Do you know that feeling
When unexpectedly
A friend or family member
Exposes their bigotry?
Well, I can be very out spoken
Bigotry after all is
A cognizant distortion

I recall last summer
In the marketplace
The sun rays
Blessing the day
Children laughing
Parents smiling
My voice welcomes all
Some of the kindest people
I have ever met
Mexican migrant workers
Such a pleasure to appease
Used tables, chairs and dressers
And used shoes on their children's feet
A Muslim man his wife and daughters
All greet me with kind words
The gleam within their shopping eyes
While on guard to be reserved
Native Americans I do respect
Their culture and their lands
For after all upon their blood
Is where America stands

And with this beautiful tapestry
Hanging upon my days
I'll stand against the hatred
America's oldest plague.

My life is full of poetry
in lyrical design
Expressions in a rhythm
that ascend and then decline.

One moment I am full of joy,
then sorrow breaks my heart.
My soul is touched by music
and the thrill that it imparts.

I love the rain, embrace the sun
and smile at winter snow.
I crave the full moon's silver light
and dance beneath the glow.

I savor sweet aromas
taking pleasure in the breeze
And love the gentle rustle,
as it passes through the trees.

Yes, poetic is the gift of life,
inspiring me to rhyme.
I'd write a million odes to it,
but I just don't have the time!

~
from the anthology of the unwritten,
from the tombs of the stillborn,
where carcasses of idled titles and orphaned stanzas
do not compete for proof of life,  
and
nameless birth certificates unissued,
yellowing and wasting midst
crumbling aleph bet spawn

here
comes a poem of concession
comes a poem of summation
of a life lived, knotted poorly, not well,
worse cursed as vanilla inadequate

the satisfaction in the writing,
the gleeful breaking of the sac,
the gushing relief giving way to
the childbirth of a new moon-poem,
arrested, wrested

a single plague affliction,
the cancer of weakness,
means Pharaoh wins

the cancer of weakness
no cure, no pharmaceutical poultice,
spreads insidious; one day - pain in the remote,
your big toe, then
next you can only street stagger
begging forgiveness and the kindness of strangers
hoping for the accidental cure of touch,
the miscellany lottery ticket probability of low chance

the visible mark you leave,
a weak indentation upon a pillow,
it is the dented head, cut deep by the shadow,
shake it out and you're a disappeared one,
nothing to show,  
did someone once sleep here?

you were once upon a time
binary
a 1
now a 0 -
flip flop bottom top,
listening to Frank's "That's Life"^

my litany too long;
woeful work this business of flailing,
posting a tired-out self help love poem
ain't no cure for the falling-out-of-love
black and blue, self-inflicted bruising blues,
the wrists ache
the bones don't freak
but squeal, somebody's squeezing me

the alarm clock, a death knell,
everyone saying don't worry  
you got a proven record,
the boss's eyes twinkling
"but what have you done for me lately?"

funny

Death says
Hey, aren't you the boss?
Who shall over rule thy Dominion?
What have thy done to yourself lately?

Answer: never end a poem with a question mark @
3:06am