What load has us braying?
We toil. Work for meals,
Clothes and housing,
Cars and holidays.
The celebrations of our lives
In our American
Middle-class struggle.

Is it the price of gas,
Steak or beer.
My lawn could use
More watering.
The streets are clean,
And the plow just
Filled in my drive.
The copper-plated coffin
Had me cry;
The kids left for school
Without saying good-bye.
And it took way too long
For the shower to heat up.
No?
Perhaps we should clam-up.
Count our blessings,
Add them up.
Then subtract Iraq.

The pain brought rain
the eyes watered while burning
it seldom subsided
and was always returning

It became so hard to read
and equally hard to write
when the hell would it end
it was not a good night

My thought was why me
why must I live in this state
but then I met another
who suffered from a worse fate

He sat in his chair
no legs crippled arms
but the words that he spoke
were filled with great charms

I became ashamed of myself
as all I'd done was cry
this man had conquered hopelessness
while I didn't even try

A man was sitting in a barren landscape
Only cracks in the orange clay
And scorpions for company
And it was very dry

One day the man was sitting in meditation,
And felt himself to be hot,
So he breathed
And when he released this breath,
Trees sprang from the ground
And a pool opened at his feet
He opened his eyes, and he said
"This is not enough"

The next day, the man sat in meditation once more
And he held out his hand and said
"By my divine energy I will there to be a palace for me!"
And from his hand leapt 10,000 bricks
That formed themselves into a castle
Greater than the Taj Mahal
And he sat upon his new throne
And was happy

One day, again, he sat in meditation in his palace
And he thought "I need servants to tend to my whims!"
And he regurgitated 4 servant girls
who would see to his needs as he saw them

Many months later, after much lavish living and unhealthy eating,
He found himself with all of his riches,
all of his silks, and his exotic animal skins and servants,
Still unsatisfied, he went to meditate in his great hall,
He asked himself "Why can't I be truly satisfied? Give me a vision.
Give me a sign that I've made the right decisions"

The man found himself in the place he was truly happy
But he was confused, as he had been here before
He was seeing himself sitting on the orange clay,
At play with a scorpion,
Searching for his water for the day

"But I've had my fill" he tells himself
"I drink so much water a day I could drown a fish.
I wear such nice silks I counted down to the ten thousandth stitch
How can I be unhappy if I'm so lavishly rich?"

And that's when he realized,
that happiness isn't measured in the gold of a ring,
Or being acknowledged as some sort of king,
Happiness is having just the right amount of water from the spring,
Not the precious metals and fabric to which we cling,
And as his palace of fools gold crumbled down,
He sprang and danced and looked all around
And felt so happy he started to sing

There’s a lot to be said for this place.
A near-perfect pitch for diversity,
Diversity:  a neurolinguistic term;
A quaint way to say: miscegenation.
No, just kidding; I meant the melting ***,
A fine blend of Anglo, Hispanic & Indian blood—
That’s Pueblo & Plains Indian blood--
Not that **** masala, chapati & dal Indian blood.
My apologies to "Who's the White Guy?" Bobby Jindal.
New Mexico: “The Land of Enchantment.”
Where 310 sunny days per annum,
Are like money in the bank, earning
Double-plus compound interest for those
Suffering with seasonal affective disorders.
A land of sunshine without the orange juice,
But substitute chili, red or green?
An equitable offset to be sure.
310 days of sunshine:
Even the white people are brown here.
Which does a lot for my self-esteem.
Back east—New York, Chicago & Philadelphia e.g.—
People that look like me, i.e.,
People with dark brown hair, eyes and skin,
Get stopped/***-cheek spread/& frisked, routinely.
Stop & Frisk: NYPD’s spectator sport for decades.
Stop & Frisk: Mayor Bloomberg-defended
Crime-stopping Godsend,
Getting guns off the streets.
Getting homicides down.
Everything’s cool until some slick race baiter,
Starts yelling:  RACIAL PROFILING.
Forget for a moment that people that look like me,
People like me with dark hair, eyes & skin,
Commit 78% of the crime in most cities.
“It’s not racially driven profiling,”
Said Newark’s police director recently
Referring to stops carried out by his officers.
“IT’S CRIME-DRIVEN PROFILING!”
But, again, political-correctness trumps common sense:
August 2013: Judge Rules NYPD
Stop-and-Frisk Unconstitutional.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s *** ******!
I moved to New Mexico to blend in.
My complexion a shoe-in for
The Witness Protection Program or
Any other public or private,
Domestic or international rendition site.
But I digress.
New Mexico: no passport necessary, Babaloo!
New Mexico: be you white or black, Hispanic or Indian,
Or even Roswell extraterrestrial,
The cops here will beat the **** out of you.
Or shoot you dead, Kemosabe.

My husband sits for days on end,
Staring through his empty friend,
My tearful words fall alone,
His mind resides in combat zone,

A man replaced by shell so cold,
Numbed by scars of war untold,
Violent dreams lived each night,
Lashing out, at all in sight,

He returns to war inside his head,
Trauma stained by all bloodshed,
A trigger pulled, his mind released,
Begging for, all thoughts to cease,

His scars remain, but can't be seen,
Buried deep inside his dreams,
Years of therapy, will help him free,
From the damaging effects..
.. of Post Traumatic Stress

I pray for the day, he's finally home,
So the trauma of war, can leave us alone.

Everything we see is
it’s pristine essence
casting the same light
from the womb of darkness.

Gripped by the dolor of a glaucous sky,
love's longing reminds us
that nothing is ever truly lost
to anything less
than the visual acuity of a heart.

Unseen signs never give up
their quest for being seen.
With a slight tilt of the head,
the light of the heart changes...
and so does everything,
everything.

just Before
she approaches the counter
to scan and pass
she hears a sound in her head:

‘Don’t take the short cut

because it is convention
because it’s easy
because it’s top technology
because it pleases the tired body’
…

because oh because
kinda excuses  
humming and rhyming  
different ways
of sayings of  a
‘that makes sense’

all meaning the same
sung in a metropolitan opera
by the inhabitants
of this city

makes you up or your body
decorated by a lost lamented self
in a brand new glittery pack
made of your shell

empty inside
belongs now
to some stupid force outside

made existential by the soul sellers
visible to soulless just

you as much as of theirs
and by their approval
need to cross
scary landscapes
to accept the glittery pack
until and  if and when
you can witness
to forgive yourself

and that only when
you’re back
to yourself

again
once more
sadly
lost it all

at the end
of your life
standing still
at the start
of your life story

just
like I
but
who cares the I
if not I

your lives inside  
gone
while years erase a memory
of the futile
search
which could never become like
theirs/
promises /
illusions

so think twice
before you scan and pass

Compared to your heart’s road
how  long that short cut really is
when you are so far away from yourself.