How can I rip poetry from my soul for you?
You are part of me and so is your poetry , rooted deep within my being
I cannot put that emotion into words
The best that I can do is tear out a raw, quivering, ****** lump of feeling
You are my rock, my strength, my laugh, my goodness, my caring,
All of the good things that I am
You are my love, immovable, everlasting
You are my security and protection
The roughness of you in my memory,the scent in my nostrils,
Your face always before my eyes
You are my father, even though you are not
You loved me
Even though you didn't have to
You are gone and God, the price I would pay
For one laugh or smile
One word of good cheer or uplifting
One story
Or one joke.
I love you

He thought that he had been evicted like a raucous Irishman, late once again on the rent, his belongings and furniture strewn on the lawn
His cold, deadly stare and ruffled red, said the same, with haughty indignation written all over him
As could be expected with any eviction, belongings strewn to the street, it started to rain; large splattering drops falling from the sky with an audible impact, adding insult to the injury
But he was just a child, set free and off to learn on his own, his perch and roost along with his chair, moved to his new home
He had outgrown the large screen porch, which was such a ridiculous place for an Owl anyway
Wood and glen gone, surrounded by girder and screen, locked into the realm of old peoples coffee and cigarettes
Tucked up into the eaves ignominiously, or sitting on the lamp, grooming flesh from his over large and taloned  feet
He would sit silhouetted by the dim red glow of the bulb, relaxing, until a noise would spin his head and he would become hooded and glaring death
The lamp added a glow to his eyes, which already burned with a raptors fire and he would become the personification of evil to the world of prey
Low and crouched, wings slightly spread; he would become the terrifying story that small warm animals tell their children at night to keep them in line and safe
But now he has been moved outside and all of his familiar belongings with him, or most anyways
Now he perches outside, either on the rough, twisted branches near his roost, or his favorite chair, and contemplates late into the night
But it seems that he prefers the comfort of his living room and he rests on the arm of the chair, quiet and pensive in the still and humid darkness
He stares at me while I smoke; the white plumes drifting like iridescent fog into the moonlight, while I observe him from his former home, illuminated by the dim lamp light
His saffron eyes gleam in the darkness, his dark form robed in that of the raptor, wings held down, with the tips outstretched like fingers
He stares at the lamp, standing like a pedestal against the wall and I wonder to myself
Does he want his ****** lamp moved out there too?

Did he know
For one moment
At all
Among flash and bang
And flaring flame
That his soul
Had lost its tenuous
Hold that gripped
Upon the cliffs of life
Or did he just slide
As body falls
Into dark of night?

Why was I given this one season only?
Why tempestuous spring with its hard storms blowing, angry and unstable skies tearing down and touching the earth itself, throwing fields of earthen debris into clay colored skies, melding the two into one.

Could I not have summer with its long lazy days and deep blue skies, with rocking chairs creaking on wide wooden porches and  lush green meadows among the white skinned birch trees, so close to a rocky creek that you can hear its tenor and ****** as it rushes downstream to gladly fill it’s moss covered banks

Or maybe the red and yellow of fall, with the crisp cutting air biting pleasantly in your lungs as you bellow out in the red rising sun, like a locomotive cutting through the wide open prairie, slicing the  amber openness like a knife , puffing steam and smoke like a dragon as your track vivisections the countryside

Could I not be given the white and cold winter, with its black skies, punctured by burning blue stars, as the fireplace roars out warmth in snapping and crackling dances of orange, surrounded by stone and wood, the still whiteness, muffled by snow and night outside the windows, that stare with red glow into the carpeted forest, hung heavy and damp with snow

Why spring and only spring, with pregnant clouds heavy laden with dark blue storms, hanging from their belly and the threat of tempest, just waiting to lay down their tearing winds and pouring rains

Why spring with its fickle beauty and warmth that can turn so quickly into a deluge that floods the earth and wipes away the burgeoning beauty that it has just created, roiling across rippled soil, dancing like silvered fish in glaring bursts of blue lightning

Why spring, that after all it’s hard blowing and storms it just fades away into nothing?

Sunset softly fading in ****** hues of red

Soul slipping silently, body falling dead

To fly again, free again

Borne on wings of oblivion

Rushing ever outward

To become one with God again

A windblown soul

Quickly waning weaker

For just one moment

It sees and wants

What it has just forsaken

There’s nothing wrong with the neighbors

That a few rounds

Won’t settle down

They are Mexicans after all

And understand the brutal language

Of the gun

They only laugh and get louder

Whenever the cops

Come around

But they know that the mix

Of gunsmoke and anger

Means

Turn the **** music down

Enough Fiesta

Night after night

Enough Tequila

Day after day

Don’t **** your neighbor off

Or the next one

Might come your way… Ole’!

I am  ****** death
Coming for you
Fear me
Now