It's wonderful to look
With wonder at our winter nights.
I don't know the constellations,
Glistening like my cold, wet eyes,
Deep in the sockets of sky.
I wonder,
Do they blink
As we crawl out our days.
O, stars, cast a shadow for me,
A midnight companion to whisper.
Let me cool
In your piercing,
Firey eyes.

I've never cried at funerals
Beside the bowed heads
Looking past the markers
In this gated community.

I've never cried at weddings,
Those blissful, blessed tears of joy.
Seeing the children settled and content
For the years they've yet to live.

I've never cried at birthings,
Though tears are warranted
For years of trouble and ecstasy
They will surely cry.

I've never cried before the courts
Pleading for leniency,
Or alone in a cell.

I've never cried for lost innocence,
Those tears that only come with experience.
The loss of a love.

I've cried for myself,
And I carry a hankie
To marvel at the wet spots.

He has a thing
That hangs on him;
Keeps it with him
At night, asleep,
In light of day,
He keeps his thing
At work or play.
It's craddled and cuddled,
It seems to double;
He's kept it all these years.
He hides it from fam and friends,
He'll keep his thing
From now til then,
Never knowing how or when
This thing will be no more.
It's not a ribbon,
It's not a bow,
How he got it
He doesn't know.
A keepsake that he never shows,
Unless you visit him,
But you're not invited in.
He's dogged by his thing,
His private, personal sin,
Thirsting from within.
Although his cup's filled to the brim,
It's not enough for him,
And his thing.

For us,
The Super Bowl
Is poetry
In legal motion.

To lift a thought to a song,
To redress perceived wrongs;
To relive my youth,
To expose the truth;
To express my love,
To see a pigeon as a dove;
To foresee the future,
To capture the elusive;
To give voice to the abused,
To find refuge when refused;
To immortalize loved ones,
To embrace the shunned ones;
To know stars are fireflies,
To scrape away lies;
To explain time is just a moment,
But enternity's in a sonnet.
Simply put,
It's the right thing to do.

He held some Romantic notion
His years of love and devotion,
The exposition of emotion
Could overcome the troubles.

He tried to be meta-physical,
Raised his crucible to the celestial,
Prayed to move the unchangeable
To overcome the troubles.

For years he toiled in his realism,
The jobs, debts and persistent requiems,
The slugging burdens of their tediums,
To overcome the troubles.

He was Dada, then Grand-dada.
She was Mama, then Grand-mama.
Once an in-law, now an outlaw,
Yet always there was trouble.

Now he's lost his generation,
Learned the cost of retribution;
Still sourcing out his frustration,
Considering the final solution
For dealing with his troubles.

It's not the rain
that makes my eyes wet.
It hasn't rained in forty days.
Nights are long and quiet.
The silence cuts to bone.

It wasn't rain that quenched the fire.
It hasn't rained in forty nights.
The well is dry... so am I.
Nights I sit in silence
while it rains.

r ~ 4/19/14

Only takes a small axe
to chop down a tree.
Which one are you
is the other me?
Could be harder to untangle
roots deep weave
from what we have
to who we could be.
Shall we close the book now
go our separate ways
and wonder how the story
could've played?
Or do we carry on growing
creating page after page
trying to forget the trees  
from which they were made?