~

her wishes she guards,
like every beat of her heart;
and plans too far off
she easily discards.

they offer comfort, no cure,
t'is the best they can find;
she calls it quality assured,
takes it one day at a time.

tomorrow a hope,
next week is a prayer;
living forward with foresight,
she's had years to prepare.

unfettered by limits,
her mind now unchained;
free from constraints,
she's gained... far and away!

with joy she embraces
every hour she outlives,
with nothing to lose
she has everything to give!

each night gives her sleep,
rest reserved for the brave,
her future she's glimpsed,
she lives free...

unafraid!

~

*post script.

this one feels undone, and yet i have nothing more on the subject.  i suppose it just means the end, like life, remains unknown... unwritten.  

Memorial Day brings with it a somber hush; a reminder of sacrifices past... a realization of more to come.  as i have written here before, none of us gets out of here without any scars; and though we are living longer today than at any time previous in history, the mortality rate still stands firmly... almost resolutely... at one hundred percent!  this then begs a question- would i live differently, if i knew just how numbered my days were... and what keeps me from living that way today?

There is a cold wind
blowing outside,
into the graying,
an apocalyptic sky

The lamps are lit
The night descends
it comes as it always does
My table is cluttered
with wadded paper
scribblings saying nothing

The hanging question you asked
remains
"What is your heart's desire?"

The light it flickers
Throwing shadows on the wall
So eerie at first,
So familiar after all

Fantasies
Phantasims
Hypnogogic imagery
A trance like state of mind

Many lifetimes pass
None of them mine

What is your heart's desire
It strangles the mind with possibilities
Waiting for the tell,
the tell that might never come.

You asked me
as we left the foggy meadow
"You who speak so highly of the little synchronicites,
But what is your heart's desire? "

I rise with the sun each day
My path laid out before me
I do this and that in order

Each night as the dark descends
The day's vivid light has vanished
I stare into this lamp light
and wonder
what is my heart's desire.

An owl so elegantly sits here,
On the branch of any mango tree,
It so silently sits sans any fear,
On the three mango trees we have,
An owl so wisely perches there.

~

Keep It Simple Stupid ("Your Poems Are Too **** Long")

~ for Natty~

white sheet of foolscap,
imploring the fool's fingers,
natty. natty, just this once,
be the simpleton dunce,
spend but a modest pence,
cap the blowout verbiage well

pretend
being a short and sweet poet beat^,
leaving those blue line requests
more white than black,
emptier and thus,
more silently, fuller, and powerful,

build  each line from a few hard crafted,
forged-wrought-iron syllables,
say the more in the
unsaid unwritten

snap your fingers in clapping praise,^
kiss the words bye-bye slow and single,
hold back the overfilling raucous reprises,
those stanza'd motley muddled crew,
de-access all excesses,
a manly, word squad^^^,
no more,
the shaft to success
be a David slingshot of single pebbles

but herein have,
prior blessed and true confessed:

"for I know there is soul in brevity,
but that ain't exactly my finest quality"

this is a "not know how to,"
for when I plunder the sea deep of a
single and singular
first and foremost# kiss,
still forever kept,
and that cylindrical memory volume so full,
one must seek and speak,
many verbal Ceylonese herbal tea toasts,
for the drunken 'n blinder I become,
the greater the need,
the lesser to please,
commissioning the poet to sing of his
long odyssey home,
of even the briefest venture ventured,
a combo of triumph and escaped,
wrapped in a single word,
his every feathery eye retention plucked,
a bald bird to be fully consumed,
even the bones, committed to
paper memory...

what the heck,
you want a speck,
a "say hey kid"^^ haiku,
a shorty hearty 60 second sophomoric Campbell soupy blessing,
microwaveable, heated but not hot,
radiated but not cooked

woe is me,
cannot be denied,
why use a pithy when
for pity's sake,
thrice won't suffice?

the woman, the observer
punches me with a solitary and indelicate,
as her wont, as her want,
"just-this-once"
telling the blowhard to not spout

this prideful pain,
deep water drilled in the muscled fortress of my rocky biceps,
eliciting  an outsized
"ouch, that really hurt,"
and my spouting retort...

~

by this bruised blotch, this redsome refrain,
dulcet sung in black and blue, a sonnet's colored quatrain,
by your flesh's mark, thee I join, in places where no mark dare
reflect our secreted touch, witness-protected by our guardian eyes only...*

**** it.