Delayed once again,
I sit and wait through
the stalled, winding lines,
through amateur hour at
security theater,
drinking overpriced water I
can’t even bring aboard.

My name is a red flag;
I become tripped up
in a cause not quite explained,
ideas plucked from fading leaders,
wisps from the ghosts of history;
black-or-white rhetoric bleeding
across their gray domain.

My scuffed shoes carefully
examined like laced explosives
reeking of sweat from war games
long-past;  flying on auto-pilot,
I gather thoughts scattered across
the miles like contrails darting
across the sky, masking the fear
I feel for us all.

Red horizon, a net of mosquitos
dot our skin, robbing our blood
like Sam Houston robbed lives
at the muddy, brown San Jacinto;
we pause there, soaking in history,
as though covered in mist.

Above us, a lone star perches
atop a stone obelisk, a beacon
shining in twilight, bright and
majestic, taller than the battle
was long, the Mexican army
caught asleep, stumbling into a rout.

We are alone on this battleground;
I can feel the souls chasing the
warm breeze as it hides your face
with hair, too thin a disguise, like
Santa Anna’s, humiliated and fleeing,
to be a prisoner of war.

Early-morning quiet time,
I puff secret cigarettes
in a damp basement,
the webby side of the furnace
where only the cat dares to tread;
every move I make a thunderclap
from a storm coming off the bay,
every board-creak a snapped twig
under the foot of the Skull Island savage.

The children still sleep,
wild in suspended abandon;
arms flailing above their heads
in frozen unconsciousness.
They need their rest
before time takes away
summer’s gift to the child.

They are not mine,
to keep, to hold;
they are not my blood,
but blood is blood
and love is love.

Dead man laying on the bed
in the morning,
Dead man laying on the bed
half-asleep.

Rest doesn’t mean too much
for the weary;
sometimes struggle lies
in every measure of time ahead.

Countenance comes at a cost,
the clock a ticking meter
adding toleration to the tank;
habituates hooked on routine’s
stinging syringe,
undead shuffling through the mall
howling at their kids,
drains the tank dry,
no water in the well;
if you’re not mind-full
you’re mind-less.

So the body becomes too troubled
by the day ahead,
Corpse pose comes before waking;
it’s sometimes best to stay in bed.

It is hard to see him now,
frail body confined to the bed,
a doll drained of stuffing
beneath his blanket,
topped with graying head.

I cast aside the memory of a man
I once knew:
the man who wore his liver
on his sleeve,
the bottle before
any woman, any job, any law;
the man who told his young son
they could drive anywhere
as long as they spent no money;
gas flowed from pumps like water;
the town unfolding as we drive,
an endless archive of stories untold
before wide child eyes.

The man who rose from bartender
to janitor to professional,
back to the bar and then,
in a flash, this hospice bed;
cruel arc of a careless life,
a life unforgiving of mistakes,
disease, and the great, great
imperfections of men.

I am too ingrained for him to forget,
culled from the years erased,
a memory plucked from the sea of fog;
implanted too deep in his heart
to dissolve into dementia’s ether;
but too many memories
have become unmoored,
ropes dangling, anchor lost,
drifting along the tides of time,
listing with the waves
in a silent good-bye.

You lack character as a man,
unable to forgive and forget
dysfunction and anxiety,
white-knuckle memories
that root down deep,
clinging steady and strong
in the garrison of your mind.

Avoid the victim’s passion play;
we are all abused,
all exploited,
all broken gifts undelivered;
giving us humanity
in this comedy of error
and regret for words unsaid,
actions undone,
consequences unleashed.

We shall meet again,
when I have learned from my mistakes
and you retain them bitterly,
skeptical and aloof,
my beloved historian of bad judgment,
plowing your own path
through the debris of experience,
to make your own mistakes
your own.

Open your arms,
open your eyes
but do not always believe
the touch, the sight,
truth’s flame cornered by the night,
we tread down our paths
with care, with fright.

Our monitors burn bright
with toys and guns,
to plastic banks we run
for that rush in our minds
leaving reason behind; while
admen conjure more ads,
more signs.

Every spark painted-on CGI
every brand-name trademark
displayed before the eye,
bowing deep into receipts
piled haystack-high,
we’re not quite tall enough
for that one last ride,
to ebay we bid good-bye.

This concrete cube
serves as a cold anchor
to future’s coming frost,
working cheaper than a ticket
to hockey game, circus or
Jehovah’s Witness convention,
prone in the crowd
to the patrons’ weary gaze,
a nail waiting for a hammer.

The boss orders me outside
like a bad dog in the yard;
the wind’s bitter fingers
cut through winter coat
faster than a bursting secret.
I shiver for bitter dollars
in a shriveling search
for balanced books.

I leap into uncertainty’s abyss
where no wind blows,
no snow piles higher than the exit,
no boss on new boss power trips;
as the darkness of my shrinking city
unfolds with the river’s every ripple,
I find more hope in the rubble
of tomorrow than today’s
crumbling concrete block.

Furry brown monkey
strapped tight to back,
harnessing freedom
from the child;
tan strap wrapped
around mother’s wrist,
a maternal yoke,
circling each other
like earth and moon.

Don’t go too far, dear child,
you are mother’s prized subsidiary;
she does not run well
with heels and cell;
go lay with the dogs
or crawl on all-fours
on polished mall floor.

Are they training to be tethered
tight to authority’s rock?
Restless boats un-docked
during the storm of release which comes
once free of the leash;
no wonder they tend to run.

When you blow from the North,
the mercury shivers,
piling your snow drifts
high before my door;
we skate on roadways
and reclaim our trash cans
blown down the block;
you shift all my shoveling
back to where there is none.

Oh, Michigan wind,
you blow god’s breath,
your roar drowns out
the game on the radio;
you send summer leaves to spinning
and pages to flipping,
blowing the sugar-beet stink
from the cool, humid air,
showering the rooftops
with broken brown sticks,
making the branches above
click like tap shoes
and drop seeds into my glass
of lukewarm beer.

When the silence is set
and the darkness is met
with uncertain regard,
your winds steady the nerve
like a quick shot of whisky
stinging the throat.
I weigh myself down
with concrete resolve
hoping to stay grounded
and not blown around
with the leaves, the trash,
the sound.

Deep in the bottle,
where even the strongest minds fizzle,
perspective sways softly
and judgment is cutting
deep into submission
of stupor and stumble,
a profound lack of commitment
nodded off in the chair.

Wishing away
today and tomorrow,
but shadows can be patient
and wait for the dark.
The lump on the couch,
he bristles with anger,
fed whiskey and Winston’s
to dull those sharp cravings
for death ever-lasting,
for abyssal release.

You left the lump breathing,
withdrew your attention
to his core care and feeding;
you’ve taken to singing
serenades to the sleeping,
but memories keep bleeding,
that puncture your tincture;
for that lump is your fixture
of regret and remorse.

The lump does not whimper
until shadows are long,
the reruns on TV run into
the screaming of your song;
the drum solo hammers
on tomb-like front door;
a concert, just for husband and you;
the social worker’s knocking;
whatever will you do?

Shadow, you *******;
bead box upended,
a galaxy of beads beckon feline eye;
you’d choke in your bliss
for cheap plastic pieces.
Your toys remain unchewed, dusty;
my pens remain missing, useless.
Four a.m. is for sleeping, not eating;
I slam the door,
no longer listening;
your crying piercing my brain,
deep as the bead nestled in your throat;
They’re never the same again
once the damage sets in;
the special diet,
medication tucked in cheese;
hairballs requiring the kittie-Heimlich,
like squeezing a black, furry accordion;
and then it is I who cries
for forgiveness.

Some of us are locked up
behind bars,
waiting for that next fix
of freedom;
just enough rope,
seeking the path
going anywhere
but here.

Some of us are locked up
in airports,
lines long and snow high;
somber, shoeless crowds
hoping for a pleasant holiday,
but heading anywhere
but there.

Some of us are locked up
in our pain,
scared and wounded,
our controllers controlling
access to every narrow path
leading anywhere,
even here.

But while we're locked up,
the system still fails,
the snow still falls,
the wounds still hurt,
battle lines are still drawn
everywhere, and change
can still be made.

I want to be a nice guy,
flower-bringer,
keeper of pens and candy,
love and smiles.

I want to drive without screaming,
to wait without scheming
someone's demise,
to float high above the clouds
without dreaming
of being
somewhere else.

But it's hard, you see,
to speak bureaucratic,
to see through the static,
to laugh and wave as though
life is a turkey day parade.

Because of you.
You, and we and they;
the wrinkles in our characters
that push us away.  
The chaos and control,
the IEDs and "low food security,"
how I wish I knew why we
came to this place, this
sticky web we weave,
snaring each other with
our needs.

But little things mean a lot;
the flowers,
the pens and candy,
the open doors and
open lanes on the road ahead,
each gesture a brick,
smashing through those glass walls
we build around ourselves,
until it all comes crashing down.

Tumbleweed,
tumbleweed,
drying in the sun,
which hidden pasture
did you blow in from?

Bands tan and brown,
Crystals sticky white,
I envision your owner
dropping you in the night
under glow of police light.

Under watchful camera eye,
along the rocky terrain,
I see you tumbling down,
torrents of soft green rain,
fruit of the desert plain.

Tumbleweed,
tumbleweed,
snatched from the ground,
hiding in plain sight
waiting to be found.

A parting gift for the road
stretching endlessly ahead
battling sorrow and confusion,
worn down like tire treads,
a reprieve from a life that
sometimes feels like death.

We are all poets;
when words come quick,
shaolin blades slicing pixels
in angry, poetic kung-fu;
when words come smooth and slow
in fleeting, awkward caresses
pulsating across goose-bumped skin,
every new lover a poem.

When we sway on the barstool,
flag poles resisting *****’s steady gale,
arguing for that one last drink
before the white light cuts through
the swaddling shadows and the barkeep
sees the reds of our eyes,
every slurring plea a poem.

When we beg the officer
to let us go gently into freedom’s violet dawn
and when unsuccessful,
to crack the back window of his cruiser
just enough to keep the world from spilling in,
spinning into violent oblivion,
every handcuffed squirm a poem.

We are all poets;
when both heart and home sputter,
energy from a rusting machine crawling
from check to check until
chair becomes wheelchair,
house becomes apartment,
fruits of past labor
line the curb in piles of bags,
every unpaid bill a poem.

When we stare out over the water,
rolling sheets of morning fog across the lake,
still, except for ripples of dew drops
painting the water in widening circles;
revived campfire crackling next to
snug, sleeping children;
quiet, like a poem’s end.