It's complicated
Living with another

Both have wants and needs
That intersect or conflict

Conflict is
Complicated

No easy way out
Best to stay with intersect

Sun is out
On Sunday afternoon
Summer into fall

I’m inside
Insulated
Cool

Curtains drawn
Ceiling fans on
Never thought we’d need AC

To know you are a sinner
Is to be a winner

More important than wrong
Is the penitent song

Not heavenly forgiveness
but to be witness

To admission to the
Loved one wronged

Absolution?

Totally up to them

Bless me forward
For I have sinned;
My last concession
Was 52 years ago.

Father, I've lied and slyed
But always told my truth;
Sins of father sync to son
I see his truth but live my own.

Hail, Mary, and our father
I can be contrite and right.
I don't seek Yahweh's forgiveness
For my trespasses, I seek yours.

If this is a one-shot deal,
And this humanist realist thinks it so,
Your forgiveness matters more
Than some spirits' in the sky.

Dark days just got darker
The future now bleaker
Our rights soon weaker

Temperatures up
Sea levels rise with
Judicial surprises:

Rights curtailed
Guns for sale
Executive privilege
Press repressed
Marches now riots
Meaner tweets
Free speech costs
Groups targeted
Families disbanded
Profiling preferred
Embryos policed

Emigration in order?

Hey, monster,
Sit still; will you?

I’ll purr you a story
I’ll knead you to sleep

Feline dreams are the best
Soothing rolling purring

You will think you’re
In control as I nap in lap

Lulling you to sleep.
Pleasant cat dreams!

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

I want something
But I don’t know what; an
Unscratchable itch

Urges deep percolate
That I can’t articulate
Fait acompli? Or No?

Wait? Or tempt fate?
Do, and invite regret?
Heads or tails?

Crap shoot, poker game
**** the zit or not
Spin the wheel…

Just watched last interview
With A. B. with love and disdain

Smart guy, funny guy, vain
Vanity is earned; he did that

He grew as a humanist
Absolutely a humorist

My cooking confidential:
Be on time. Be organized.

Be forceful but kind
Clean your wheel quickly

Restaurants taught me much
Travel taught me more

And Anthony, you SOB
Your lessons will stay with me


https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=vUEFdWAKpf0

The dead remain so
The alive not not so

Pivot divot when
Friends through end

Are still so; with or
Without tuna casserole

This is a time rhyme
A jurassic fantastic, an
Ichthyosaur score

I’m having a bones Jones
As a coprolite acolyte
If the **** fits, be it

It’s all just a flicker-flash
Our all-important mad-dash
To be immortalized fossilized

Freshmen,
(Her, him and they,
And all other
In-between iterations!)

Welcome to
CSU Northmost!
Furthest on the
Northcoast!

It used to be
Hills, Stairs, Umbrellas
Before corporatization

We had a radio station

No more:
Sacramento weather
CSU Chico news
Welcome to Jefferson!

Local news? No.
Community calendar? Whoa!
"Here’s what’s happening in
Yreka California…”

We hope you enjoy
Your time here
In the Northern Quadrant
Our quad-county area

We used to be HSU
With a KHSU and
A funky community vibrancy.

Welcome to CSU Northmost!

Nope.
Don't want to.
I'm not driving.

It's a week night.
I have to be at work early.
Can we leave at intermission?

Yes; let me think about it.
Yes, I want to see them.
Saturday at six can work.

Well, that was really wonderful!
I know! I'm glad they came.
Thanks for doing it.

With my armor off
Attitudes adjust.
Thankfully.

The clickety-click
of pedaling paused
The sound of ease
of exhale breeze

following gravity’s grade
Sliding flying on asphalt  
I’ll pick up the pace soon
but now, just flow

We do what we can do
With our time allotted

We want everything safe
Done; in the can

We want to rescue
Who we love

As we run to it
As fast as we can

Should’ve, would’ve:
palindromed

Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

Can I take you to the poem?
He asked again

We can dance to
The stanza

Spend time with
The rhyme

On the dance-floor
(As metaphor)

Are you into me
Like, as, a silly simile?

It’s synecdoche
Your  dance with me

Sometimes this world is
Devastatingly beautiful
Puffy whales
Swim in azure sky

Tabby tiger turns and
Enters spotlight shaft
Rectangular stage, an
Orange explosion

Hummingbird swoops
Thrumming through spring
Arc de Triomphe
On a nectar vector

A rhody in full bloom
Another just past shy
A debutante ball
In red and pink and lavender

Thank you Boxed-in Home Office
For a decidedly devilish diversion
An unexpected beguilement

Conveyed to a time and place
Almost misplaced in memory’s stream
With Wm. S. informing S. Dakota

Whispering to writers
Of language nearly lost
Discourse both dandy and dangerous

Characters familiar
Plot’s circle elliptical
Storytelling respected

“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 .“

Who to hedge?
Mayor Butigedge?
Camelot with Harris?
All trying to scare us
Bidin’ my time
With this rhyme
Oh! Sleepy Joe
Establishment’s gotta go
Does Bernie Sanders
Really furnish answers?
Can Gillibrand
Instill a better plan
Choose Hickenlooper
Over Agent Cooper?
Is Eric Swalwell
Really ready as well?
Is senate Bennett
Really in it?
With smart I could I hang
Can do, Andrew Yang
There on the end,
Author Williamson
Sometimes chiming in
Hanging in
Add it up, Kamala
Show us the algebra!
Universal health care
Always and everywhere
Here’ a real shocka:
Gotta keep that DACA
We need legislation
To fix immigration
And yes we can
Care for veterans
Tax the rich, *****!
Time to shun guns
Meet the feed need
Help the poor more
All in a home zone
And note every vote
And yo:
Not your embryo

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

Should I stay or should I go?
Just get it on up?
Or keep it down low?
Pick up the pace?
Or chill it to slow?
Do what needs doing?
Does it really though?

What will I do?
I’ll let you know.

I take a pledge
To support Buttigieg
In all his future pursuits

It’s a thrillah
To support Kamila
And her justice crusades

Elizabeth Ann can
It’s guaranteed
and warranted

He’s a looker,
That Booker
Way to fly high, guy!

Hit or hold?
Time to fold and
Lose the Beto

I don’t feel
The Bern, sir; not
Not throwing away my shot

You as placeholder?
Take it slow, Joe
Steal the show

Darling,

A redeployment
Next week:
Clean-up crew.

After:
Logistics.

And then:
Shore leave!

I'll be with you.

Soon,
My commission
Will be over.

Then,
Our next assignment
Will begin.

My pops was a Reagan man
As far as the G-Ole Party can

The vote: went with it
But he called him “Idiot!"

Iconic ironic elephant
Don’t be inelegant

Just fire the Man and
Make a stronger stand

I’m here because I stink
I’m here because I drink

I **** because I eat
I wizz what that I drank

Stuff in; stuff out
Ergo, I’m alive, I think

The line between here and there
Grows thin once a year and death
Smells of copal and marigolds
Those who remember sit twixt
This world and the next to commune
With madres y padres y abuelos y tias
Bathed in candle light; this afterlife
Remembering is festive, not somber
As October moves into November
With those living and past together

Everything living
Requires things dying
Nature is beautiful cruelty

It’s thermodynamics
An energy gradient
A food cascade

Staggering connectedness
Exquisite fragile quilt
Sadly, loose strings pulled

Expected bad news
Did not receive it
Relief enormous
After fear ginormous

What a tangled web we weave
Seeing a future we cannot see
Fear is the monster under the bed
The unimaginable imagined

Yield sign versus stop sign:
RR Crossing down and flashing;
Striped bars slowly rise and we
Proceed preciously…

I sometimes let the credits roll
Dénouement with music beautiful
As the artist tribe parades

I’m oscillating differently
The frequency has changed
The thrum feels different

We hum along as fish schools or
A flock of birds murmurating
Shimmering, scintillating

The live wire vibrates
Temperatures rise
Time to leave the flock

You reduce me
To speaking pleasantries
The eggshell walk
Careful talk leaves only
Quiet desperation

When is this?
Where is this?
Where am I?

Awoke in dark
Wall dimly glows
The rest shadows

Here now?
Then when?
Where to go?

Stepped from sleep
All unfamiliar
Observe; think!

Gauze falls
Fog clears—
Here. In my chair.

Darling,

Still on the front,
I hold my territory.
No enemy in sight.

Interregnum
Or Interim Peace?
I wait for insight.

I usually do due diligence
For most every major purchase
Eschewing the apples of my eye

Sound, round, research
That’s what I’m known for
Predictably, boringly prepared

Whiff of cheese
Trap snaps! Now:
Purchasing peripherals

Tornadic winds
At its periphery
Reached the conifery

Whether ambuscade or
Circumjacent to
Chaos ensued

Her again?
Or him in gray
Growing stronger

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

For your sacrifice you get
An *** and a half
Your ***** donkey

A cat-n-a-half
Wild, unpredictable
Somewhat lovable

A dog or two?
Royally loyal
To you

Fish?
No
So?

Chicken?
**** yes!
The rest?

A horse, of course
In your corral
Stable.

Shaken
Awake,
Naked

Hearing
Staring,
Naked

Meaning
Nothing
Shake it

Knowing
Something
Take it

The space between expectations
And real-world realizations
Pinning hope upon a star

So far

Desire sires hope
Hope molds chance
But then circumstance

Twisted dance

Legislative ping-pong
An absurd, wrong, sing-song
Maintain a sense of self

Them, not you

Be the best you can
Rely on those you love
Have a back door plan

This land is your land,

Too…

OK; I will:

I will drone on and on about this and that
and you won't get a word in edgewise.

Droning is fun! You don't have to
check your mouth
or worry about vocabulary;
you just need to keep talking!
You can talk about sheep,
you can talk about skin lotion.
Did you know that lanolin
comes from sheep shear?
But no one yet has figured
a good use for hairballs—go figure!
I mean, the Scottish figured out
what to do with sheep's intestines;
I mean, the Scotts figured, yes,
I'm talking haggis!
But then again,
the Moonlanding was staged.
It's true!
Evidence of soundstages
for that prank can still be found
in Area 53.
But back to Hagrid —
in the Deathly Hollows
he seemed 3 cm smaller
than he did in the first HP movie,
and I'm not talking about Hewlett-Packard.
Can you imagine Carly Fiorina
as president?
I sure can't!
Did you know that you can survive
deep in the redwood forest
by licking the slime of banana slugs
for needed protein
and protect yourself from hypothermia
by plucking hundreds of fiddlehead ferns
and delving deep inside them…

hey, I think my drone batteries jus

You over-do
I under-do
Friction ensues

One always right
Other ever left
Hard to undo

Flight or fight
Choice always wrong
An old, sad song

Not even hello, though?
When you go, you’re gone?
Close the door behind?

That’s the brand
In until you’re not
Then just mist

Don’t bang at gates
Always forever locked
Regroup, regain, retain

I want something
A sirloin steak
A piece of carrot cake

I want more than when
Not who but now how
Something more than then again

A purple drink umbrella
A creature double feature
An itch unscratchable scratched

I want something

ENTRopy

ENtropy

Introphy

Intrope

Scope

*****

Sleep

. . . eep

…eep

.…eee—

‘Twixt here and there,
slippage

What’s right and true
gets bent

This way or that
depends

On what you now
decide.

Sudden shutdown
Decades gone
Sheroes silenced

No one home
No one on the phone
No one

Still, vestiges
Residuals
Echoes of what

Entropy enterprise
Someone scrubs
What once was

Fading…
Fadi…

Gone

Three decades gone
Legacy now latency
Blink, no longer there

Invest in entropy
A future certainty
Nothing ever lasts

No one needs the past
Nothing to learn there
It’s over; get over it

MC Escher drew it
Unshure the best way through it
Down is up
Around is down
Gravity hilarity loops
Infinity turns and hoops
Puzzling faces, birds and places
Morphing yin to yang
Ending is beginning to
Circle around again.


Now the hard part begins
Living with a hole in our hearts
While digging a hole in the yard

"Just a dog” some would say
But if he liked you ten years ago
He’d be happy to see you yesterday

Buddy boy endured five different cats
They bugged him as they loved him
Their fierce protector in Freshwater

6AM and 6PM
He didn’t understand daylight savings
His stomach kept time

Happy to see us
Worried when we‘d leave
Of that now, we are bereft

Sweet boy, we will miss you
Biggie boy, you biggered us
With your unconditional love