Appearances swept aside,
a point across a cosmic background.
We are all the same: seeking love, losing pain;
siphons, ideally, in this sense.

I have these hands with nails like paint chips
and wrinkles that show my true age.
There's a scar on my little finger
That you never noticed
And I don't know how it got there.
I have these hands with dirt engrained into the thick calluses
Of my palms,
Dirt as in tucked away lies
And thoughts
I'd rather not share.
I have these hands that trace the bedsheets
While I sleep
And touch the places you no longer inhabit.
(My heart, sweat soaked nightmares, under the bed, the crack in my favorite mug.)
I have these hands that get trapped in my un-brushed hair,
And my un-washed clothes,
While they search for the pieces
You left behind.
I have these hands that ache as a heart is supposed to.
You have hands
That shook when they held mine
And now without them
My hands have begun
To shake.
I have these hands, these shaking hands.

Resistance of the wind gives
rise to sentience inside,
realization that self is on the
fence of rejection and love.
Feel the hurt eyes looking out to the world,
always with love
and always behind bars.
Relive the old age that
you will experience near the end;
there is nothing to fear,
but fear is real.

On second thought
Should write this poem
Tomorrow morning

Movement minx, mincing meat
She tides through jungles in wake leaves shake
But east side eidolon her sleep displays
Between the concrete displays, her age and her rage

A dream like a rag rests on the spires of her city
Centuries of men reflux into muscle
Pushes her along, her excitement belongs
To none other than herself (you're young (sometimes rich) once)

My father never liked cities, "they're all the same"
But daddy don't you know that's where the future is
And neon vines drop down from scaffolds
Grab her by the waist and bring her up up

Where she rests, solemnly gargoyle at
Outrageous heights.
I'll surely miss her, that old gal of mine.

he tells me dark secrets  
and paints colors on the shore
where the salt mist speaks to him
in voices heard no more  

along he wades, watching
the growing ground at his feet
careful to not crush creatures in the surf  
***** crawling to bed themselves
in their own tugging time
before the moon full tides  

slowly, he walks
as if one long step
might fling him into the abyss  
he does not fear the fall,  
he knows, it comes to all,
fishmongers and kings  
falcons with their mighty wings  
all share the descent, as the sea
turns from blue to black    

while I hide far inland
he paints me dark secrets
vanishing tracks in the sand,
and I long to hear his brush strokes,
to see what vast weary waves reveal,
through his teary eyes

Fifty years ago today

A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.

I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.

The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.

A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.

Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.

Going to take a hike
down these old Georgia roads
Lead me to where the dust comes crawling
so I can stare into the distance and imagine

Hold my hat, son please
watch me as I unhand this plow
Feed the cattle, don't forget
that I'll be home on a wooden float

Way up there in the hills
the way the northern woods glow
A perfectly placed dead tree, that'll get
me satisfied, then I'll find a natural moat

Build a raft, sand the spikes
on my way back, I'll pass a toad
and the river will open onto woods more sprawling
until I find my way home, I imagine

1)** One grain of salt and one grain of sugar
To be taken daily with the dose of the day
And I was impressed by what was said,
Sitting on the curb, I turned to face him as he explained
A little bit of brine and a little bit of sweetness
To make the bittersweet passing of time unchained

2) Sit, matter, stay for a while
But it does not and it passes askance
The universe on the next block over
Pajama shorts, your mom's hat on
Says with tongue in cheek
"This too shall pass"
While pointing at a passing bicyclist