Birds,
Upside down
On a wire,
Tell us landing
Keeps you
Higher,
But you're better off
As an airy flyer.

Dear Dear:

I heard you're not well, and I'm sorry as hell. Nobody, not me, not anyone we know, could see it coming. Was it metastasized kindness with a primary worry; some say eroded patience and promises, a tightening of throat, are systemic symptoms of a body of hope.  I can send you the quote:

                               Drs. say excessive and extensive heart
                               failure is brought on by an over-exposure
                               to caring, and hence, is co-existent with
                               the rapacious spread of the disease.
                               Fortunately we've isolated the hosts.

I was sorry as hell to hear you're not well, and I asked,
Why you, not another?
But your immune to such an infectious question.
And Dear, I'm sad to say,  there's no remedy. You're  stricken with being a mother.

Once the fee fie fo fum *******
Stopped, he was small,
Lying still,
Eyes and lips glued,
Orifices finally stuffed.
What would a priest do?
So, I stretched my hand,
Ritualistic-like,
As a benediction of charity,
An attempt.
I should've worn a soutane,
Perhaps used a kneeler,
But suplication ended.

That night, I looked
Beyond the moon
To starry clusters of ka-boom,
But nothing.
That sealed it.
Death bed conversions
Don't move me;
Death bed confessions do.
Ah, still nothing.
Forgiveness has
A statute of limitations.

In the pitch of sleep
On a hot, humid night,
From a depth so deep
I woke in fright.
The overhead fan
Swirled the air,
The bedroom window
Was drawn and bare.
Out from the dark
I heard the scream
Penetrate and join my dream.
It slammed and splattered
On my screen,
An anguished cry,
An animal dies
Caught by a red-eyed predator.
I couldn't help but think
Of death,
Coming this November.

Be careful where you sit your ***,
Keep your kids off the grass,
Take a stroll but wear a mask,
Wash your food,
Avoid butter,
While you're at it,
Wash your water.
Slather toxins on our skin
That seep into our soul.
Death is all around us,
Don't say you've not been told.

Don't suicide.
Don't die.
Death is way overrated.
You don't rest peacefully
Rolling in the deep,
Or sit on clouds
Admiring the view
Below.
You're dead.
It's not a compromise
From our daily woes;
It's not respite
From our daily blows.
It's death.
And if you think
For one eternal second
You'll hover, ghost-like,
At your memorial,
And hear stories
About how great you are,
Were,
Or see your enemies cry,
Forget it.
You didn't get even
With anybody.
I suspect, if it's possible,
You wouldn't be interested
In us anymore,
Anyway.
You got dead.
Forever and ever.

The words have stopped,
The music aint flowing,
There's been the death of a lady's man,
The death of one Leonard Cohen.

A hapless Lit student named Brandon,
Was researching Death of a Salesman;
He Googled then ogled
What Hap Loman called Strudel,
Then choked on his oral exam.

So many things happened
So many years ago.
You hitch-hiked to have tea with Mammy;
But not me.

You scaled the Mount to succeed;
Without me.

We slid the Fiat into a Rambler,
Before your big night.
The front got bent out of shape,
But we still went,
Drinking whiskey from the bottle.
Nothing stopped us. We couldn't bother.

We stayed at Sean's,
Or various friends,
At Inns, or canvas tents;
All were means to our ends.

It was fifty years ago...
Half a century of years;
Decades of joyous laughter,
With many unanswered tears.

Decartes's too smart,
Much too profound
With his,
Cogito Ergo Sum:
I think therefore I am.
That's deeper than my toes.

So, I propound
Simplicity.
Read on,
Perhaps you'll agree:
Expirem Ergo Sum:
I die therefore I am.
That's as deep as I go.

It's December in Ontario,
And an early morning fog
Has cancelled school buses,
Again.
In a few more years,
We'll worry about frost
In our orange groves,
As Florida digs out
Of another blizzard.

