She combed her hair with the night sky
& then let loose those bits of stray galaxy that had embedded themselves in the wisdom of her follicles.

young lovers enthralled
in a passion that can
melt the deepest
Alpine snow cap

announce an intention
to join as one
till death do you part

the elders smile
at the audacity of
your grandiloquent
proclamation

youthful optimism
expressing pollyannish
sentiments born
of wistful hope

yet to learn the rules
of the vows of matrimony
and the endless sweet labor
required  to keep it alive and well

thus i pass on  this sage advice

when the baby cries at night
when the car won't start
when the rent bill is due
and you find yourself
a bit short

i wish you love...

when the cupboard is bare
and the desire to satiate
swelling hunger pangs
is overwhelming

i wish you love…

when you find yourself travelling
through roads that are
unfamiliar and foreboding

when you are hopelessly lost
in the darkest reaches
of the Black Forest

i wish you love…

as you grow as individuals
straining your relationship

when in laws become outlaws
and the pulls and pushes
of family and friends becomes
unfamiliar and misunderstood

i wish you love…

when resentments and insecurities
conspire to undermine trust

when greener pastures
pose a mirage of better things

i wish you love…

when oversight and neglect
leave you empty

when the luster of the
edelweiss bloom fades

when exasperation melts
the Alps greatest glacier
flooding everything you have

when the untended furnace
doesn't fire and the last
log is consumed

be patient
be diligent
be expectant
be kind

hold on to it
believe in it
practice it
trust it

may it bind you
in a perfect circle

and all your fondest
hopes and wishes
will be yours

i wish you love…

Stevie Wonder
Signed Sealed Delivered

Salutation for
Engagement Party
Maxine Lintel and
Glendon McCallum
Munich
11/29/13
jbm

Sunglasses stolen from Wingz in Duck, NC
a $15 thrift shop suit - just in case
the car is used
and the cashiers at the GoodWill down the street all know his face
bagged eyes
morning after hair
in need of a shower and a smile

He just bought a $200 laptop
now he masturbates in style
shoving Lenovo 2in1's and iPad's up their ***
please sir - may I have some more
status symbols symbolic of castes
and he hides among the untouchables
but this **** is loud
and I don't drink ***** unless P Diddy made it
Memento Mori
when we die -
we'll leave behind remnants of our false idol

My Father is the little boy kicking ant hills and pulling wings off butterflies, but he will cry and not understand why that beautiful monarch can't fly away and he will not understand why the ants have gone away. He has a spirit that has been lost for decades and I think now he has realized that he must search in order to find it. My Father crushed my Mother's spirit because he just never understood who she was but he knew he loved her and it was infuriating to him. He never meant any harm, genuinely,  he only wants the best like most fathers, and that was his downfall. I love my Father. He is my Father and the only one I will ever have. I will never look through the same glass as him and I have learned from his mistakes, just like I have from my Mother's as well (my father being one of hers). I have a little piece of my Father in me but I have a big part of Me inside and I know that I must learn and not repeat.

'I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shall find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.'

I’ll never love another* he inanely thinks as he flips through 112 channels with a remote that hardly ever leaves his hand and even though each and every program he lands on is a repeat (he never blinks) but he can lose himself inside a world of surreal and not try to face a world that is real. Please he pleads to the TV Just give a something, anything, to be make me free. Show me a world where I can be me He sighs as she walks into the room and sits down next to him and looks like she needs to say something but he doesn’t want her to begin…

I’ll never love another she tearfully thinks as she slips into the room and stands inside the doorway, quietly, watching her beautiful groom, flipping channels almost angrily, like he doesn’t care to watch what’s going on but is searching for frivolity. She sits down next to him and gives him a smile that is much too grim and slips her small delicate hand into his to grasp the remote control and slowly take it away from him so she can turn off the TV and make him face what is in her soul, she needs him to see the ultimate goal. She gently places the remote next to the empty cereal bowl.

Please don’t say it, please don’t please…. Don’t... He is reciting his litany that has been his personal prayer, his own mantra, over and over again because, ever since the cancer, she’s been distant and he doesn’t know how to close the gap. How can you ever get over a life that is cut short? What do you say? Why can’t people look at it differently? How come only one that is loved becomes “That poor sap” What’s up with that? She doesn’t know what he knows. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say before she goes.

She’s sitting there silently; he’s holding his breath indefinitely. She looks him in the eye with a tear on her cheek, he feels it is now his turn to speak….

Rabbits! He bursts out loud
And she absently rubs her hand across her bald head
Yes she says, mostly embarrassed
I had them tattoo them on to my head
so from afar they look like hares instead…
I’m just so sick of not seeing the fun side of life

He fully sees what it has taken for her to come forward but there is no comforting her when he is stricken with his own strife. It’s time for him to go, she needs someone stronger. Someone who will comfort her in the hours that she needs and can give her some sort of life. She’s thinking that it is time to unburden the only person that ever understood why she chose to live and why it would be inevitable that she very quickly die and if he was anyone else she would not have gone to such lengths to make them understand but she always knew that he would want to know why.

How can she explain to him that no matter how much longer they had left together that it may be short, it may be long but time is irrelevant to a soul mate. It’s as easy for him to explain that there is a perfect reason to try to hide the pain but it seems almost impossible to escape even though there is a reason for haste.

One lets the other go to spare one another, such a waste...

Jan 25