Small talks,
Written in between railroad tracks,
A track going to nowhere,
At least it's beautiful,
The houses look cozy,
Behind their walls we wonder aloud,
If its football or just a get together,
Little lives playing,
Seemingly unimportant roles,
Living lives, on stairway steps,
No longer living lies,
Breathing,
Just breathe
Return to places you've never been,
And feel the love around,
At least it's hear now,
Long timers with only today,
Saying words that feel weighted,
Because they actually know,
Caravans catering to the perpetual,
One night stands,
Take the advice,
And keep the serenity,
You won't feel it till tomorrow,
As you smile at your
Forever frustrating manager,
Leave the destruction back where,
It belongs,
Take your seat,
remember to stay awake,
And hold onto the kisses in the car,
Tomorrow reality is waiting,
And you've only,
Just begun kiddo.

I know some folks
Some new most old
Keeping logs swirling

It’s a balancing act
Lots of plates spinning
Whoops! Stretch right!

***** fall
Plates crash
Notes fall flat

Oh! Look over there!
Thank you, magicians!
TAH-DAH!

Take a bow,
Sis, bro, boom!
You got the room!

I have a low variable rate. I
Know enough through the cuff
When it is too high
And then when lower—
It’s variable

So, detox on the decaf
Binge Flix clips on elliptical
Keep to no salt diet result
Take the lesser stressors
Before anything else begins

the green grove a magnet to my eye
on these sun baked plains

I enter the glade to take shade with the cicadas
and vampire mosquitos

then I see it, Eden’s villain, coiled and rattling,
red ready to strike

I raise my staff, I too programmed to survive, do to what millennia
have taught

still we are in this staring standoff—silent save its rattle, deaf
I am to the chorus of insects

neither of us moves for an eternity of seconds, until the snake lunges at my feet

where its fangs find a field mouse, and devour it while I watch, an unwitting witness to expiry other than my own  

I leave the copse, whole, content another creature has, for today, taken my place in the bloodletting

History deceives us with many fictions.
We mistake fantasies as if they’re real.
Such illusions create stringent frictions,
Giving past emotions their strongest seal.
Our heritage deserves valediction,
But narrative art asserts its appeal.
Myth, story, fable and archaic diction
Overwhelm concrete facts; their essence steal.
I long for the past without reflection
Of ancestral interference or zeal.
But there is no version without mixture
Of deceptions and meanings we can feel.
Past accounts remain shrouded in factions,
Whose rifts of fabrication will not heal.

I recall the day, before she was five,
She asked to go, and play outside.
I answered, Yes, for awhile;
For I read his poem, about the road,
The travails she'll face far from home.
At our door I watched her play,
And saw the roads lead her away.

There'll be times she's on her own,
In a one-on-one, or in a throng;
In places where she won't belong;
Or find herself between right and wrong.

Yet, I untied the knot,
Dropped the tether; as a father,
I knew there'd be tools to hone,
Wits to sharpen, boards to carry,
An ax to edge on her whetstone.
There was work to be done.

If all goes well,
If I got it right,
It won't matter
Which path she roams;
She'll always know
Which lead her home.