We're deep to our waists
In February;
Trees look like a geriatric pool-fitness class,
And the grass,
Sparse as the bobbing skulls.

      I heard a lone Canada goose overhead,
     The V has left the others for dead;
     And a gray pall covers all
     With winter's threadbare spread.

The alarm is set,
The time is right,
The season's snug,
But not sleeping yet.

     Soon, the beast will close its eyes,
     And Spring will march in,
     Fresh and vigorous,
     Like a new recruit,
     Green and anxious.

She'll fire-up roots, flowers and leafs.
In the pool they'll sway in the breeze,
Branches touching in Spring's reprieve.

Stand up, stand guard,
Staunchly defend all that is ours.
What is ours to defend?
Begin with what was before us,
The good earth and all inhabitants.
Defend that which is ours.
Truth and love;
Leave a legacy of righteousness -
Defend these, and thus,
Defend those whom we leave,
And leave them to.

We live our lives
In past review,
Sometimes we get
A snap preview;
It's what we call
Deja Vu.
Our synoptic
Brain ignites,
Fuel injected,
Bathing grey matter;
Hurling perception
Through time;
Faster than a blink of light,
No more than a nano,
To immediate present.
Then brain relapses,
Returns to stasis,
We're in the past again.
Same peoples,
Same places,
But I was here,
Before.
Never left, now
Back once more.

Ever hold a razor blade
That you couldn't use;
Find a six foot piece of rope
That couldn't be abused?
Ever buy a vial of pills
That couldn't do the ****?
Ever enter office buildings
Looking for a ledge;
Or walk across a span of water
Without stopping on the bridge?
Ever wade into a pond
Breathing like the fishes?
Anyway you think on
It,
You've delusional
Death wishes.

Desmond Tutu died.
Not left behind in Afghanistan.
He didn't drown in a comet induced Tsunami.
The lava flow from la Palma didn't fry him.
Aids, Corona, measles, small-pox or Enola didn't infect him.
World fires didn't **** the oxygen from his lungs.
He didn't dehydrate in the Sahara.
No plane fell on him, nor did he fall out of one.
His size indicates it wasn't a self-imposed hunger strike.

Desmond Tutu just died.

A two year old with his father's handgun didn't do him in.
He wasn't struck down by a falling tree, or speeding car.
I'm sure he fell lots of times, but he always got back up.
He doesn't hang from a cross; he wasn't tossed overboard.
And he wasn't lynched, electrocuted, injected or shot standing.

He died,
Naturally, on St. Stephen's Day, when stoning is popular.

It's a **** good thing he led such an exemplary, meritorious life, or we wouldn't know
Desmond Tutu died.

The cancer is told to no one.
We latently recognize noble reticence;
Are inspired by the selflessness:
He hid the pain and loss so well.
The addict,
The same lie,
And we say,
Loser!
One inspires;
The other,
Despised.
Two suffer too.

Do we really believe
That it's as simple
As a coincidence,
The words,
Spoke, wrote and vote
Rhyme?
There are bigger pictures out there
Than my phone screen.
Phone, home, alone...
Tell me that's serendipitous.
What about
Frump, Lump, Dump, Trump.
That's not chance.
That's Divine.

I can rise to any daily challenge,
Except the diagnosis;
Then the days of respite
Are scripted,
The scales are tipped
To measure meaning.

     Yesterday I felt the pressure
     Of my father's hand
     While I wed the garden;
     Never thinking I'd long
     For those days.

Memories fade cool.
First, I wonder,
Then, I ponder,
Now I worry.

     I've read
     The Death of Ivan Ilych,
     I know It.

I'll give traitors
A sneering reprieve,
Dismiss,
Turn my back,
Breathe between the particles
Of a middle-class life,
Then languish
Between your clean eyes.
Will you miss Christmas
This year?
Am I asking too soon
About fewer rooms?

