Did Jesus pass his hand over my wi fi?
and it's working again
Must have touched me too while here
as I'm starting to feel well
after a month of illness
skimming the rim of hell
It's bad when you can't sleep or eat
or care for anything
When real friends
become more real
Hold you up with their presence

Robins reassure again with song
a millennium of winters...

They still got it
goin' on

It is a sudden thing
while the night is lamp
It is sudden
senseless
scattered
amidst fitful dreams
when the word for dark is lamp
as dawn collects light
a phone rings
in a gray rectangle
around the window shade
to announce the first day
without you

I should have been there, Momma....

when mourning came
Sudden

I should have been there
as you were for her--
feeble waving hand
as they carried her away
through the gray rectangle
of her twelve-year-old day

Morning always comes

Massasoit and me
driving under signs
from the spirits
that should have warned us...
what was to come
that Cotuit got Pearl Jammed for...
"one great brass kettle seven spans in wideness round about,
and one broad ***.”
Read as you need

From Wampanoag:
“she lies and says she's in love with him--
Can't find a better man...”
Perhaps she can't
Perhaps she can't?
Read as ya need

495 South
on-- and out to sea
“You don't have to live like a refugee”
Not when ya got
Music and the road


sachem: great leader
cotuit:  place of the council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag#/media/File:TribalTerritoriesSouthernNewEngland.png

Sentences are thoughts
All thoughts are sentences
the way we're wired

They flow sideways across the page
with words and phrases
In their span
From tip of thumb to little finger
and all that's in between in hand
...a Cap...a dot
with all contained

I understand just what you mean.

Some Northeastern PA red wine
on my darkened deck
a dog barks
a toad sings
to find his mate
I am something of a toad too
and drunk enough
I will sing with him
when you've lost everything

the song of toad will do

I do not understand transitioning
to what?
to hormones?
to surgeries?
to maiming?
mutilation?

If trans is not new
what did
other times and people do?

Perhaps they accepted themselves
no matter how born or grown
Adorned the way they wanted
created by the beauty of the day
among the company they kept

Maybe they danced in the  continuum
of their music and sexuality
somewhere between the male and female
There lies the mystery

I own it
I Wrote it!
I lived it!

It's mine
...and to whom it was intended
You have rights to read--only
Maybe you're the only reason I wrote it

Hope it gets to you somehow

I think about you...
Route 84
How many times we traveled
to get home

...by the side of the road
that winter day
fumbling with your phones
as we hold one
to my father's ear
So he could hear
Good-byes and Love yous
in your voices
too far away....
to drive
in time

for one last...
your voices
in his ear...his mind

The night is ink
It moves around me
with it's broken heart

Can I return you
to the shelf
Closed, Collector
of dust
to be thought of
now and then
when some reminder returns you
blood red and rampant?

Like outta control alliteration
***** so sweetly

To Be Read over my grave

But what can I say?
    He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this.
I will walk humbly all my years
    because of this anguish of my soul.
16 Lord, by such things people live;
    and my spirit finds life in them too.
You restored me to health
    and let me live.
17 Surely it was for my benefit
    that I suffered such anguish.
In your love you kept me
    from the pit of destruction;
you have put all my sins
    behind your back.
18 For the grave cannot praise you,
    death cannot sing your praise;
those who go down to the pit
    cannot hope for your faithfulness.
19 The living, the living—they praise you,
    as I am doing today;
parents tell their children
    about your faithfulness.

Commit
Three small tokens of remembrance
wrapped in copper, silver, gold
Oddly shaped that qualifies
as curious
They would like to see your dreams open
on Mondays
in the morning
I tell them
spring is only
painted upon waking
Bend the air for us
they plead
I tell her
how words come and go
Ideas the stuff of stumbled over
Strewn without a thought
to where they land
Tangled in the sheets
of unmade distance
to the bathroom
and back to bed
I want to linger here amidst
the ephemera
littered
Loss of words

In my mind
They bloom always
...along the fence
of Mr. Chauncey's yard
who cut and bundled them
for us to give to Mom

And suddenly
purple has a fragrance
I can see...
and another name
that follows me
forever
infusing home
Insisting on it— everywhere  

...though it wavers
in the years
in clouds of Lilac bubbling
Memory's palest purple
amidst the golden-green

...I am a child again
running down the hills of May
dizzy
in bee buzzing
Floating
in the lush warmth
and parachutes of fluff—
Next year's dandelions aloft
in the ends of this year's spring

Turning ferns to wings
twisted into tee shirt sleeves
We fly by sheer will to do so
Pretend to hide our nests
in forest of the lilac

