the amount of light
expressed equals how much of
our dark we explore

There is a deep honor befriending an elder;
returning the blessings that we've been bestowed.
Also a frisson of fear we have held, for
we pray we are gifted with honor, not owed .

I thought you would burst
from unexploded laughter
when my ten-year-old self
knocked at your door
in my Sunday best
fresh-picked dandelions
in my grimy hands
as permission was granted
to court your daughter

Thirty years later, you made
the grievous error
of asking your daughter
if she wanted to attend
my mother's wake
the mother who always said
I would marry that daughter

Today that daughter
prepares her pilgrimage
to home and bedside
a journey I can't take
because we are fellow travelers
and you boarded the express

Our lives have always been twisted;
yes, literally and figuratively
between friend and family
I pray you safe and quiet passage
and will let you know
how the kids and grandkids are doing
when I catch you on the second shift

Give me a moment
and seventeen syllables;
I will move your world.

The mind will deceive.
It will read the exub-
erant writings of youth
as if still steeped neck-deep
in the turmoil of lust,
while the still-breathing dust
of its mortal remains
casts its gaze through the tears

from the distance of years

if there is nothing human
about humanity
what's to save

it's not the pandemic
that keeps us separate
it's the dehumanization
and the demonization
the demoralization
we heap upon each other

no poet
can survive the lack
of friction
between their lives
and the lives of others

this artificial suspension
of everyday life
wrapping ourselves
in tight-lipped tolerance
or inflamed outrage
does nothing
but extend the isolation

the flimsy rope bridges
that cross the chasms
of derision
sway in the winds
of anarchy

those still able
and are willing
to communicate


must.

what does a survivor do
upon the re-entry into life?

When offered the gift
of myself, I no longer
seek the return desk.

there would be no sleep
this night
wracked with reckoning
futile cup of decaf cooling
minutes become
memories murmuring
recriminations reverberate
bowed head nodding
over quiescent keyboard
as vivid visions vanish
one
        into
                another
hesitant hours hovering
errors echoing
in void of forgiveness
aching agony of awareness
becomes brutal
he receives respite
as night became day
he understood what truth
could be known
he has only himself
and the day before him

and so he lay down
and so his eyes close
in the light of morning

He was a simple man of simple words,
or high-school girl with broken heart who thought
they had a message, or a call, or not.
Arriving with a sense of the absurd,
a bittersweet purview on life and love,
together with a gift for nuanced phrase,
appreciating how the language plays
upon the mind and tongue, they rise above
the well-worn similes, the tired cliches
for days, perhaps for weeks.  Then comes the time
when human ugliness shows up to flay
the budding poet.  The evidence of crimes
committed: smoky circles, nameless gray
reminders of whose gifts they took away.

there was a time
we broke the bones
of each other's poems
and savored marrow
explored what made them breathe
sought out
warm arterial pulses
examined the hearts
to find the essence of their lives

it was vital to us
in the truest sense of the word

life today is too cheap
to waste that much time

While I still breathe, I write to save my life
in compact form; mistakes, the lessons learned,
triumphant days and nights of needless strife
brought on by willful dreams and bridges burned.
One day too soon, a final page will turn,
the book will close. My fine and fragile chain
to life will break.  A loneliness unearned
will mark your passing days in ink of pain.  
Then if you wish to hear my voice again
one silent morning when you wake alone,
I leave you songs and poems.  Each refrain
will resurrect the soul you've always known.
So when my fated moment shall arrive,
my words are here; come read me back alive.

Hiring me to repair
and prepare the old rental
for you to occupy
after you sold our house,
I found the collection
of carefully selected snowglobes
bought for you over years
and the original copy
of my gift poem
left with the tenant's trash.

from one who knows
the hours spent
honing a voice
to cut through a room
the days lived
seeing the unseeable
until the lyrics
bleed onto paper
and the sacred moment
when the masteries
and the mysteries
combine
to rend my soul
and salt my eyes.

Every day is once again too precious;
a journey, step by step of thirteen years
evaporates to salt like drying tears.
The salt not wasted, rubbed in wounds so specious,
wrapped in bandaged memory, bound tight
and bloodless by layers of adhesive time.
A wish, a prayer, a moment from my prime
when all could be accomplished, all was light.
Each morning wakens heavy, trudges on
Promethius's odyssey to night
still hoping rolling stones may be diverted.
Reality re-dawns; all hope is gone.
The uphill climb remains to make aright
what gifts that born in grace became perverted.