No, no, no, Dirtbreath. I say we call the big one an elephant,
and the small one a mouse.
                                             Eve

I'm sure red's a better color for me.
                                              M. Monroe

She has a face that could sink a thousand ships.
                                              Ulysses

N­ow that Hawking's dead, I'm the smartest
guy on Earth.
                                             D. Trump

You're too Jung to understand the Superego.
                                              S. Freud

No. You keep it. I have enough.
                                              B. Graham

Are you sure that's the Delaware?
                                              G. Washington

E=Mc Donalds.
                                              A. Einstein

Go pound salt.
                                              Gandhi

Wha­t day is it?
                                               Roosevelt

T­hat's one small.... oops!
                                               N. Armstrong

I don't remember any of my dreams.
                                               M.L. King, Jr.

Hey, John, I can see your house from up here.
                                                Jesus

Beaches, fields, streets, hills. Did I leave anything out?
                                                W. Churchill

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I wrote 'em all.
                                                 R. Starr

It's just too big to wrap your brain around.
                                                 S. Hawking

Don't lose your head. This won't change a thing.
                                                  Robespierre

Before I was fined, I walked the line.
                                                   J. Cash

Could you lengthen the title and shorten the book?
                                                  Tolstoy'­s editor

What if we put the workers on conveyor belts?
                                                   H. Ford

I have a splitting headache... hmmm, interesting.
                                                   ­Oppenheimer

I've never liked orange juice.
                                                    N. Brown

Really? You want to blame me?
                                                    ******

He stings like a butterfly.
                                                     S. Liston

#timesup #metoo
                                                     A. Boleyn

Mr. Watson. Come here. Spare me a dime?
                                                      Bell­

Roebuck said he'd be back in ten minutes.
                                                      R­.W. Sears

To be or to do be do be do.
                                                      Shakes­peare/Sinatra

When you call me Whitey, I get cotton pickin *******.
                                                      E. Whitney

We're the team to beat!
                                                      Toro­nto Maple Leafs

Don't call me a Mother!
                                                      Mo­ther Theresa

Is that a Cuban*?
                                                      M. Lewinsky

Did We
Drivel or drabble,
Blither or blather,
Prattle or prittle,
Nitter or natter?
Which two don't
Match;
Which two don't
Belong?
Yes, we know
It's a choice,
Yes, we know
We'll be wrong.

Hawking's told me
My universe is contracting;
Then he changed his mind,
It's now expanding.
Sounds like a new wave diet.

Make a difference?
Be the difference!
There's the difference
For me.

The strangest dream
I've ever had,
Is when I dined
With the dead.

My skinless, boneless
Friends and foes,
Enjoyed the spread
Of Deviled Toes,
Deviled Ham,
Grapes of wrath,
Deviled eggs
And sin-namon bread.
The deviled tongue
Sang no siren's song
Marinading in
Devil's Dung.

Devils On Horseback
Washed down
Our gullets,
And ****** Mary's
Flooded the banquet
Capping the feast.
I opened eyes
To end REM sleep.

Since then
My morning meal
Has altered.
Encouraged by
The risen sun,
I butter myself
A Hot Cross Bun.

A hind leg
Shaped like Antarctica
Will scratch us off
This golden retriever.

A passing UFO
May crop-dust us.

We're nibbling cheese
Near the trap;
Swimming upstream
Towards spears and nets;
Making reservations
In a roach hotel;
We're in the cross-hairs
Of Mother ******;
The place needs sheep-dipping
Before dinosaurs walk
On a new coat.

I've
Disassociated
Myself
With
Losers:
Now,
I'm
Beside
My -
Self.

Stupid is as stupid does.
Tupid is as tupid sounds.
Upid is as upid sounds.
Pid is as pid sounds.
Id is...
Donald.

Love is a dish best served cold.
Or should that  be revenge?
Often they're interchangeable,
As the outcome is similar.
It's wise to fear both,
Both unexpected
And most anticipated... and dreaded.
They come out of the blue.
I excel at neither,
Though I keep my platter
On a low shelf.

