Mammy died years ago,
So I'm older than her now,
Though I never feel this way.
But I'm younger than my father was
Years after his delay.

I'm an aging Granda now,
But I seldom feel this way;
When in my memories,
Where they truly lie,
I'm still their son today.

Set a timer.
Watch the millisecs tick away;
Not so much telling me
How much time is left,
But how much is irretrievable.
Not like waves,
Washing upon themselves and returning.
Not like the hour glass
With sand that once was a boulder
That once was part of a mountain
That rose up from the burgeoning strife of life.
The hourglass, that looks right-side-up
Or up-side-down,
Depending on your perspective.
Not like sundials, pointing in the wrong direction,
And always running clockwise.
No,
Setting a timer
Alarms me
For all the same reasons
As wearing a watch.

my hands are full of waves, walls, kisses, common faces
a shamanic design sometimes
but they still can't bear the weight of words
in a language without wrists

I am a Jane Doe on a metaphoric journey
cause time isn't waiting for me in particular
so I won't waste any more minute on the description
of the darkness of language
better start writing the memoirs of the time to come

it must have been the sun the wind
the elation of the singing birds
that I fell into a sweet slumber
in no time I was dreaming
the storms in our eyes had met &
the stones got deeper

every bright future is a wind whisper,
a caress of the ray,
every touch in the palm is a getaway for  flying words,
each word, like a *****, wears two white lines and one black,
a life spent in thought, not to withdraw in etilic sevraj, from time to time
raises the glass to taste the words  with its mouth, cheers ... cheers ...
silence,
confessing,  silence
silence,
forgiveness,
every forgiveness is a lucid grave,
a grave clear as water that  watches the angels as they grow wings and fly,
they rise and rise to unclog the springs from the air,  unearth the  sunset
and embrace the light like a newborn at the mother's breast,
every death has a mother, every death has a father.

the light is flowing on the naked trees
reality is more beautiful than metaphor,
I'm thinking while I'm feeling
the river of darkness flowing through me
faces gestures smiling and forgetting
destroying the plenitude of not yet known
spring explodes like vitamin bombs in old scars
the life waiting to happen begging for us to contemplate
I'll never stop dreaming someone else's electrical storms
I have to learn how to walk on how to love even more
the skeleton of darkness in the hands of time

A massive field of energy
With quantum fluctuations:
That is how it all began,
From all indications.

And then the Big Bang came about,
Giving birth to us,
And energy became transformed
Into matter. Thus,

We are beings who go way back
Into a distant past.
Over 13 billion years--
Before the die was cast.

Within that scheme, planet Earth
Is relatively young,
And many of the scientists'
Songs remain unsung.

No one knows for certain why
It all was orchestrated.
We ALL seem quite unique, and yet
We're ALL somewhat related.

Billions of years, collapsing stars:
So difficult to grasp.
The vastness of the universe
Makes us stop and gasp.

-by Bob B (11-20-22)

She said I was her first true love,
And one day she'd marry me.
I told her another might object to that,
For I'm not what you seem to see.
You see, there were three others,
That said the same to me;
And I married the one,
The only one,
The Mother of those three.

I scanned the old man
Through my translucent curtain.
He stood before my door, hand raised,
Seeming ready to knock.
Wires ran into his large ears;
His waddle swayed over his crew neck,
Beneath a brown corduroy jacket.
Liver spots crowned his wispy head,
And the back of his hand.
He listed and bobbed
Like a Huron laker waiting to unload.
He had a distinct and not unfamiliar look;
A man with full faculties.
I opened the door to him,
But he said, "It's not time."
"Time?" I asked.
"To let me in."

It doesn't take
a kitchen knife
to butcher life
or a motorbike
to ride until I die.

Instead, I take this journey
on a broken gurney,
not a suffering soldier
but a poet older
than any bolder
active warrior.

My tourniquet tightens,
as blood loss lightens
my mental load.

This damaged road
is full of broken bones
and scattered scraps
of marble stones
that no longer fit
the foundation of
a safe home
full of love.

That's why I still roam,
searching alone,
staring at my phone
looking for answers
to a call I'll never make.

Every breath I ever take
should hold some purpose,
but the truth is
my search is fruitless.
This existence is useless;
Just another wound
that will not heal
but festers and rots
as everything I thought
held value gets lost.

In my mad mathematic trend
I subtract family and friends
from my equation,
becoming the inevitable immigrant
as I finally cross life's bitter border
to nowhere…

I met a monster
and I called her mother,
dangerous to no one other
than myself.

Every night she would berate me
make me think that she hates me
as she violently laid her hands on me.

I feel like I would have been safer
in the arms of any stranger,
cuz a decent person
wouldn't put that kind of hurting
on someone they claimed to love.

All the years that I lived with her
I learned how to suffer
indignities like they were trivialities,
and with each verbal and physical attack
I learned how to turn my mind black
and inwards towards
my own sharpened sword
as I skewered myself.

The day unveils
it's beautiful bright self
pulling back the curtain of
twilight’s twinkling.

Dark body undressed in favor
of nature's flavor of greens
that I long to savor
as I repatriate her repainted clouds
that cover a light blue complexion.

Death makes
imperfect things
into haloed beings
with white wings
fluttering in
ascension.

It turns attentions
away from the
anger and towards
more perfect abstractions
of past painful actions.

Uncomfortable truths
becomes distorted memories,
that we extract from all of these
filtered false realities.

Grieving becomes
the reweaving
of what was undone
into a long-viewed narrative,
as our current imperative
is to turn chaos
into purpose.