Existence
Is a tired pill
That I no longer take
It takes me

I'm the sad sad puddle
That you step over
Out of place
Always reflecting about
Reflecting - Never doing
****** by a blank cerulean sky
That once read coulda

Looking back on it,
Even the corpse
That I have yet to become
Is bored to **** with my life.

Rubies glistening
'neath light of the moon
as rabbits feast
and children sleep
'midst dreams
of a strawberry morning.

r ~ 6/13/14

Take a Carney ride
at high noon,
or at midnight sky
under the Moon.

The Moonlight says,
the Night is a good deal..
and the Night  says..
the Moon knows
that we are here
to pack a wallop.

But the Stars ignore
the Moon's stolen light,
knowing that they
will soon be dust,

While they spend
wistfully useless hours
wondering if
the only reason time exists is

So everything
doesn't happen at once..
then, all at once,
They were able
to leave 'well enough alone'.

The wind was howling and the trees were bare
I called your name, there was no one there
The darkness gathered all around
And stillness – there was not a sound.

It was then I saw Him watching me
With eyes so sad that I could see
He felt the sorrow and sensed my pain
He knew I’d not see you again.

He surrounded me with a kindly peace
As if He knew there was no release
And all my tears welled up inside
Emotions that I’d tried to hide
All came tumbling, tumbling down
And fell like raindrops to the ground
And in that moment I think I knew
What He, Himself, had once been through.

I stood and looked into the night
Of Him there was no longer sight
And thus I left that Holy place
Myself at peace, and you in grace
And though my life will just go on
Forever now we’ll be as one
But when I go back to that place
I’ll hope to see His peaceful face.

©Joe Wilson – A Place of Tranquility 1994 (re-edited 2014)

No one told me
so i'm telling you
i expected grief to feel like sadness
but i wasnt told that
that it makes your whole body ache from morning until night
and even in your sleep
and that it makes your hands sting from numbness
making buttoning your jeans impossible
and that some days clumps of your hair fall out
but having a good hair day is the least of your worries
and morbid thoughts attack like being ***** slapped upside your head
hurting so bad you actually pass out in mid sen--
But it's nothing like the sadness i had expected to feel
i've known clinical depression since age 4
and that feeling of curling up in the fetal position
waving the white flag of surrender
trying to make yourself into the tiniest ball of nothing
But grief is a flammable substance
and you can feel it as it ignites the flame of your soul
it feels like being angry in a righteous way
like when jesus knocked over the flea market vendor's tables at the temple
like being so ******* at all of the scales that are inbalanced
and it is the fuel that makes you want to correct the injustices of the world
and become larger than you are
and shower love compassion and truth over evil
no one told me that grief feels like this
so i'm telling you

Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me


5:30AM
June 11, 2013

O,
to be
Manet
with Nana
on that morning
before the stroke
of brush did touch
her cheeks with blush
of immoral immortality.

r ~ 6/11/14

Alone in his dark apartment
black dog asleep
the sound of children playing
in the street outside his window-
children of color, his housekeeper says,
not quite seeing the distinction
only hearing happy voices-
an old jazz number on the radio
as he stands and dances slowly
with his cane tap, tap, tapping
to the beat and dreaming of a girl
he once read about named Helen
in a book of braille.

r ~ 6/6/14