They (and you know who I mean)
Claim (vociferously and accusatorily)
That
They (who lay their hands on and call on the Holy Spirit)
Are
Christians (funny to see that word in their lexicon).
They really do think that.
Is Christ that confusing,
Or
Is it Just Them?

A true Valentine's more
Than a rhyme
That ends
In chocolate couplets,
Or written in flowery prose.
A real Valentine
Smells sweeter
Than your dozen roses.
My Valentine
Gives me her time,
And that's
How she shows it.

The baboon savant
Will rear and taunt
From high on his hair-swept hill;
He snatches bananas from the unsuspecting,
His reach has no appeal.

He relishes the sound
Of his own voice,
Screeching into the wind;
He sticks his fingers in his ears,
And when he plops down
His ruby-red ****,
His thumb's nestled up his rear.

Whistle while at work,
Donald is a ****;
Giuliani strokes their egos
All the way to court.

I'm a molten mess
Of emotion
Flowing in
My core.
I'm girthed
With waves
Of passion
That heat up
When you're near.
My skin quakes
With your breath,
I'll orbit til
We finally touch,
Erupting
In cold sweat.

I was It.
Singled out
By a mere
Eenie-meenie.
Now I touch you,
You freeze.
Now you're It,
I'm not.

Where did my brother go?
He never shared his coat with me
When I was cold,
But so was he.
He didn't have much, you see,
He's spartan,
He's no TV,
He has no means to e-mail me.
He's chameleon,
Look will you please,
Call me if you spot him.
I'd like to get to know him.
But I should not enter there,
In his lair near the bones
And genie bottles he has thrown.
(To think that I shared my tea);
To appease me, he often ate my bread,
And stitched his days
With invisible thread.
Let me know
If you find him brother,
We'll claim our grief,
Then bury our dead.

While outside waiting
For night to slide,
The ISS went sailing by.

I happened to be viewing Venus
Dip in the western sky.

The ancients would've
Watched in wonder
At this wonder passing high:
     *Those are demi-gods
     In Phaethon's chariot,
     Scorching the night sky.

Her party conflicted me.
I worry if her expectations were met
After the last gift's been unwrapped,
And she's wearing her Princess elbow-length gloves,
Her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and chic ball cap.
I took a picture of her sitting on her new bike,
And on the table you can see the remains of birthday cake,
Cards, some ribbon and paper, crumbled past the folding creases.
It's over now, and there she sits, feet on pedals,
A serious look on such an innocent face.
You might think I think she's greedy or demanding,
But I don't. She's not, she's a child,
Expecting great things on a special day,
Her day, which comes everyday,
Until she won't remember this day,
The way I will.

Once there was a time...
     Now I'm a different man.
I wasn't one to imagine
     The challenge of the choices
Between lanes of long
     And short blade grass.
Not all is by decree,
     So spears of grass
Sprang vigorously back
     Beneath my chosen track.

Seasons change,
     No two the same;
We scattered suns,
     Secreted some...
The elements clear of blame.
     I'm still that former man.

My ground's been rocked,
     But I'm blessed
More than I've been ******.
     So says this travelling man.

I'm standing where a tree once stood,
It's branches, leaves, and roots weren't good.
Perhaps they used it for a rood,
Down in Alabama,
Where skies are lit with flames,
And chants are raised to holy names,
As though they understood.

In the park, an empty swing
Is twisted by a changing wind;
I cannot hear the children sing
Of lambs gone to market.

In the class an empty desk
Draws one's eyes to stare and rest
On a sharpened pencil
That scribbled with regret,
The names we'll soon forget,
For they have gone to market.

What was here,
Now is missing,
It's as if no one's listening;
And it began with our christening.
Like a ship I too am listing.

Here's what they'll say of me:
*He stood once like a tree.

We heard, in general conversation,
It costs an arm and a leg, now,
Just to see a game.
To join in the comaraderie and cheer.
To eat a dog, to have a beer.
It's a rip off.
He closed.

I agreed.
Then something else occured to me
About money and time,
(and what grows on trees)
How they interact to corner us;
To keep us from shows,
And stage dramas
That help us forget
Our real life traumas
(the causes of our nightly insomnias).

There's plenty to spend our cash on
(when older. like me, not when you're young).
So I tell my friends to purchase tickets
For games and concerts,
Plays and trips,
Meals and tips,
And gifts for giving
While above ground with the living.
Cause when you’re gone
You'll wonder why
You didn't spend
Before you died.

My friend's Father,
Who's just that,
Has a Papa Francis.
And her entire congregated family
Won't acknowledge her
Very existence.
How can she communicate.
There's a crack in the crucifix,
And it's splitting, running up the wood,
Past the cruciform,
To the Head.

I'm told the sky is blue.
God is dead.
Lead is heavier than cotton.
I'm not convinced I know where the sky starts.
You need proof, like a birth certificate, to be declared dead.
Cotton and lead can both weigh a gram or a tonne.
So, my conundrum... how do I write about what I know.
My name is Francie. I have a birth certificate, and it's yellowing...fast.
Whatever comes after this is pure speculation.
However, our opinions are weighed
With equations and laws. Laws.
There's a thumb on the scales.
Reason is subjective. Water is wet... warm... hard... vaporous... dry...
I can write about death, while I'm alive, believing in it.
My forehead is bleeding from pounding my lack of truths into verse
For readers to think of the possible, for certain.

The red high chair,
Now empty there,
Has carbon foot-prints
On scuffed rails,
And impressions
On the tray.
Like digs from earlier days.

Her first steps were small,
Unsure, unstable,
Needing balance,
Yet proving able.
A two-step dance,
An infant's prance,
An infinite chance,
She tottered to the door,
Drawn and wanting more.

But I fell,
Forlorn,
With those wee steps,
She was gone.

Daddy held me in his arms
Once, when I was five;
He wasn't one to embrace,
To clap and say well-done.

To hear him speak two words
Was volumes from someone
Who tsked and rolled,
But never scolded
His daughters and his sons.

In his hold, so foreign,
He made his assumption,
That I was content to be held,
Though squirming for the ground.

For me it wasn't soothing,
He never was inviting,
His demeanor so discomforting,
He never did it again;
Not that I could tell;
And yet the security
Never diminished
From arms that once held me.

Turn up the radio,
The sequels to
War of the Worlds
Are on.

The best irony ever,
Is not that the Prizes
Grew out of dynamite
And cannon fodder,
No,
The greatest irony
Is that no religious founder:
Not Abraham, Jesus, Mohamed
Or any number of Swamis,
Received a posthumous
Peace Prize.
And with good reason.
Religion has never been
A peace broker.

Today is like any other day,
However,
Don't plan any trips to the Senate,
Stay off of stairs and away
From people named
Cassius or Brutus.
Wifes are dreamy, so listen and look.
Knives are for cutting, not stabbing.
Should a soothsayer
Warn,
Beware the Ides of March,
Don't leave without an explanation.

Isn't it easy to write during these times,
And difficult to write on these times,
Without ripping off figurative comparisons.

I want to use wasteland
But I'd be the one compared,
And that won't work. That's not my intent.
Besides, Townsend and T.S. worked it.

There are the platinum choices
Like Satan, Lucifer, or Legionnaire.
But Milton has his scent all over these,
And the Bible invented them.

Those times.
These times.

Apocalypse, or any version thereof,
Would surely bring Brando to mind,
And Kurtz's heart of darkness.

There are inspiring descriptors like,
Cataclysm, devastation and destruction.
Well-represented in cinema
Since Birth of a Nation.
Now there's irony.

As much as Holocaust would be perfect to plagiarize,
I, nor anyone else, should ever attempt,
(And it would be a vain glory attempt at best)
To use this singular word
In an analogy for anything, ever again.
Ever!
Unless absolutely necessary.
Unless someone we know gets stupid.
Then more stupid.
Then stupider.
Then most stupid.
And finally,
Not with a whimper, but a bang.
I falter.
Not exactly plagiarism is it?
Shouldn't be repeated either.

The harlequin trees celebrate
With a red, yellow and orange
Ticker-tape parade
On all the streets of Ontario,
Announcing the onslaught
Of another miserable
Canadian winter.

Dads,
Some kids we raise
Will abandon us,
Despise, deplore
And anger us.

     What can we do?

Some sons will denounce
To even some score;
Some daughters will leave
To dance and *****.

     Dads, we're trapped forever more.

Some daughters will stay
And tend the home;
Some sons will sit
In cold cells alone.
They're worlds apart
From what we'd expect.

     Dads, I'm not finished yet.

Some sons give sons their father's name,
Some daughters so proud they keep the same;
Some teach and preach and heal and toil,
They've learned their lessons well.
You're so puffed you're buttons pop,
You never want this life to stop.

     Dads, take it from me.

You've done your duty,
You've won the game,
Take it from me,
No two are the same.

When she opened her  closet,
There was Jamie,
At the end of a rope.
All three twisted as the face,
With feet an inch from life.
A brown and yellow drip
Puddled the floor,
Touching the toe of a worn sock.
     If I can't live here, I'll die here.
Was pinned near the heart.
Stretching out her fingers,
Working fast for the unattainable,
Thinking speed and action
Could change the outcome
Of the hours old body,
Hanging,
Like a favorite suit
In need of dry-cleaning.

Bible literature
Foretells the rapture
With the breaking
Of the Seventh Seal;
But there's an Eighth
That seals our mouths;
Broken
When we're laid out.
We'll never know,
That all along,
There's nothing at all
To worry about.

I stripped the branches,
Debarked the limbs
Like peeling sunburnt skin
On the chest high grassy plains.
There's a nest in the crotch of our tree
With umbilical vines detached and green;
I check to see if my bellybutton
Is missing, just like Eve's.
I see that mine's an Outie,
Still connected to the trees.

I listened to a man who was terminally sick,
And he wanted to talk politics.
But I was focused on the stars
And how they'd fall like grains of sand;
And then I heard the woeful wind,
Plaintiff as this breathless man.
And I was sad
That the stars did not fall
To mark the passing of our time,
For it has no real face and hands,
Or wings to fly on, or legs to run.
Yet rushes at us like politicians;
Perhaps that's what he said.

He drapes an arm around anyone's shoulder
In every shot I've seen;
It leads your eyes along his arm
To his eyes, a vanity trick,
Like a narcis-stick.

He often grows some ****** hair,
And wears a logo shirt,
Every thought is well-planned out,
To push his latest scheme.

I attended his wedding,
The first I've ever seen,
Where the groom draws more attention,
Than any bride could dream.

She wore an oyster-colored dress,
With a train six feet long;
While she was walking up the aisle,
The groom broke into song.

Then they had a child,
A boy, now thirteen,
He throws his arm around his dad
To be the centre of the scene.

The dregs are in
The bottle;
The crumbs are on
The floor;
I've nothing to
Regurgitate;
I'm an empty plate.

So, I'll dip
My bucket
In Lake Muse,
Drink its waters
Til I ooze
With metaphors
And similies
To read on
Hello Poetry.

We're in thrall.
Where's your wall?
You dump truck...
You fumb duck...
You other mother...
You worse than senseless thing.

I am expected
At the clan gathering today.
The naughty and nice will attend;
I'd like to say they're friends,
But it's family - a gnarly tree
With thick bark and thinning branches,
Twigs pointing and abandoned nests.
Yet, when it rains
I find shelter,
And when things get hot,
I find shade.
The roots reach into the cemetary
And across the blue.
I will wear my favourite Tee:
     Keep Calm
     And Let Lynch
     Handle It.
It's cute, and breaks the ice
Before I melt.

We sketched it out,
Construed an outline
With bullet points;
Worked on the draft,
Fashioned the conclusion
While forming an introduction,
And through infusion,
Developed an argument.

From thesis to synthesis
We entered the plot,
Quite sure of twists,
Not knowing the costs.
Our assay would go
Something  like that.

Plodding forward
Through antithesis,
The crises, decisions,
Then the denoument.

In conclusion,
To summarize:
The vacant character
Of my eyes,
Was the climactic dowfall;
Your hero dies.

The final draft
Was finely crafted,
Something just like that.

I have nothing against the person,
But the profession can be irksome.
You may get argumentative,
But that’s part of the dance:
To step on some toes.
So, I leave you to choose,
And add some of your own.
o Dentist
o Teacher (for the disenchanted/entitled)
o Oncologists
o Auto Mechanic
o Clerics
o Lawyers
o Funeral Persona

Well, are you?
Did the news startle you
That things are a mess.
Gaza's imploding,
Palestine's exploding,
The Middle East could use some help.
In the Communist countries,
There's an electronic curtain
Keeping people out.
Planes go strangely missing
Over unknown ground;
Others don't go missing,
They're eagerly missled down.
There's millions starving
All around;
Meaningful work is hard to find,
Self-worth is in decline.
Under the steeple
There's fewer people,
But that was another time.
My bills are stacking,
We're seriously lacking
A government we can trust.
By any account, our sorry world
Is rightly ****** right up.
If you're not ******,
Then you've missed
The news at six o'clock.

I wish she were on my mind,
But she's not. She's in it,
And has full possession.

I've lost my mind;
I'm beside myself;
I'm next to an idiot!

She has my mind in her hands,
And I have time on mine.

She takes all mine. My time.
But I don't mind spending time,
And gladly giving all of mine,
If she would only mind me.
Mine me.

(There is treasure to be had)

Between the vaxxers
And the anti-vaxxers;
Between the dearly educated,
And the poorly educated;
The lines are blurred,
But clearly visible.

The twins came today.
They took their first breaths
On this first day of May.
Today, and all days,
I swear and I pray,
To love them always,
Come what may.

One may observe one's quite absurd,
And question why one's not deterred,
When one hears what one's observed.
One's world abounds with wondrous places,
Peopled with mosaic races.
When one blurts out a black man's black,
One says one's not a Democrat.
If one detects one's hue of skin,
One says one's not Republican.
But one is blamed for mouthing words
Like Indian, Paddy, Jew or Kurd.
One's innocuous indiscretions
Has one's eyes rolling on occasions.
Should one be blind to the homeless,
Then one can't see one's not blameless.
When one supports a Pride Parade,
One proudly says one's not afraid.
If one's an anti-abortionist,
Then one must help the Innocents.
“The sick and dying are a great expense,”
One yells demanding the same treatment.
One preaches hard-line on foreign shores,
Would **** the ******* in one war.
One's a diplomatic boor
(And one's glad it's there and not here).
If one knows one conceals a gun,
One's compensating for the wee one.
If one encounters a common thief,
One should keep one's company brief.
Should one hear a politician,
One needs to separate fact from fiction.
One sees terrorists everywhere
From the confines of one's chair.
One speak of one's impending doom,
Looking out from one's room.
There's so much angst one lays on one,
Yet we are one,
We're not one.
Our time here has ebbed,
Will flow,
One must leave.
One must go.

Will you falter and fade
In a Palliative room,
With beeps and tubes
Confirming your doom?
Or a fiery crash
And screech of rubber
As onlookers see
Your hair aflame;
Will you fall from the sky
In a laser marked plane;
Get shot while buying
A lottery ticket,
Die doing something
Horribly wicked?
Perhaps the sound
Near your ears at night
Will forewarn your demise
By a mosquito bite.

Inside,
I'm naked
And warm,
Where our hearts
Beat
Despite the storm
Of whirling air
And pulsing blood,
Digestive growls
And umbilic crud.
I snuggle in
Fetal bliss,
Where I await
My first kiss
And first cuddle;
Safe
From elemental muddle
Of outside harms.
I see a light,
I'm being torn,
No going back,
I'm reborn.

Many of the world's greatest Leaders throughout our tumultuous history have;
Many of  the insightful Revolutionaries in stink hole and glory hole countries have;
Many of the oppressed, disenfranchised and cheated also have.
Look to Lenin, Mandela, Gandi, Nehru, Havel, Bhutto, Ceausescu, Charles I, Papadopoulos, Lady Jane Grey, Louis XVI, Marcos, Milosevic, a pile of Mohameds, Mussolini, Nicholas II, Pinochet, Saddam, Marie Antoinette, Pope Clement V, Selassie, Baghdadi, Duvalier, and, let's not forget the author of Mien Kampf, Adolph the Tenderizer.
And what do they all have in common?
Some, before they became boldly notorious, and others, after they became criminally notorious.
Some, looked out their window and saw platforms being erected.
Others witnessed gallows, guillotines. posts and walls.
They all got some time in:
PRISON. GAOL. JAIL. COOLER. LOCKUP.  DUNGEON. KEEP. PEN. BASTILLE. CLINK. STATESVILLE. SLAMMER. STOCKADE. THE BIG HOUSE.
You get the idea.
His time will come.