A blue jay
Cries in deep background
of robin's qweedle day
A breeze moves the curtains slightly sun-
light scrawls
it's shadows
Soothing brighter
Lolling on a cushion
Late afternoon
of mourning dove
calls
to it's mate
meet her
on the edge of sleep

Night noises rather know
How to snap
fingers
for heat
While wind
hears puddles shudder
Bashes chimes
all to hell
Rocks the house with no one
in it
Rain pits a heart
Against ungodly hour

The moon smiles
wrapped in its bunting
of innocent blue
with fringe of coral and pink
borrowed from the ends of day

Wish I knew why
it's happy
Nothing new, exactly
Same old route across the sky

Same old moon
I don't ask why
but I can tell July
the moon is happy
with the stillness of stars
Fireflies decorating  
its dancing shoes!

A recluse has no reason
No effect, nor place to go
No place to catch the eye
Nor show 
that I am ****
effortless....
in baggie jeans and ragged sweatshirt  
Beauty is for the forest
the ocean and the sky
I am an odd and solitary bird of brown
Only
beautiful in nature's eye

Cardinal Attack

Beating heart!
outside my body?
In the bushes outside!

God!

Clutch my chest!
and look again...
Yup!
It’s out there alright—
eating seeds no less!
and flicking its blood-red aorta!

Spring signed her name
with the breeze
Sipping the moon
from a goblet of twigs
Gazed out across her path
Through the streets
By the houses of sleep 😴
Not in a hurry
Maybe no one will see her
dressed in silence and silver

I forgot that we share nothing
but the sky at night
O wait-- not even that
The clouds are here
but not with you-- so
sometimes?

We have nothing
not even blues
or clouds
to hang on to
...or songs of love
No

Leonard's song, “Suzanne”
was always his
for me
I wonder if he ever knew
How much...
when I didn't even know?

He named His daughter after me
where he left his memory

My heart told me he was gone
to graver places

As I wrote
of love
in decades hence
I would mourn
brief moments by the sea
Go on! Go on!
Your life awaits!

while distance does its thing
along with time and rhyme
and white noise and music when I'm drinking
by myself

and
for a moment
you--
are here

I know the truth

...my wonderings
what you look like
doesn't mean a thing
your covid smile behind a mask
you take the only pictures
every trace
of puppy
strange proclivity
my darling curiosity
of art and thought
You take....

I wonder
what your breath would feel like
on my neck
should we share a moment close enough?
to know your scent?
and how in God's name
would I
love you?
Not a clue
what it's like to know your eyes?
were they for me?
some guy?
some girl?
And all the questions of--

Another memory
for time to rub away

But I forgot
that we share nothing
Not time of day, nor sky
a simple glance
nor graceful dance
What is this room that we are in?
And does it matter?
Anyway
If you are here
But no, you're not

but I forgot

A weird fascination with swirling water
Paws on seat
he peaks over edge
to watch
the coriolis of his day
wash the concerns
of corona
a world
of death—
away

Yes...
We need all five senses
on our hopes and words--
to really know
how to make dreams bloom--

We need the sunlight of a touch
the water of a whispered
wind through apple trees in spring
to give the fragrance flow
Yes...

and add to these
the rhythms of love's ocean
that yet again  
and always--

Touch...
that sudden blaze
in catch of eyes across a room

I am officially worried about you.

The wine, the fire
before me
in the still
night

...in me
behind me
through me
I sit here
running....
in my head
my heart

I will escape
it
to the truth
that some of us will make it

after the fire

On Days Like Today

On days
When the thrush curls his song
among the buds unfurling
Lilacs float their fragrance
Past the trees, among the bees, between the roofs
Only distance makes it bearable
to be

...so called
Spring
in the chimes of breeze
Bent by the force of life
in disbelief

of its always
leaving

behind

the apogee
Now, past--

The fatal
wound of spring

I plant seeds each year
a fool of hope
in hopes—
another life will bloom
taste as sweet as I recall
when I was a young

Supple curls
fluid swirls
the rows of lettuce
poised upon the earth
To snap a bean
bathed in butter
tossed in breadcrumbs
Can't you just taste!
robin breast tomatoes
throw their greening arms around the sun
Its roots to siphon rain
absorb the turgid strength
of storm
of life
so ruddy now—

without
consumed
within

It snowed today
May snow on green?
The growl of winter
threatened Persephony
if she raised her song ...
She'd be dealing with December's death
Who will not back away
from threats to everything
Still standing in his debt
Demeter
and he have a deadly agreement

To all the families of this loss: POEM
______

People I don't know
except for watching basketball
with a friend who loved the sport
The squealing of sneakers on floorboards
That airborne grace of long- limbs...
go on forever... stopped only
for that photo
His daughter's head, against his shoulder....