...and so it begins,
rural against urban,
rich against poor,
change against established,
white against black,
privilege against opportunity,
proud boys against military,
prostitution against dictatorship,
both sides digging in
turning trenches to graves...

and so it never ended

If you'd care for a
severe case of whiplash, watch
CNN and Fox.

as time tumbles by
eroding its rocky bed
of eternity
in the shallows
we create
pools of stillness
capturing handfuls
to refresh us

on cold January mornings
the pools ice-olate
into frozen moments
we sculpt into memories
until the reality
of springtime
puddles them
drip by drop
back into the current

what do I save
when I press save?
a few words
unforgotten
shards of ideas
slivered into soles
painful enough
to extract

perhaps pieces
of what once was
my soul

A line begins,
is drawn,
ends.
An endless,
infinite number
of waypoints
between.
Lines leave no legacy;
a small black streak
to be erased.

The last of my line,
I leave no legacy;
my poems are my children

don't know if I'm here
seeking some splendiferous
solace or just sleep

so little
of life
matters,
yet

all of it
lovely

to look inside
even the most
even-handed among us
and bring light
to the darkest spaces
where the brothers
fear and anger
still reside

Casting my craft out
upon creation's shallows;
pray to pull in art.

vision so vital
to all a poet is;
silent beauty whispers
its miracles only
to those listening.

the poet cursed
with eyes and ears
the clamor of
a living, dying world
inundates
their soul

finding refuge
from the deluge
in a quiet stream of stanzas

never realizing the blessing
of the eye of the poet

until all the words have dried

Gathering self for
the morning's journey into
today's mystery.

A love for music and words
so deeply stained
in your soul
that all could see
your life's blood
coloring the brick wall
you had painted
so that any artist
who made you stop
the tatting and applaud
could leave their autograph.
Not that you'd exclude
the hangers-on and wanna-be's
from the stage.
That would not be kind.
But you'd get that distant look
as your hands would keep
stitching, knotting, tying off
until the talent showed up.
The hands needled and weaved
without pause;
Only a shift in focus
let the musician or poet know
that they indeed were heard.

Your words at once
lovely and incisive,
inobtrusively lethal
when you chose to create;
pointed as the tatting needles
and strung together
as thoughtfully, carefully
and beautifully as
table runners and doilies.

Too few remember
your dedication to
your coffeehouse,
how you bled
paycheck after paycheck
to keep a stage lit
to keep the magic
of a new discovery
who would soon become a new friend.

It was a hole in the wall,
a converted brick storefront
on a nondescript main street
of a small Florida city.
It lit the lives
of many who needed
a place to bare their souls.
It...
and you...
were great.

each quiet night
a sieve
sorting what's kept
and discarded

shiny straight hair
sky-blue eyes
lips made to cradle mine
shoulders strong yet delicate
******* supple and ripe
tapered waist, flared hips
legs finely turned
by a master carver
feet to be worshiped

all perfect pieces
never fleshed out
into Woman

when a young Ghost
is more substantial
than an old man,
the living must accede
to the un-dead child

Still trying to write;
anything worth doing is
worth doing badly.

five moments
in nine years
i felt like a poet

You are light itself;
you are blessed, you are blessing.
Peace always with you.

in whispered words
you sing along with
the song of my heart

unconcerned with tune
or harmony
a simple chorus
in unison

the reverb swells
as the presence
multiplies
you and i and love;
with Spirit
adding contrabass
more felt than heard

Some people change their
colors and fall away; a
few are evergreen.

Naked, moaning softly, bathed in sweat,
jaw agape and panting. Such a sight;
a perfect beauty I'll not soon forget.

Charming evening's prelude to a night
where passion grinds your voice to feral growl,
jaw agape and panting.  Such a sight.

The gentle purring now belies the howl
from shattering release that takes you whole
where passion grinds your voice to feral growl.

Your strong yet silken legs enfold my soul,
as you recover life from petite mort,
from shattering release that takes you whole.

No need to contemplate what's still in store,
I'll hold this waking dream until we sleep
as you recover life from petite mort.

Tomorrow's work and worries all will keep,
I'll hold this waking dream until I sleep.
Naked, moaning softly, bathed in sweat,
a perfect beauty I'll not soon forget.

You came back in 1968
from teaching Kenyans
to speak English
to teach Americans
how to see the world.

A nine-year-old boy
was in your fifth-grade class,
precocious, gifted
and quite full of himself
and ignorance.