The coffee *** just signalled, Ready,
So I pour the cream before the java:
A cup of divergent thinking.
There are roads running
In opposite directions,
Sharing points of similarity:
A tree, a sign, me.
Inside or outside the box of thinking,
Using the lower and upper ladder rungs
To paint the same wall,
Prologues and epilogues to the same story,
Lawyers in clown suits,
Children using,
Kittens chewing slippers,
Dogs in litter boxes,
Earth cooling,
Healing and feeding the masses,
Elected monarchies... NO monarchies,
Sleeping in or getting up,
Cursory letter to family and friends
(Though this is coming to an end),
Making love while wearing gloves,
The moon moves east to west
In the blink of sleep,
Churches giving alms and unlocking doors,
Schools excelling,
Parents attending.
To juxtapose is divergent,
Like sobering up with detergent
(You may be clean, but are you dry?).

If insurgents were divergent,
We'd have more convergence.

The dividing line
In our
You/Me partnership,
In our
Us/Them friendship,
In our
Love/Hate relationship,
Is a listing/sinking
Forward slash.

If you do date,
There's no debate,
Come the due date.

You were the perfect offering:
You wrote,
You sang,
You played,
Did anything,
But now -
Are there any cracks or crevices,
Windows, holes or doors;
Has the pine split below?
With the leafs gone,
Under Supermoon or blazing sun,
Does the light get in,
Or was it just
Another song?

He lifted his leg,
And ****** on
The Tree of Life,
The Tree of Knowledge,
And the entangled roots
Of all humanity.

When compared to the average life span
Of the average human, on one side,
Dogs come up short of us; tall ones, even shorter.
And trees, especially tall ones, live longer. On the average.
How many times, in an average day,
Do I come between such?

You know Cohen and Ellis,
Powel and McEnany,
Hutchison, Meadows,
And soon, Giuliana;
But try not to recall
The most infamous POTUS of all:

Donald the orange-skinned POTUS
Has a Pinocchio nose,
And everytime he speaks out,
You literally see it grow.
All of his well-placed minions,
And millions that can't be named,
Try to protect the Donald,
But only expose their shame.

Then one sunny DC Day
SC Jack Smith  says:
Donald with your team in flight,
Your term in office is finite.

Then how his minions left him,
And they shouted silently;
Donald, you long-nosed politico,
You're a blip in history.

Strange guests appear on Christmas Eve,
Entities, more real than seems;
And POTUS soon will get three visits,
From three well-known, transparent spirits,
That call as an unholy host.
Stormy, his first ghastly ghost,
Then Moscow Mitch to **** his boast;
But the ghost of Christmases to come,
Is New York's Vance; there's scary fun.

Should you phone
When I'm home,
Don't assume I'm alone
Choosing epithets
For my stone.

If you phone
And hear a graon,
Don't assume I'm on the throne.
That's me practicing
Saxaphone.

When you phone
And hear me moan
In mellifulous polytone;
That's my slide
On a sweet trombone.

I'm the new age
Don Quixote,
Sitting in
My library.
I'm not dying,
I'm versifying,
Communing with
Life's mystery.

We've never heeded warnings,
We surely won't start now;
Because we ate from a blissful tree,
We're mopping up our brows.
They witnessed a smoking Vesuvius,
Yet went about the day;
We mark washed up bodies
From distasteful lands,
With arms wrapped round each other;
Signed Versailles to end a war,
But postponed it instead;
Ignored the bottle's label,
Drank whitener before going to bed.

We're blinded in Casandra's world,
Ignoring words of peril,
Uttered for our good.

The digs prove the existence of eternity.
Lucy joined millions of years ago.
Thats a long time to be in eternity,
But that's hardly eternity.
Her relations don't bring flowers,
Or trim the grass.
They stopped mourning years ago.
Perhaps hours after she died.
Eternity is a long time not to talk.