I can guess your names,
Cleverly chosen to reflect
This year's popularity.
Names beginning with XYZ.
Some silly ones, by all accounts,
But I'm silly to think my opinion counts.
Though that's of no matter for what you face;
For we've left this place in a sorry state.
Our lame excuse is,
We didn't fare well from our benefactors.
The ethnic mix was already a mess;
And rightly demands fair redress;
Broken promises to those who dreamed,
The indigenous and the migrant streams;
Those in chains, though innocent,
The fairer ***, and I'm not sexist,
Has been under the heel of the strong,
Yes, far more fair,
And they've been wronged.
Unique communities of men and women,
Have cracked the doors, blown their horns
And tumbled the walls of garrisons
Through film, print, paint and clay.
Their inclusiveness gives me hope,
That some near not far future day,
We'll all be gathered in one parade.

I've scratched the surface of our inheritence,
And in fifty years of managing the place,
We've left problems til too late;
Some we've worked on,
Some escaped.
We've pointed fingers far too long,
The work we started's never done,
You too will have to pass it on
To the unborn of the human race.

She's a messianic complex,
She's way too self-absorbed;
She's not the centre of the universe,
Nor the orbit of my world.

She's not lit beneath the spot light,
She's not the colours of a rainbow;
She's not the sun or inconstant moon,
Nor the North Star of my nights.

She's not the compass for direction,
Nor the warm winds of my winters,
Or the cool rains of my summers;
But she's my predilection,
It may sound misconstrued;
It may be a prediction,
It may as well be true:
*It's hard for me to live this life
If life's not lived with you.

A newborn received
The greatest gift imaginable,
Then proceeds to loose it
Day by day.
And we say
We love her.

1 Pope
0 Pope
1 Pope
2 Popes
1 Pope
0 Pope...

Eternal time to Re-Group +

I knew her when
She learned her letters;
She liked me too.

We shared a tent;
Followed the sparks fading in the full moon's face.
Draped water over our skins at midnight.

She bickered with her mother,
Whom she mothered today.

She once had a mole
Only we two knew.

I knew her then.
That's the fact of it.

She rebelled,
Then surpassed naysayers and detractors.
I knew her, then.
Got to know her at her best-
A sharer, and keeper,
One who wasn't one to rest.

I knew her without discretion;
Like when she partied at Mardi Gras,
Wearing string-beads, blowing saxes,
Something she never spoke of.

Then, this cannot be her.
I knew her, and,
I didn't know.

Sit, fast.
Lie down if you find privacy.
It's a wave, cresting over you,
And you wonder,
Should I continue breathing?
Gulp, and let the wash begin.
Look to the feet first,
And calm your soles:
Work the legs,
Think outside the head,
But stay down -
You'll walk again,
And wait, and forget,
Then forgive yourself.

You would say,
If It were so.
Remind me
To grab a coat,
For the chill and snow.
If cash was tight
We'd be home at night.
If she didn't make the cut,
Forgot her lines,
Or missed the shot,
There was no sugar-coat,
You said it straight
If it were so:
Girls, you're doing fine.
Today is was, not now.
Wait til next time.
If it were so,
You'd say.
So say you love me
One last time,
So I can let you go.

When the plank is up,
Icicles form like the sword of Damocles
Above my door.
Breath is whisked away by prisms
Hanging between limbs, flailing.
My parka rests in the closet;
The shovel looks incongruous
Leaning against the shed.
High, I giggle in the peopled park,
Waiting for descent.

There is talk of another Arctic Vortex,
Combined with the Texas jet stream,
A canopy of cold is raised,
Crueler in the bright sunshine of March.
But we see shadows, elongating and shrinking,
And my toes reach tentatively
For the softening ground.
But soon,
I'm high again,
Heading towards the bright, yellow sun.

Give your ******* a name,
And then Goggle it.