It was magical, that connection;
the world-wise teacher
and the barely contained
bolt of potential.
It was his only year of school
where he never missed a day
or dropped a class.

Amazing how subtle,
blunt and gentle you were with him,
tapping walls of arrogance
with a wrecking ball,
allowing him to maintain
his structure
while rocking and rebuilding
his foundation.

You saw the boy
who danced on the the tightrope
between genius and insanity...
and quietly fed the jukebox.

He wanted to write;
you gave him Frost and cummings.
He yearned to draw;
you showed him Van Gogh.
He thirsted to learn;
you taught him how
to slake his parched mind.

He left your classroom,
but you continued to teach him.
You still do,
nearly fifty years later.

The last time he saw you,
he hurt you,
in that casual,
caustic way
of the high-school senior.
Still, when his nieces and nephews
with his last name
passed through,
you'd ask them
how he was doing,
and asked them to tell him
to stop in, or call.

He never did,
so he's now reduced
to offering words
you would have loved to read
in their full futility
telling you
that you
are
immortal.

all of you
no more than
zeroes and ones
electronic bits
sharing flesh and bones.

when living in Jurassic Park
one learns why we become extinct
our heads are turned by well-turned words
instead of legs   when out for drinks
we'd rather chase a line of thought
than cherches le femmes   our passions shade
toward learning life and less to love
our broken hearts healed and remade
so aching, tired, we lick our wounds
inflicted by the patient years
and seek a resting place for bones
to bathe in tar the end-game's near
and offer meat to those young furry
new creatures as they hunt and scurry

Brutal truth is the
last resort of a best friend
or a patriot.

Have spent three years
of mornings
listening to
voices of reason,
observation,
quiet humor,
a spot of civility
amid a scorching desert
of screaming,
argumentative
bloviators.

A concept
created in reason
was great
while it lasted.

I am an old man now whose time has passed,
the youthful heart of fire has long burnt out.
Pray that a needful message shared will last.

My generation grew on love and held on fast
to their ideals of change to come about.
I am an old man now whose time has passed.

The lessons born on voices from the past
ignored as if we never had been taught.
Pray that a needful message shared will last.

Where anger blooms in fire, stones are cast,
the looting steals all probity, no doubt.
I am an old man now whose time has passed.

My heart grows glad when people join en masse
to turn around what had once come to naught.
Pray that a needful message shared will last.

To those whose lifetimes have been heard at last:
a quiet word will win where fails a shout.
I am an old man now whose time has passed.
Pray that a needful message shared will last.

Is there therapy
enough for a whole nation
to heal its schism?

Tchaikovsky heard
the bipolar duality
of his nation
Rimsky-Korsakov
the mediator
between two
implacable forces
Stravinsky captured perfectly
the strident cacophony
of revolution
Shostakovich
screamed his love
for all his people
in the face of a dictator

can you not hear their music?

those rarest times
you leave me
to my silences
i shut the TV off
and i am sure
whenever i go
no music plays

i savor the quiet
as much as
you welcome
the white noise of game shows
which fills the chasm
where your children were

i know as stone fact
that if you go before me
the first thing i will do
after placing
the urn upon the shelf
is turn on the television

promise me
you'll play me a song

Once upon a rhyme I had belief
my life contained some wisdom to be shared
with those around me.  So my soul was bared
to spare my readers pain, perhaps some grief,
or offer up examples good and bad.
Foot by foot the path was measured out
upon a trail of no uncertain doubt
until the sacred truth would be forbade.
On walking down this road none cared to take
the woods throw shadows, light and dark alike
upon new mornings, nights of memories.
This too, this too shall pass.  On this I'll stake
what life remains, in hope in time to strike
a trail through all the vague uncertainties.

it's been said
that testosterone
is the driving force
behind male creativity

so as one is less able
to get a bone
one is less able
to write a poem?

A special day; have
a drink on me, if you can.
I've had enough, thanks.

the shape changes
depending upon
perspective;
from the bottom,
an oak leaf,
from one side a butterfly,
from the other a fist.
they have pictures
in color and in sepia
which speak to them
with different interpretations.
one sees a scar,
one sees growth.
they all agree
     it's a part of me
     it doesn't belong to me
     it came from they don't know where.
it's been cut
it's been shot
it's been exposed to radiation
it's been poisoned
it will not die

aha!
rasputin lives in my right lung!

Ewer ice blew as disguise of springs,
***** mined reams at knight.
Ache hiss Swede as ta sum worse do
Tacit mined hay a rite.