I keep having wacky dreams
followed by false awakenings in which
I'm telling the people who were featured in them about
the things that I've been dreaming
and then I wake up for real and realize
that no one's even listening.

Is like a carousel,
and there's a pleasant sensation,
and it makes your head spin.
So many gaudy animals to choose from.
You get used to the dizziness.

The music is loud,
and there's an onlooking crowd.
It's so much fun
to go round and round.

Stay on too long and you forget how it feels
to be on stable ground.

These zebras and giraffes.
These benches and poles.
They do nothing for me anymore.
They've turned into hurdles.

You can't get anywhere
when you're just going in circles.

Pull up a chair
and rest a spell.
In your glance
I can see a tell.
Your heart is not here
when he's in town.
Your home fire
is burning down.

Come sit,
let's talk awhile.
I won't ask you
for a smile.
Here, now,
just take my hand.
Let us watch the sun
sink into the sand.

It is getting cold,
but the night is young.
There's still a fire in me
that has not been sung.
We can watch the moon
creep o'er the hill.
I'll sing for you
and warm the chill.

Pull up a chair,
let us talk awhile.
The night is young,
I can make you smile.
Take my hand
and make me feel.
There is a hearth here
that's burning still

r ~ 6/25/14

Shiny black spit-shined shoes
on the walk
in the Memorial Gardens
hurt my feet
to look at their stiffness
and his swollen ankles
in them.
His worn and creased pants
too short, belt buckle aligned
dress-right-dress
with the button fold of his shirt.
He wore
an old faded USMC campaign hat
pulled down
almost to his white eyebrows.
Almost comically.
I pitied him
in the way we sometimes do
the old who mumble,
never knowing
just who they are talking to.
I heard Inchon mentioned,
and Chosin a time or two,
and every time he said Puller knew,
yeah, Chesty knew.
I quit taking my lunch
with a book in the Garden
when he stopped coming around
and after I saw his picture
in the obituaries
with a description of how he won
his Silver Star and two Purple Hearts;
wishing now I had listened closer.
More’s the pity
I never spoke to him.

r ~ 6/27/14

We, the people of this country, in your eyes are:

babblers, bachelors, bafflers, baiters, barkers,
beakers, beaters, brawlers, blamers, beggars,
bloaters, bloopers, bombers, boozers, blunders,
bruisers, bafflers, bluffers, burglars and burners.

That's why you feel compelled to keep your foot on our heads
keep us down, put us down, push us down
subjugate us, belittle us, berate us.

We, the people of this country, in our eyes are:

butlers, bouncers, bakers, buyers, barbers,
cake-makers, delivery-takers, cocktail-shakers,
taxi drivers, cancer survivors, employers and hirers,
music makers, entertainers, window washers, foster takers,
plasterers, carpenters, scaffolders, sparks and builders,
boxers, carers, coaches, tailors, shoe makers,
designers, illustrators, multi-language facilitators,
dog walkers, dog trainers, bikers and cycle couriers,
doctors and nurses and all the emergency services.

We are the People, the reason you are where you are now
you sometimes forget that we exist as people, somehow
locked in your ivory towers with gold plated showers
and MP expenses and investment banker pretenses
this is not theater, its real life drama, its not just a bluff
its time to stand up
and say enough is enough.