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I can tell I'm depressed
When I don't take the laundry
Out of the washer,
Where it has been cleansed of its sins
Of passion, or rage, of greasy fast food.
My filthy hands would ruin them.


So I wait for my roommate
To baptize his own spotless hands
With MY damp boxers.
The habitual thuds of my soggy clothes
Against the back of the dryer
Are a nice distraction.

My favorite flannel dances
With her tiny lost sock.
But 45 minutes isn't enough.
I don't want to end their fun,
So I leave them there
And hope that they'll fuse forever.

He tosses the clothes onto my floor,
Scattering them, wrinkling them, freeing them.
Corduroys atop henleys under crew socks and tees.
Folding them would be a waste
Of a catastrophic masterpiece.
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
Robert C Howard
Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
     oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
          meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
     driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
          and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
     bringer of that ominous pallor
          that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
     for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
         medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air – window to the cosmos
      and our fragile life–giving broth -
          unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
     the air we breathe is what we make it
          or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
     wanders through time and topography -
     cherished and cursed for
     what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
     sculpt rivers and streams
     through forests and plains
     bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides ebb and wane
     at the whim of the charismatic moon.
     Ice mountains advance and retreat;
     rock-strewns moraines left in their wake.

Turbulent currents
     soar over jagged cataracts,
     spraying pastel prisms
     across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
     secret sanguine rivers navigate
     our veins and arteries
     bathing organs, limbs and sensors
     with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
     fill our daily ladles
     and grant us the will and empathy
     to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Loki, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

*Revised and integrated version, December, 2015
These four poems are aligned with a set of piano preludes of the same title completed 12-21-2016. Here is a link to the music https://clyp.it/user/1qruizko
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
Blue Flask
Worry is the word of the century
I wasn't sure what to expect from this
what to expect from her
but the worry is eating away at me
and late at night its getting harder to fall asleep
pensive words only meant to comfort
being strong for hopefully the right reasons
being there for you when I am gone
these are what I promised you
in that lifetime past
in the new one at last
no one thinks paradise would be hell
until they live it themselves
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
martin
We take a mains water supply and proper drainage for granted now,
but not so long ago they were new things, and not everybody had them.

My old boss told me about the time they turned up for work at a cottage where a woman lived alone, just in time to see her empty her **** *** out of the bedroom window onto the tiles of the lean-to.

Half way through the morning she asked if they would like a glass of home-made lemonade, and dipped a jug into the water ****, saying
" I like to use soft water. "

Having noticed that the lean-to tiles emptied into the water ****,
they found themselves in a slightly awkward position.

When the woman appeared proudly offering the full glasses of lemonade,
my old boss said  " I think I heard someone at the front door. "

Off she scurried and the lemonade was quickly disposed of in the flower bed.
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
Jeuden Totanes
The table waited
For the father and mother
For the merry children
For a splendid dinner
Beside the fire
Where memories flickered
Of roast turkey
And hot cocoa
And a puppy emerging
In a bright parcel
Of red and green
The festive colors

The walls remember
Candle lit evenings
Where stories were told
Under warm blankets
The children would snicker
And laugh in glee
And excitement
As the mother kissed them
And the father said good night

The porch reminiscing
Bright summer days
Where the family
Played joyous games
And sang with the guitar

The yard misses
Seeing the children
In clean uniform
Marching off to school
And coming home
With tired smiles

And the rusty old car
Creaks his hinges
As he weeps
Remembering the father
Who polished and cleaned
During dusty days

And the curtains were weary
For they wanted to move
To let sunlight in
To recapture moments
When the family
Would chase each other
Around the house
Playing hide and seek
Shrieking and exclaiming
In happy voices

The old tree so ancient
Bent over the house
Missing when the son
Would climb his branches
And when in night
He watches them in silence
Camping under his leaves
Huddling each other
In warm plump arms
And when the tree
Peeks in the window
He would see the daughters
Gladly dressing up
For birthday parties

And the doghouse
The wooden old doghouse
Falling apart
Looks at the past
At a little puppy
Licking at his bone
And then coming out
With dozens of other puppies


And the dusty floorboards
Weak and brittle
Will creak at night
Remembering footsteps
Entering and leaving
The grandiose proud door
With a bronze doorknob

And a chandelier would clink
When the wind passes
Filling the house
With flashbacks
Of a new baby
Of graduations
And weddings
And then of noise
Noises of fun
And laughter
And giggles

They cannot remember
The blind day
When everyone vanished
Not a letter of goodbye
Not a wave of the hand
No words no memories
Nothing
Sadness and peace once again

They all sighed
As the sun vanished
In the edge of the neighborhood
They all wept
For the old wood
In the middle of everyone
Waiting for the family
The sad dining table
In ashes and burnt chairs
The table waited
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
JoJo Nguyen
Echo
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
JoJo Nguyen
It's a valley carved by moving water
It's a face wrinkled by time's current
It's a hike across the valley's face
It's a trek in through our granite life
It's a shout into the cool mountain air
It's a spike tracing our cloudy memory
It's a familiar echo bounced  
It's a family reverberation gone
The mountain has moved
The river is still
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
Dead lover
Friends with modesty, honesty and quality
Friends with novelty, loyalty and equality,
Is What all desire,
And
Friends with disability, social inequality and religiosity,
Friends with 'weird' human ecology, and 'discriminating' ideology...
None wants to acquire..

Some traits of these,
Are undesirable for sure,
But not even a single person of them,
Need to be ignore(d)...

We all are humans, we all are friends,
We all are lovers of humanity,
We all are creators of humanity and
We all are sufferers of humanity...

We all are friends, we all are a family,
We all are a human colony..
 Nov 2015 FiesaLy
Chalsey Wilder
"Go ahead be a snitch
You'll get more than one stitch
This time, *****."
._. My aggressive side.
I fell in love with the dark.
I found comfort in the sorrow-filled shadows .
selfish, I know.
but it is all I know.
you used to help me find beams of light,
but now there are no traces of hope remaining.
I have been consumed whole.
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