Chop, chop, chop. The marionette slumps, and I’m left holding the blade, sticky with the residue of years. Family? A loose construct. A rotting scaffolding propped up by shared scars and the thinnest thread of blood. They weren’t people—they were collectors. Hoarders of anger, archivists of hurt. They fed on it, bled for it, distilled it into a toxin they called love. I drank it until my veins swelled, until the comatose hum was the only sound I knew.

Their lies were iron bars, their truths blunt objects. They didn’t whisper—they shouted, fists slamming bets on the underdog. "He’ll crack," they said, "too small, too soft." They didn’t count on the dog biting back, didn’t see the will buried beneath the scars.

And the scars—purple, thick, obscene. Skin turned leather under fire. A graft job, patched together with pain and necessity. They thought they’d burned me to ash, but ash has its uses. It fertilizes. It grows things.

Now I’m moving forward, past their circus of anger and blood, past the puppeteer’s stage. The road hums under me, neon signs flashing promises that aren’t real, but maybe they don’t have to be. The truth? There isn’t one. Just will. Just the drive toward some distant point of light. Peace isn’t handed out. You take it. You keep it. And maybe, just maybe, it keeps you too.

If you'd say

s
o
r
r
y,

I’d forgive all that you’ve done—

                                   Even this shadow,

The hollow shell you shaped me,

                                   Yearning still for your soft voice.

When my dark clouds rise

And dirt clods fly and I try

In sheer panic to replace

Rotten fruit with dull wax fruit

And wilted blossoms with

Plastic flowers and she thinks we

Will be on yet another short-lived

But cold cycle of tightrope and

Eggshell walking . . .

She comes home


With bags filled with

Apples green & red

Peppers yellow & green & red

Grapes green & purple

Plums yellow & purplish-red

Strawberries, peaches, tomatoes

Bananas & Greek salads.

 
This usually inspires me to make

For this setting a centrepiece of a

Vase filled with a variety of fresh

Picked wildflowers which brings

Her more joy than two dozen

Of the overrated overachiever rose.


At times this seems like

One of  few bridges back

To a healthy & colourful world.

And you and me are still
Young enough to really live
We are simply melding
Into another season of emotion
The years are just beginning
To gray what they have claimed
And have been allowed to claim

The wind blows away what it can--
What cannot be tied down

Keep whispering
Your soul into my soul
Keep primal scream tears          
Falling into my primal soul

Keep filling up the empty spaces
Keep creating empty spaces

Tearing down the vacant walls
Building up new walls

Opening locked doors
Locking others in turn

As we forever transform together
Under the aegis of the Immortal

As we grow like the roots
Of the banyan tree

Hanging down with the branches
Helping to provide shelter
As we slowly grow closer
To the sweet earth
In silent anticipation
Finally touching
Slowly penetrating
Gently pushing deeper
Until we are of one purpose

Deeply rooted by the banks
Of the Eternal River
That descended from heaven
And flows through
Human spirit transformed

Life-giving water running slow
And deep the source of your whisper--
True essence in deepest longings

Flowing into my source
Pockets of holy energy overflowing
Slowed down to a trickle at times
Going full circle and
                                     Back and forth
From out of reach channels

That something deep beyond
                     The Starry masses

That something some call love

That something some call God

That something flowing & living
                                  In me & you.

The wishing well has done its part

Now still its water's lie.  

The reasons for the darkest nights

Come as the Dawn draws nigh.

A little girl in handmade dress.
           Black shoes with  
White knee-high stockings.
                       Shy eyes framed
By and hiding behind
            Long  curly
            Blonde locks,
Waiting with me at
                   The bus stop
Each school morning.

Vulnerable  
             Protected from the harsh
Outside world.
               But nothing can completely
Shut out its
                             Cruel essence.

The outside
                       Can creep in or the
Inside holds dormant
                      Outside influence
Like the eggs of the proverbial tree
                      Lizard laid among  eggs in a
Bird's nest  
             Remaining dormant to eventually
Hatch to feed on the newly born fowl.

