Smoke is clearing
We can see clearly now
Rain is stopping with
Flood waters receding

Appreciate this moment of clarity
Watch the fog resolve
After days of dark, the sun
Revealing harsh truths

In stark contrast
To hidden shadows
What follows is
A path forward

BAM!
The cudgel descends

RIP!
The bandage off

****!
Old wounds can fester

POW!
Kicked while down

WOW!
Past is present again

GET UP
Brush it off
Mend your wall
Stand tall and
Walk away

My story is unexceptional
But for a few exceptions

A story uneventful
Except when remarkable

There are characters dull
And characters full

It’s a whirlygig existence
More than a water slide ride

Take note as it happens
No one else keeps score

Listening through the chatter
What‘s mattered now shattered
Cluttered schemes now
Shuttered dreams
Minority priorities
Reassigned—
Misaligned

Days, months of hot brown
Walking around here, there

I wake with a poem of home
Far from the familiar fog

Missing the mist and rain
Missing the wet and green

Full moon tonight in Oaxaca
It’s full too, in Freshwater

Don’t forget us, gatos
We will be home and wet soon

02/08/2020
Oaxaca, Mexico

Creepy dolly thingies like
Chunky Chucky upchucks

Melody box ballerinas
Mesmerizing, hypnotizing

Rat-a-tat-tats splatter spats
To the music of sax and violins

Little ******’s pursing lips
Seducing the sinner in me

Or ending it all at the end of
The barrel of a long, ferric gun

Buenos días
Hoy es sábado aquí
Hoy es domingo allí en Australia
Hoy es በማንኛውም ቀን
En el Planeta Próxima

El sol salió hace 15 minutos
No veo ¿Que?
Esta detras de las nubes
Pero sabe estas allí
¿Porque?
Se lo que se.

Sé que cada día es un milagro.
Sé que para ser amado,
Necesitas amar
Sé que soy amado porque
Te amos

I cleaned up my **** today
Then, afterwords,
A lot of mouse turds

Decades-old dirt
Archived, postponed
Obvious duff discarded

Genetic leavings
Fingernail clippings
The flakes of folks we were

Cobwebs cleared
Mouse traps sprung
The new has begun

There’s a low below WWD
A kind of neutrality
How low can you go?
Lower than flow

Quiet

Breathless

Present

Still

But…
We go as we go

Off course
By thirteen degrees west
Level the mainsail

Apology correction
Eight degrees right
Agree to digress

**** shouting
In a **** storm where
Nothing is heard

Wave spray intense
It’s nonsense
Useless direction

Taking in the beauty of this spring
Grass growing fast
Birds chirping cheerily
Mowers lowing in the distance

Blossoms beautiful surround me
Future apples plums peaches cherries
With almost every tree leafing
Rain/sun/temp ratio tipping

Old trope: poems by the millions
But this spring is special
This spring is now
Elevating specialness

shadows stretch long
across the lawn
autumn sun swings low
singing winter’s song

The twist-tie
Had failed
Again and again

And it fell to us
Not our fault
Not our concern

Yet it exposed us
In an unfamiliar place
Our problem now

Rubber bands? No.
Beaded chain? No.
Thread from patch kit? Ha!

Then came the paper clip
Thank you Samuel B. Fay
The fabric is up now

Not curtains for us
Privacy regained
McGyver reclaimed

Darling,

The sun is out
My door is closed

Clouds come from within
Not without you

I assert my right to live
Here, not aggrieved

This land is your land
This land is my land.

Guess who’s 42?
…me…

Who here is a clumsy 13?
(me…)

Roaring 20s?
CAPITALIZE MEEEE!!!

44. I’d rather have what came before.

Look you in the eye at 55
And lovingly speak truth

Will you still need/feed me
When I’m

There once was a boy from Eureka
Not Kansas nor even Topeka
He took stock of life
Went off with his wife
To kayak in Lake Tanganyika

I wish life had subtitles
Or at least a Babel fish
Deep in my ear
To hear…everyone

Or a translator universal
As Seen in all series Trek:
Denobulan, Klingon, Ferengi:
I’d buy that for a dollar!

