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

In those first years
we spent a lot of time
in red corduroy chairs,
the ones that came with
the house on Turner Terrace.

I would sit and watch you
when you didn’t know
I was watching, constantly
looking for a crack in
your armor,
for a little snippet of the
***** you might become,

but I never found it
and it never happened.

Your little girl wonder
had me convinced that
the world in your hands
would be safe,

no death blows,
no mean streaks,
love's foundation set deep
never to be undone by
head games or hidden agendas,

and now all these years later
I am still transfixed by
your clarity,
your complete “sheerness”.

You are my priceless
dividend of peace finally paid
from a lifetime investment
in Faith,

you came to me
when Hope had gone
and Grace was silent,

and you love me
when you don’t even know it.

The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM