brush down to the graveyard
We'll take a walk among the stones

I’ve got a wild hair
This oil spill running through my soul
Reflects iridescent rainbows
Soft shadows clinging to dark depths
I inhale the star dust of old bones
They scatter my brow, meteorites plunging across the edges of my sight
Exhale
The wind like burning sonnets
As I belt out across the wide expanse of fading cotton candy sky
My lungs ache with unspoken words, ones I long to whisper, to sing
Instead I scream until my legs feel weak
There is no more left of me
But for the rich loam of Appalachia curving crescents beneath each fingernail
Hold fast babbling brook
Hold fast

psychic transportation
transcendental meditation
end of elvis generation
detrimental situation
******* secrets resignation
political assassination
free thought mindless constipation
church crime hidden deprivation
split with no consolidation
roe and wade argue creation
banks financial manipulation
country in need of sedation
the sixties dead, no more elation
no direction, no recreation
sitting, waiting, at the station
time for psychic transportation
and transcendental meditation
to the elvis generation
remove me from this situation
******* is just pure elation
still political assassination
and more need for quick sedation
back to psychic transportation
train is waiting at the station
transcendental meditation

ALL ABOARD

Graceful is the way death floats down to earth
Like a feather, a bird
Placing its hand upon a young person's shoulder
It tugs on their clothes as a child would
And the young person kneels down
Grabs death's small arms with a smile
And they walk, hand in hand
To where? I don't know.

SWEET

The day she went
out of our lives

I offered her a sweet.

'Thanks love, I'll eat it
later on the bus.'

She snaps it shut in her little red purse.

I still feel my hand  letting go of her hand
see for the last time her never-again-seen face.

Only the little red purse returns
out of its mouth…Death laughs

in blood besprinkled glass
some small change…the never eaten sweet.

For years it lives behind the wind-up clock
in my mother's bedroom

scaring me each time I have to pass
and it sees me     and laughs.

My little brother not even born then when...
jumps up & down playing alone

all by himself
in a world of his own.

He is both good guy & bad guy
falling down dead on the bed

as a quick spat out shot
ricochets & agggh...gits him!

Even by 7
killing yourself is a tiring business.

He stops. Rests.

...rummages around among
my mother's artifacts.

His little inquiring mind
snaps open the little red purse.

Death laughs(but he not knowing)  
is immune to it.

He sees the white wrapped death sweet
almost glowing against the red.

He sees it...eats it.

The Past has been
eaten by the Present.

Unaware of what he has done
(Death defeated)  

he flings himself on the bed once again
pretending he is dead

sunlight streams through the glass
holds him gently in its hand

this the living child
Death dead at last.

Painted toes, the color of ripe eggplants
Flutter and kick around as giggles bubble the rim of my hard edges
Days gone by in silence, broken now by mirth
Drunk on a spring afternoon's nectar
I catch the sparkle in your eye, knowing
What comes next will have me breathless, wanting
"Please" whispered softly as giggles fade to sighs
You love it when I beg
I need this, you, here in the sunshine
Gilded fingertips tracing my tarnish
Chasing away the darkness with the promise of warmth

let’s live our lives
barefoot

let’s live our lives like
small children,
children so precious that their simple presence
evokes tears in the eyes of the most
stoic father,
so precious that the image of them
snoring softly in their Thomas the Tank Engine bed
causes the stressed mother to smile a mile,
so precious that when one of them
pushes back the blonde, wispy hair of the other
the photographer can’t help but laughing as she
captures the moment

let’s live our lives like
children who are not afraid of nails and rocks
in the backyard, but who are
obsessed with finding that elusive
white grasshopper that their uncle
promised was there,
like children who endure countless foot baths every day
in the heat of summer but the pads still blister
and their feet still turn brown
but they don’t care,
like children who have just smelled a flower
for the first time, who have experienced the
sharp pain of a first bee sting,
like children who are in awe as a deer
peeks quizzically at them from above the bush,
tail twitching, eyes twinkling

let’s live our lives like
children who make up odd games that
they remember years later, a complicated one that involves
Patty Cake, jump rope, tag, and somehow
hop scotch and charades as well,
like children who wander away from their house
for many hours, exploring like Columbus,
drawing detailed maps of their small neighborhood,
beautiful crayon stick figures dotting the horizon,
like children who capture and dote on an assortment of
toads, grasshoppers, frogs, moths, and butterflies,
like a child who thinks the worst sin is to
**** an animal that the Lord has made

let’s live our lives like children, with a
loving and unwavering faith in the Savior,
with eyes unaltered by the
whips and thorns of life,
with minds unchanged by the
Judas Iscariot’s of this Earth

let’s live our lives like
small children

let’s live our lives
barefoot

Reclining on a cliff
In the twilight gloom,
I beheld a different world;
Where earthly sufferings can't reach.
The blue expanses expended non-ceasingly.
The waves glittered,
And seemed to be frocking in joy.
A divine voice was chanting,as if
Spatting out what I never heard.
  Then-
Was it or I who felt it
Hey,the waves seemed to make fun of me!
The waves with it's every ripple
Seemed to have an air of mockery!
Was I an alein among them?
Or the vice versa?