Walls fall
Borders borrando
I think I’d like a
Lingua Franca

Me, standing up
For myself
Summer camp, 1972

Catholic camp
Anything but
Everything ****

Big guy
Twice my size
Calling me gay

What’s gay anyway?
Didn’t know then
Now I do

It felt entirely unfair

Hairs tingled
Skin prickled
Kicked in adrenaline

Little fat boy
Stood tall
Never to be bullied again

Archived sounds
Modems yodeling
The boop-boop-hoop
Of someone’s phone busy

Back further: the
Thwick-bop-bob-bop
Thwick-bop-bob-bop-bop
Of a rotary dial

Further back:
The piercing
Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Of the 3am TV test signal

Why stop there?
Cha-clump; Cha-clump, Cha-clump; Cha-clump
Milk bottles rattle
Cream at the top
Milk truck’s come and gone

“What was your card?”
“The queen of hearts”
I tossed the withhold deck and
palmed her as she squirmed.
The cards fluttered as my hand
crossed my face it
landed between my lips.
I plucked it forth with a flourish
and pronounced,
“This card?”

There were sounds of astonishment
and tumultuous applause.
I felt sick as I bowed and
left the stage, dejected.
The tiny queen squirmed in my pocket.
A sulfur stench assailed me
as I entered my dressing room.
He sat crossed-kneed, red, scowling,
the end of his barbed tail thumping.
“Not good enough. Try again .“

Yosemite denizen of
Potato dimension

Not rat but rabbit with
Rabid storage habits

When you don’t hibernate
You better compensate

Be the advocate ant
Not absent grasshopper

Support your PBS
It’s your better Nature

And then one day it happened.
Not one gun was used, nor knife.
There was not a mass shooting;
no one was killed.

Not s car hit a pedestrian,
not even by accident.
No deaths by heroine overdose
nor by fentanyl were recorded.

No one committed a ****** crime
against anyone.
Doors opened for indigents
and immigrants.

It became more strange:

Truth was spoken everywhere,
even on Fox News.
Corrupt leaders abdicated—
get this—even Trump!

Acrid air cleared, waters too
and salmon swam upstream to spawn.
The earth cooled half a degree,
over the rainbow.

Lost in space
Is a crucible
Inconsequential sloughed
Tested mettle

Lost in place
Reproducible
Insatiable urges scoffed
Regrettable

Hiding place
Reprehensible
Excuses always one-offed
Still, fixable

Saving face
Commendable
Excruciatingly tough
Be flexible

I’ve packed it up before
Appointments not earned
Arrangements undeserved

I went off map for months
Leaving one closet for another
Life defined, boxed, shelved

Tossing the flotsam
Flowing the jetsam
Purging the past

Scripts, notes, lesson plans
Decades of detritus
The past as trash

One story ends;
We hope the sequel
Is better yet

Brave men bonding
While mending
And tending
To truth-telling

Tears welling
Laughter bubbling
Working, cooking, eating
Together

Beyond story
This work we do
In the crucible circle
Authoring integrity

Today I lost my ****
I did; that’s all is it?
Older and bolder?

No, just lost my ****
Not bolder,  just older
Not good with it

I lost my ****
This is it
I’m old

I want something
I feel it deep in my bones
I feel it sometimes
I think it sometimes
A hunger, a longing

Akin to anxious
An unknown known
A dispersed urge
It’s important
In concealment

Just past dusk
A whisper before dawn
It’s under my skin
Something I should do
Begin what when?

"I am old,”
Said father time
Absconding an
Older nursery rhyme

Baby 2019
Fresh and clean
Chortled, coughed
And ripping his/her bib off

Opined: “Settle down; breathe;
This can change with ease;
You are not the only show in town.
There are other clowns around”

Time slowed
Sat down
2019 rose
And now grows…

I know who I am
A man of
Complexity

Completely
This and that and
In-between

Coming and going
Evading but knowing
Modern eye Popeye

Yuk-yuk-yuk-yuk!

Thwick-thwick-thwifff
Cat tail twitch
The cat is curious

A busy tail tell
A tale, a swish
What’s a cat to do?

Tail down
Slouching low
The game’s afoot!

We are roommates
But no longer lovers
As we once were though
Thoroughly married still

I love her, my not lover
Who does not share my bed
Even as we share our dreams
For the rest of life it seems

We will conquer the world
Traversing indifferent distance
Always returning home
To hearth home and them

The cinders of eros cold
We both grow old
Gnarled vines entwined
The fruit makes good wine

Bomb!
(nuclear bomb!!)
Pshew! Pshew!
You're dead!

Not funny.
Seriously;
Not funny.

A musical once asked,
"How do you solve a problem like Maria?"
Or the father of Ivanka.

Give him a pony.
Or a destroyer
Festooned with
"Mission accomplished."




Me have cookies now?

