(A repost from 2019)

My favorite aunt is dying.. cancer, quiet and consuming as a flame..

Seven short weeks ago she was easily doing an hour of step aerobics, unaware of this intruder, this murderer within. Now she's lifted from bed like a rag doll.

She is my mom, well, a near twin—only smaller, funnier, serpent sly, more heavenly childish, sapient with sweet attractive grace and modest pride.

I am in total awe of her. We're kindred spirits, two sillies among the dull and endlessly serious.

I feel her, see her, day by day, slipping away like the hastening angel of heaven foretold.

This is too big for me, too awful and too close.

I am struck helpless, nothing moves, I sit, hardly feeling, and watch her sleep. Death's cruel process suddenly made visible.

I silently rage at the loss of it—my loudest vehemence pointed to this ravenous, lurking enemy pursuing her inwardly like a swarm of deadly hornets accidentally composed.

40 and still stunningly beautiful, she lies surrounded by computers, iPads, phones, faxes, intercoms, notepads, friends and care-givers. Her life reduced to escaping pain and making arrangements for her soon to be orphaned children 4 and 6.

Fentanyl and other pain blockers are her nourishment and seem to work better in the daylight as lawyers garner powers of attorney, bankers conjure trusts and estate planners build foundations to protect small children from a mothers loss.

As if they could replace a single hug
.
.
Songs for this (Gospel music):
Order My Steps by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
Angel by Sarah McLachlan
Jesus Loves Me by Whitney Houston

corporation against company,
train rider against commuter,
the animal's instinct is to destroy
and somewhere between a beer and 2 hotdogs,
cigar smoke and chatter,
joe got hit,
his legs bent,
and his *** hit the canvas.

...and somehow through the roar of a 1000 voices
I can see and hear
the ref
counting
chanting into joe's wondrous brown eyes
"1,2,3...

"oh ****," joe laughs a bit bemused
perched on top his vertebrae of stairs,
"oh ****,"

and he climbs back down those bones
into the quiet night...
there is distance were a building once stood
and the field that was the farm
that made way for a factory
is a field again
where no wheat will grow.

I kick the ground trying to unearth
the ashes of joe's fire
but the angry earth just bleeds dust...

...and down at Marty's grill
the shadows lean forward
and with one quick stare
drink up the dreamer and his dream...

when I leave Marty's Bar
there's a boy beating a dog
with a baseball bat.
the yelping, howling dog
and another swing of the bat,
a home run.

My heart is a stained glass window, fragile as a Rose in May
refracting light from every angle, it holds life's leeway
Suffused with fragments of love,  I can be warm as night    
filled with a sense of awe, when you tilt me to the light,  
                                 I feel just right  
My heart is a stained glass window, fragile as a Rose in May !
Fragmented beauty encased in bursting beams of afterglow
if I follow only yesterdays, life can soon appear surreal  
Infused with an outside world that can often smite  
I choose to live inside my own reflective colors,  
                                           Always, in the light   !
Fragmented beauty encased in bursting beams of afterglow
My heart is a monument to all that I have lived and known
changing and bending with every curving path
it has been overused and "Inter-diffused" many times  
like this mosaic piece of art I call "stained glass window "  
                                I am a,   "Pièce de ré·sis·tance " ( a work of art)
My heart is a monument to all that I have lived and known
My heart is a stained glass window, fragile as a Rose in May
When I pray with it, it remembers to give thanks, in every way.

Daddy belongs to
an exclusive club,
out beyond
the rules of atmospheric
pressure.

On our precocious little fingers
we count,
on tracer paper
Mommy checks our figures.
Being she was never clever
with math,
she consults with the slide rule.

No crystal ball needed,
we all know where Daddy's been:
at the apogee of his ride,
hanging out in zero orbit,
checking
on his own figures.

He must be
lonely up there, fishing off the dock of a satellite,
until the moment he reels one in.

He does his best philandering
once we've shuffled off to school
and Mommy's found her solace
underneath
the hairdryer.

She's stopped looking up
at night
to observe the starry heavens.
They only made her cry,
which, in turn, made us cry— for her.

One time we heard Mommy tell Daddy
she knew all about his long division
and how he misused
his slipstick.

With the cruel turn of a smile
he reminded her
her math is routinely
wrong.

"Usually...but not always,"
Mommy whispers in her sleep.

Tomorrow is lift off again
for Daddy,
hunting exponentials
from
heavenly bodies.

For us,
the ones left behind in the wake
of his rocket trail,
it's
addition by subtraction.

Celestial and spritely flower head
A cloud of white in a wheel
A spread of stars on a sunny bed
Enchanting - a vision ethereal
Blooming afar and clustering nigh
What bud, what blossom, what ****
Blowing away with just a sigh
In a breath, in the wind that breathes.
While the rose is crowned and daisies loved
How often are you brushed away
But magic lies in your snowy fluff
As wishes fly night and day
You greet the morning, a languid dawn
As the skies turn pink and bright
Then gather close with the moon's rising song
That plays with the coming of night
A fairy's flower you seem to me
A joy - a charm - a delight
Flying away over meadows and leas
In the wind with your wings of white.