Faith soothes the pain
                     By daily standing
On the sidelines
                     Of the pantomime
Of the mundane

As lush dense
Ivy reaches
                         For the sky but must
First slowly crawl
                              Over a cold
Gray wall of stone  
                               Reaching
For dreams and ideals
                          Once clearly seen
On the horizon of the
                      Unobscured  plains
Of childhood.
                    A bit harder at the myopic
Foothills of youth.  
                       Now harder than ever

At the jagged  
                  Snowcapped mountains of
Adulthood.


The curly locked
                             Little girl still lives
After all these years.  
                             Lives on to
                         Balance the weight
Of disappointments
                    Compressed by daily
Reminders of that

Once dormant inside
                       Influence unleashed
In the innermost
                      Sanctity of trust. Lives

In the security
                        Of ideals gradually
Becoming reality.

                       That place in the heart
That no one can touch  
                             That no one can
Invade.

Thank God that home is where the heart is!

                     ¤¤¤

My friend came by the other day.
As a leaf in the wind he has blown
From street to street
            Town to town.

A wanderer he may be
but not at heart.
He longs to be attached to a tree
                             Any tree.

In spring and summer the leaves are green
                                        And
       attached.

Summer slowly dries them out as the tree
                      Prepares for winter.

My friend, the dry brown leaf
Blows in his perpetual autumn.

We all grow in our own time and season:

Winter dormancy

         Spring regeneration

                   Summer fulfillment

                             Fall  preparing for the
                                                  
            Inevitable
season of death.

These  seasons of the soul
Are the very essence of our existence.

They teach us

                        Temper us

                                   Fulfill us.

But there are those who do not see
The purpose of the seasons.
To them winter means only

                             Cold

                                       Snow

                         Desolation.             

Spring means only

           Rain

                    Mud

                               Flooding.

Summer means

                             Beauty to mock
                                The heart in winter.

I trust in the wisdom of the seasons.
Nature teaches us lessons in her cycles.

Let the leaf fall to the ground.
Let it rot into cold

                                  Stark

                    Winter

Desolation.

Spring will come.

Bleak gray will become bright colours
                  Of spring.

The beauty will fade once again but will
Reappear in winter's own stark beauty
Though it may be cold and gray.
Then spring will come.

          Spring will come!!!

I got a late call
Just the other day --
    Sister reluctant to say
  What she had to say.

Mama's not well
     She almost passed through
    The veil --
A life of hard work
    Can make any strong
Woman frail.

I'm not an old man
     But time isn't always kind --
Teenage children
Make youth that much harder
                      To find.

It doesn't seem so long ago
               When I was that
        Young and free --
My parents feeling like I do now
            When they'd look at me.

      She was always proud
Of the garden that she grew --
   Working with her hands
In everything she'd do.

But now her body can't
      Keep up with her mind
And father seeks for what
        They both cannot find.

        You're a child with
Parents all your own
Then it's your turn at the wheel
      When you are grown.

Then your children
See you old and frail --
Time goes by faster than
      You realise and you've
Passed through the veil.

I've always watched
      The Agèd Hands of Time
         Winding other lives down --
       They were not mine

But now my past
    Is in the distance and my
Future is as close as my agèd
  Parents and my growing children
     In The Agèd Hands of Time.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

12 years have passed since I’ve last seen her in this life.
Distance and sickness in our being had robbed us both
of streams of time which passed like a long cold winter
into her death. These lost memories often create over-
exposed and superimposed photo negatives of imaginary
frames of time I desperately imprint to hold tightly in my
heart and mind.

But I still hold tightly in memory to her soft voice on the
phone and pictures of split second frames of physical
time my sister would send me. Many people don’t even
have that.

In this life she loved to mother her three grown children
and flower garden as near as
she could to the end. It was
in her nature to nurture us--
her perennial children--
and to help make the move easier for her literal annual foster children plants taken
from a confined existence to a deep soft warm bed of comfort.

Stamped on my mind is not the faded and worn, bruised
and torn image of her outward shell in the Trauma
Center at age 88, but the indelible inner and outward
image at age 38: a lovely young mama who tucked her
little boy in bed every night with a song and a prayer.
The little boy that is still alive in this man.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

You don't give a glass of water
  To a drowning man
And you don't throw a thirsty man  
  Into the deep blue sea

Yet I drank deep of that glass
  Though my lungs were full of water
And thanked you for the refreshing swim
  As I gulped the briny down.