Lost in place, a
Childhood displace
To TV infinity and beyond
Past Jupiter, too

Series recreation
With post-modernist twists:
Lost in a marriage carriage
Family dysfunctional launches—

Mom Maureen resolute
PTSD dad always mad
Danger ranger Will creative
Penny dreadful has her thoughts of

Sister “Judy, Judy, Judy!”
Reimagined, toughened
Age stage softened
Sibling competition

From the abyss, Dr. Smith
Zachary fakery; survival snake
Blending genders
Misogynistic Smith transforms

Less family than familiars
Enter on spot alien Robot
Alien. Robot. Friend, “Will Robinson“
With algorithm compunctions

And the rest?
Wait for West
His function?
He saves the chicken

Or does the chicken
Save him?

You must be this tall
To ride this ride
The man clangs you in
And the ride begins

There is a bar holding you back
As clanging gears strange you up
And up and up
Clackety-clack

Apex of apostasy
Seeing clearly
Holding on for dear life
As the real ride begins

What? I’m aghast!
S/He doesn’t have a podcast?

How do we knows
Which way s/he flows?

I like what s/he says
Should really be prez

But w/o social tweets
Who truly competes?

Tell me, tell me Facebook
Which way should I look?

Lockstep in totality
In our virtual reality

a poem a day
what a way
for neuron sway

brain elastic
language plastic
a bit sarcastic

word play
what a way
to start or end a day

We chimpanzees proceed
With all available evidence

Oog said Ogg will attack
Bash Ogg’s brain; now!

Wait, Zegg said, we can’t do that
It’s against the chegg convention

Dash the convention!
Rescind what Zegg said

Restrain her, retrain her with
Extraordinary rendition

My petition for retribution
Is my absolute authority

Find Oog; restrain him
Waterboard retrain him

Truth through torture
Trogg exclaimed

Ugg saw all debasement
From Ogg through to Zegg

And what she exclaims
Remains ———————

What’s acted is redacted
And still remains the same

Hello, yin, I'm yang.
We're different but mostly the same.
You're white, I'm black,
We curve and enfold:
A little of you in me,
A little of me in you—
Not a lot, just a dot.
With that, we complement each other.

Did I tell you you look especially good today?

Nox, nox…
Who’s there?
Fooled.
Fooled who?
Fooled you, sucker;
It’s Fall!

Line in the BIG sand
With the TERRORIST Iran
Because Sam I am

Sublime timeline—
Yours or mine?

Which switch?
Which time?

The distinction fine
Defines which which

Relatively selectivity:
Your past or my next?

My now or your then?
Who’s here or there?

Outcomes of which
We must now contend

It’s now all gone
What was wrong
It’s now a past that
Now won’t last

Here, movement
With involvement
Moving forward with
Goodness toward

When life lurches,
Add a modicum of control—
Downshift.

Flight or fight is
Lack of hindsight.
Take a chill pill.

Inaction might be
The right reaction
For stress reduction.

Grief is cousin
To depression
But darker
More leaden

Grief is heavy
Under water
Time slowed to
Sluggishness

Grief is a degree
Of despair
That goes deep:
The cost of loss

I’m having
Kerning yearnings
Finding space between

Space is or is not
Too close is too close
I know that’s just your elbow

Too far is too far
Can’t hear can’t see
Eye before he except after she

Let us learn from letters
Some need to be closer
Some need to breathe

Page not found
No longer around

Page has moved
You’re still here?

The past disappears
One page then two

Manuscripts decay
The web dissolves

I loved the ****:
Tongue teasing
Emergence…

Elegant rising from
Folds within folds
Rising sighs…

Lust to laughter
Owning ******!
Gift from me to you

Terrified at first.
Girls. *******.
Teeth?

I fell in love –
I fell in love –
I fell in love –

She, mostly;
An occasional he.
Which makes me…

Me.

Here I sit in my
Emotionarium

Right next to my
Imagintarium

Down the block from the
Duldrumations

And other sullied
Sorry situations

I’m a Happy Jack without
LSD or smack

Because for three seasons
(The had their reasons)

Fevered schemes
Were clever dreams

Yes, allegory, but thankfully
A well rounded story

I have been to the top of the hill
Thinking as a hero

I’ve crashed into the ditch
My power never lower

Mostly, in-between
Taking all as it seems

Bored Sisyphus
Doing daily things

But some moments
Define time for action

Et–hem; that time is now

We are old now
When they are gone

We are on our own now
With journeys strange, long

We go our ways now
Whistling solo songs

We be who we are now
Elders—right or wrong