A footstep can
     Change a
            direction.

A thought can
     Change a  
                mind.

An idea can
   change the  
             world forever.

We are travelers all our lives.
Like the sun and moon, never come to rest.
When the body stops, the motion survives.

Time twists inside me.  I buried two wives,
their love spent on an endless road.  My quest  
consumed them, traveling all their lives.

Profligate summer mocks my waning drives.
Riddles of the road languish here, unguessed,
where my body stops. The motion survives

In my art’s vigor, you say, derives
force from what now seems the bitter  jest
that we are travelers all our lives.

My friend, before the end arrives
There must be time to seek again the west
beyond the sunset, where motion survives

in the dying sun, blazing, as it revives  
inhuman tongues that said it best
that we are travelers all our lives.
When the body stops, the motion survives.

i know no bliss like getting lost within
the endless expanse of your genius.
trace the chasms of space-time
right to their origins: a big bang
rupturing split atoms, sending
every ounce of matter cascading
into the blossoming cosmos—
spiraling outward for all infinity,
unfurling like the petals
of some intergalactic carnation.
i cannot fathom a better metaphor
for the majesty of your psyche.
you are the monastery where i seek
solace from this miserable existence.
i could stand amidst these hallowed halls,
stretching out all around me,
admiring the stained-glass windows
set like so many precious stones
for all the days of my life
and still come away dumbstruck
by their effortless incandescence.
let me bend back the pages of your brain
like my favorite book: well-loved, highlighted,
and fit to burst with the scrawling pen
of my annotations. feed me, Dark Strider.
nourish the broken bits of my spirit.
wild and free, unbowed, unbent—
you answer to no one. you deserve
nothing more and nothing less
than a thousand-thousand poems
written to commemorate your existence.
you are an encyclopedic library displayed
in kaleidoscopic multicolor, i want to drop acid
and wander, psychedelic,
through your neurological pathways
from this day until my very last.
if i could, i would fold this world
like a map to bring me closer to you.
you incite deathless joy
and take away the pain.
your mind is the cathedral
where i finally find god.

There is no magic in the world
If there was,
I’d be on Woodland Avenue
With an endless dollar in my pocket.

There is no magic in the world
If there was, i’d be strong and limber
And healthy as a horse
With beautiful thrown into the bargain.

There is no magic in the world
If there was
I could make everything better
For everyone who is ill or hurting.

There is no magic in the world
So I must make the best of
Where I am and how I feel
And try to maybe touch another heart.

That would be my very own magic.
             ljm