Love doesn't really stay in your heart forever.
Forever? Too Romantic a notion.
My eternity began at conception,
And I'm in no hurry to continue.
Neither should you.
It's a long time.

Will someone or something
Find forty percent of my bones down the road.
There's not enough time to fill eternity.
Remove it from famous sayings
And we have no comparison
For love, duty, time and beauty.
Can we really see it
In a blade of grass
Or in an hour.
Digs don't prove reincarnation, resurrection or spooky stuff.
Just eternity.
Silent. Non-existent.
Imagine a dove swooping down and brushing our world
With one wing
Every thousand years.
A soft or palatable swipe.
It's all the same.
Every thousand years.
After a period our world eventually vanishes.
Every mountain and ocean – gone.
Skyscrapers and swimming pools – gone.
Boulders and grains of sand – gone.
And the animals of ground, wind and water,
And earth itself – gone.
Eternity begins with the last brush
Of its wing.
That's a long time to be dead.
A long time being quiet.

I read endless poems about eternal love
And self-destruction,
Only one theme defines eternity.
Death.
The digs have proven it.
Lucy was found alone,
No lovers' bones.
Death wins out in the eternity theme.
Constant and sure.
And that's a long, long time.
Don't dwell on it.

Don't fall in love.
Jump.
Have a back-up chute.

My brother did.
I haven't.
Others have, going back.
Forward, I will;
But today isn't the day
For theologizing on the mysterious,
Unknown will.
I won't squander away,
Vicariously,
Beneath  indiscriminate winds.
I don't get it.

Don't give up on me. Please.
I'm begging you.
I know that look.
You're shutting down.
I've made promises before,
And I've meant them 100%, every time.
But my faults prevail. I know them well.
So do you. I've promised to get help,
And I did. It failed... I failed...
I failed myself and in so doing,
I've failed you.
But please, don't give up on me.
I know I can change, but I don't know how.
I've tried. I went back to my old prayers,
To professionals, to my innermost self.
I've worked on it so many times,
Alone and with others,
But never with you.
You distanced yourself from my troubles,
Even though you were an intricate part.
You had a stake in this.
You have a stake in this.
Don't give up on me.
You'll see.
I'll be me again, before the troubles.
But what's to become of me,
If you give up on me.
Don't! Please!

It's usual when one moves a stone,
There's things there that one finds;
Someone tries selling a car,
To rear-end us and our hind.

Amazing all the deals one's offered-
Insurance to seal us in our coffins;
Stocks to secure our future,
Anything to get our lucre.

The stone can be a pebble,
Inocuous at first glance;
But move it and one finds oneself
Involved in false romance.

Roll a boulder,
Lift a rock, of any make or shine;
Well find someone's beneath our heels-
The blind leading the blind.

The creepy, crawly bottom-feeders,
Are waiting for our kind.

Good morning, Dear Wife,
The only love of my life.
The sun's not yet up,
I'll go brew us a cup;
So, stay snug in our bed,
And I'll bring it up
With a bite that's enough,
Till you're ready to rise
With those gorgeous green eyes,
And join me this day,
And all days I do pray,
Till we rise up no more.

What good can come from words of mine,
In open, blank or crafted rhyme;
Could they affect a single mind,
And if so, for how long a time.

If my heartaches touched you
Because of what you read,
I know you understand
My truth needs to be said.

If what you read
Brought pallid tears
Over your quick and dead;
Or the words I chose to write my lines
Cast shadows before your blocked sunshine;
Or wrote good and bad of family and friends,
Of our descents and our ascends,
Or a general lack of recompense,
I truly make amends.
If you felt shame or remorse,
Don't rue the day you read my verse.

(You see, I concur with your every curse)

But if you winced or held a giggle,
Rolled your eyes at some recognition
Of our shared quixotic plight,
Then I'm pleased to get it right.