Temperature changed
Spectrum shifted
Brown around town

Look see glance
Walk it talk it
Best you can

Foreign as familiar
Strange the same
The new game

All one everyone
Smiles are smiles
Walking miles

En este mundo
Todos familia
Cada dia

Follow a moral compass
Yours or one divine
Own your needle swings

Abhor hypocrisy
Shun mendacity  
Straight path walked

Don’t defend deceivers
Lest it define you as
Waddle Chump

Be better
Choose another
Jump that ****

My bones ache
My head seeks

The body slumps as
Spirit breathes and

Unhindered soars
And scores

That door has closed
Everything known, practiced, reveled
A short time ago

Ones trusted, loved
Now just another
Long past innuendo

The new unknown
A chasm sprightly trundled
As a newborn idiot would

Has its bright baubles
But leaves one troubled
What mattered whence when

Which involvement mattered
What remembered remains
I don’t think I’ll see again

I’m happy; but why so sad?
I miss my dad.

I saw him last a year ago
I wiped his *** and so

I told him I was proud
I’m glad I said it out loud

Because now I can’t
Nothing to recant

He met the end with dignity
And aplomb, didn’t he?

Lovable lug of a man
Emulate? I’ll try if I can

I thought him an ******* republican
At age 18—then thought again

I left home to be me
Family? I was free!

Young, naive, on my own
I made my own home

Family was for other guys
That umbilical thought otherwise

Because there was another
Yeah, my mother

Always there, always kind
Reminded me of mine

Calls ended with, “Here’s your father...”
A Lake Woebegone bother

“Hello son...” he’d intone
“Hey, pops,” I’d own

Every poem needs a fulcrum
A change always welcome

I’d say before the call stopped
“I love you, pops”

Months, years, eons begun
Finally, “I love you too, son.”

Next defies time, logic and law
A love so deep it fills me with awe

We became good friends
Mutual respect to the end

The loss cuts deep
And so I weep

And you still have
Your mom and dad?

Call them.
Amen.

What I don’t know and
What I want to know:

I know what is important
And suspect the rest

Time tells us which friends
And those not in the end

Safety is illusion
Reality as allusion

Now is not knowable
Instantly fast then gone

Glimpse it askance
And do your best

Apologize for faux pas
And skate the rest

Past is immutable
Unless you can forget

All futures possible so
Imagine the impossible

What I know is this:
“.......................”

With teacher as student
And all the world’s topsy-turvey
Not knowing knight's next move
Although all the board’s a flux
Each step is potential adventure and
Intuition is your only guide
Take the step