It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

ten years into my studies of amateur
gynecology
I  looked down
and decided to take up
proctology

knee-deep in forest,
a wellspring of
multi-colored liquid
joy, bubbling
in frothy
peaks
my inner eye open wide
at the sacred wonder
of it all
glory of divine
earth water fire
wind in my soul
sunlit scarlet on
leafveins in this
garden feast of the senses
If heaven were imprinted
upon the runes of my body
a soulmind, shimmering
crystals in heart
then this
is it
nothing less
than spirit
coursing through blood
in untamed rush
a wild creek
teeming with freshness
and trout
deer peeping in shyness
and I am all
      lit up from within
as the hues of life
run through me
pulsing energy
filling me up
in deepest
strokes
of
air,
of trees
of mountain
here
even the stars
seem to call out
my name
and, in ever-depth
in focus of heartwave,
I listen

dance alive
honey, I want my whole sway
to be with you
the  dip the step on a toe the parlay
my nose tucked so close to your ear
just both of us so lost in the rhythm
no one else there
on that dance floor
one more time
sweets lets grab ***
take one more shot of Cuervo
let's bring home the
band with us