The Sun stood still
Burning the people underneath
Making them lifeless
And now, all is but a silence

                                 Except me,

There’s a noise inside my head
Making my heart beat steadfast
And the heat of the sun couldn’t make it stop,
Too loud and too strong to take my life.

I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul now had complete control.

He fought kicking and screaming
the night the men in white came to take him on his final journey
like a great wildebeest struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken down by young lions. The way so many had said he
probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail throughout his life from the very beginning.

That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed staring out the huge ceiling to floor window of the medical centre at the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of rows of stationary lights and fluid winding rows of transient lights in-between and thought how the light of this window is just one of many thousands.

At that moment it seemed more like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields worlds above this city of light.

My father had spent most of his life just a short six-mile drive from here under the scattered lights of his hometown.

He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"

Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky snake
handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.

It seemed like it all caught up to his body. But it was good to see much of the bitterness and bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.

On that night compassion ruled the day.

I could not say it then but it has been many years, where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.

In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up from a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.

Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard. All I could do then was sit by his bed and lean in close to his ear and sing softly his favourite hymns. 

By morning his lifeless
dilapidated body laid in the fetal position. His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.

All I can do now is hang my head and think of how weak and frail we humans truly are.

Like compassion forged with objectivity, weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of strength. We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
the pedestals the former is made of to somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.

The good
The bad
And Me, The ugly
I'm not the first nor the last to be bullied
Ugly
For years I let that stick in my head
Doubted myself
Pills! I tried to end this life
But I'm growing
I like her
I like the girl in the mirror
I like her long face
Her brown eyes
Her dark, small lips
The scar on her thigh
Her tiny waist
Her coffee skin
Ugly?!
What is that?
Oh yah I know, the world
The world is ugly
But she
She
Is
B
E
A
U
T
I
F
U
L

A broken machine
It's motion impeded and destroyed
The mechanics of hard days ,
the plight and sad ways of a cur stray
Begging for sustenance along the street ,
where white collar impresarios meet , where
the heat can knock you on your feet
At the killer an killed divide , in some defiled , hollow portion of town , where criminal plus victim racked in hunger do rile* ...

long hair around my neck
a red complexion
my grandfather would have never
approved of my predilection
for words instead of action
he stands in my memory so tall
white haired then and chiseled
face and faction
a man of Cherokee stance
and action, had markers and hates he stood
fast to, no other way to act he said,
kept Grandma pregnant
her whole life, until she had that attack,
and lay paralysed her last years of breathing,
then he kept up with her nurse,
and climbing pruning trees till he was 93.
He fell fast , one September,
like a limb he had pruned from an oak,
fell hard to the ground under
a hot sun, his whole life devoted
to family and heritage.
He might not approve of me, being so
magnamious in forgiveness.
It has to end some day, though.

Why does it seem
only the ones who dream
are gifted of
so many things...
Yet cursed of happiness?

I really feel more than sad,
To know that thou art gone—Dad.
Dragged away by winds of time,
Far away to a very distant clime.
Leaving me upon shores of life alone
With a physiognomy but forlorn.
Such grievous news unto mine ear,
That nevermore to hold thee near.
Yes, thou art out of human sight—
But may thee dwell in eternal light.
And when my earthly life is over,
Searching thee I'll incessantly halt never,
But wend along the wildest river banks,
Clobbered by wild winds, nest upon trunks,
Journey myriads of galaxies on yonder
Just searching for thee from star to star,
Simply because till we ever meet again,
I'm doomed to languish in a vale of pain.


**REST IN PEACE DAD

Where the stars are my own
With a guitar and a private audience
of killdeer to critique my songs
Where daffodils and yellow bells bloom
just for me
Where hardwoods bear new foliage at my discretion in
every tree
Where the rain taps the same song on a tin roof
Where picture perfect Alabama sky cradles the
Harvest Moon* ..

This pill will correct a speed shutter mind , with this pill I will without a doubt lose precious time
With this pill the shaking will cease
With this pill my creativity will flee
With this pill the hallucinations may come to call
Because of this pill I might one day decide to end it all* ..