I moved it off the porch today,
where sun falls hard and wide.
The *** is cracked, the roots are weak.
Still, something waits inside.

The blooms were bruised, a weathered pink,
like lips that lost their say.
Still, one had cupped the morning rain
and hadn’t looked away.

My back cried out. I crouched and worked,
Hard knuckles in the dirt.
I cut the dead, I turned the soil,
poured water where it hurt.

I set it by the cedar rail,
where shade and heat align.
Still stiff. Still sore. You’re gone. That holds.
It’s standing. So am I.

Unrighteousness
Inlayed
Woven into me
I had to put the misery
Out to pasture
Target practice almost buried me
The blood sweat
And tears became entwined
Null in void  
Like the fiddler
On my roof banished
Beyond liberating
As the prisons crumbled
Fortresses and barriers fared
No better collapsed
Could no longer hold
Me at there own request
Consume elsewhere
Find a new enemy
Identifying a better reality
Taking a bite of
The right fruit for once
Endless chapters
Non fiction roared
Like the sad fables of yesterdays
They might still be screaming
But I’m not listening
Not my kind of scripture
I didn’t have
Enough tools on my belt
To cope properly
Until he shined down on my sadness
Eventually I started easing towards
Something more graceful

smoke
from a nearby chimney
subliminally
merged with the fog that spoke covering
like protection
but indeed looked like
silencing screams from the wild.

It struck me,
When my phone asked, no, demanded—
To back it up,
How machines claim their needs...
Sometimes, more often, than not,
better than we do!

the grass,
ghostly white,
snaps as I tred upon
it and the remnants, aghast,
yesterday's memories
lay frozen in time 'neath
my feet that live steadfastly.