if any
one
were to be
no
    thing,
then every
one
would be
(supreme)ly
being.

Having shot up
(with two flavors of insulin)
before bed,
I've been instructed to snack.

So I drop fifteen pills
with an ounce
(of water)
and wait for the subtle wave
of unreality
to flow through me.

Never thought my Eskimos
would be four doctors
and a dialysis nurse.

Sweet spring air kissed by
amorous sunshine, building
slow heat for summer.

Because recycled
themes keep showing up, guess
I'm a green poet.

s  p  r  e  a  d  i  n  g out
poured viscousmelting into
(howslowly)
                  an after-noon
Friday notpassing
your buzz hovering
gathering time from
every
        flowering
                      moment
to meld with my
langourous liquid
honey-sweet and suspended
resisting flow
and (sundrifting
                       downdown)
darkness strengthens
defines sharpening curves
and shadows leading
                             (downdown)
into your
sweet
         ohh
                honey....

Who've tasted freedom
will have no appetite for
less; silence be ******.

raskol tells me that
we don't have to live in a
mediocracy.

Now: yesterday's dread,
tomorrow's history; the
only time we live.

My fear sleeps so far
tonight, cradled lovingly
in the arms of faith.

I once worked the sign
at the intersection
of Facebook and HelloPoetry.
All those years when
secure in my job,
flush with cash,
I'd not meet the eyes
of those who muttered
"thank you, sir"
on those rare occasions
when a crumpled dollar
fell from my hand into theirs.
So I now tell on myself
to bleed the shame
from the arrogance,
never knowing the courage
it takes to look the privileged
in the eyes and ask for help
until I stood on the corner
clothed only in my naked need.

The soil supporting growth
has long since been rinsed
down a muddy arroyo
to some alluvial plain,
someone else's loam,
ripe for seeding.
Roots were exposed,
gnarled fingers aching
for firm grasp,
finding air
and just enough wishes
to remain suspended
in place but not in time.
A place to stand under,
and understand
the stand of trees
nourished now only
by memories
of warmth and moisture,
the gentle showers
of tears and praise,
the embraces
of worms and earth.

When people learn how
not to hate in the name of
love, Spirit breathes free.

There are so few true
men of Christ around; God alone
knows why Bob left us.

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.

Bones of dreams remain,
picked clean of pretense by the
winged passage of time.

her spirit broke the very chains of being
as light as light itself and glowing soared
on unseen thermals currents long ignored
freed at last from caged dreams of fleeing
her body sings of sunshine clouds and thunder
her hair the very wind upon your cheek
a strength of beauty kept for those who seek
a force of nature full of awe and wonder
through with cringing games of male and female
surging power of life in every move
deepest sleeping third eye wakes to see
the mountains trembling as they tell her tale
every smallest gesture howling love
embracing gods and devils equally

Spring's rush of warmth, the
morning breeze edged with the chill
of winter's last breath.

I must not yet be ready to love,
because in every woman's face
that tears me out of time
I feel no gift, no grace;
just loss
                  and ever lonelier.

Ignorance adores
uproar; rage is all the rage.
To die a peaceful
death is anathematic.
Smile, nod. Ignore ignorance.

Spirit says It will
give no more than I can take;
I keep on reaching.

Do you really mean
there is a lack of response-
ability in
our culture?  I don't think so.
The ability is there.

sensual curves
cradled in my lap
long smooth neck
begging for caresses
ready to respond
any time my need calls
vibrating
at my lightest touch
sings like an angel
and can scream
like a banshee
my constant companion
my mistress
though it's been too long
since I last held you

don't fret, m'lass...
I'll always make a case for you.

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

An affinity for
tight spaces;
bears like cubbyholes.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1398227

A link to my soundclick.com page.  Please listen, and, if you find something you really like, please support your loco musician.  :)

Appreciating
the cunning embrace and sharp
wit of an old foe.

sub-tropical heat
best observed from a chilled room
with chilled drink in hand

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

What
           ((holds)) you
to unyielding self?
Petrified
you stone your sins
and still miss the mark;
attempt to beat soul
into healing.

Fool.

Even this
nascent struggle
to understand
casts another rock.

Would you lobotomize...
****** a stick
into your eye socket
to see more clearly?

Suffering is
in the resistance;
you know,
and do not accept
grace in the hands
easing you toward
the gentle current
of Spirit
washing around you.

Why?

Entombed by need
to atone,
you cannot roll
the rock aside alone.
Stop asking for
"more weight",
Giles Corey...
you are a fearsome man
standing upright.

You deserve more than
a few quick dashes of ink,
glimpse of waterfall,
unrolled upon papyrus
and hung to be overlooked,

English contorted
into Japanese styling.
Especially when
you take the trio of you,
me, myself and I to task,

speaking to yourselves
in such a Zen-like manner:
Get out of my Way!
The ten thousand things vanish,
Ego shivers in the void.

Cold, hard wind of truth
knifes through armored illusion,
shurikens spun from
insomnimaniacal
nights, throwing words at the stars.

Sleep and find your peace,
you three, dream of wives and salt,
the whole Lot of you.
Remember you're a pillar
of Muse's community.

I can't see myself as a whole without going just a trifle mad.

A bear in Florida
finds no winter,
no months to sleep
in cozy cocoon.
He watches,
wakened and wary,
for sea changes
and weather shifts.
Many other predators
spend cooler seasons
in lassitude
despite the latitude,
neither hunting for truth
nor caring about
what surrounds them.
The bear raises his head,
wrinkles his nose
at the scent of danger,
the hint of threats
to and from
his environment.

The louvers of the
windows to my heart are shut
to the storm of love.

There's a lot more
to being sober
than staying sober.

Life revolves; a door
which spins from my heart to yours,
soul to soul to soul.

I tried to write a villanelle
The words come easier
when they're pretty,
form and meter
can be salves.
There is no relief
when writing
of family,
the three-sided dagger
leaves a wound
that must be packed
and never closes.

I tried to write a villanelle,
to package the truth
with enough honey
to make the bitter-roots
palatable;
it wouldn't go down easy,
wouldn't come out either.

This poem a finger
on the back
of my throat
to purge
to flush
to rinse my mouth
from the acid
regurgitated

In spite of seeking,
struck dumb by immensity
of my ignorance.

(n) A phenomenon
whereby the day-to-day
necessities of life
call for action and thought,
not feeling,
and the emotion
catches up suddenly
when the actions stop.

Forgive me
if I don't wait for you.
Pray that I get there
long before you must.
Travelling always trumps
arriving,
hopeful or not.
The terminal of one leg
of the trip
is merely a
point of departure
for the next
(so it's been said).
So let's pack a cooler,
call shotgun,
and ride with me
for so long
as there
is road.
When my stop comes,
say the words
and hold me
until I take off.
I'm afraid
you'll have to drive
the rest
of your way home.

Your words slink around
my legs, purr insistently,
nuzzle at my hand.

the Belle of Amherst -
because she'd not stop for death --
her poems still breathe

to whittle away
the extraneous, slough off
dead skin which hides the
one who will not force a change,
not compress, contort a soul

hope the thing with feathers
and I a featherless biped

Aching whispers of
family memories, wishing
feelings were attached.

We travel sine waves
of lifetimes; on certain
orbital planes, we meet.
From all our times around,
we think we are
essentially
                                   alone.

Once in an eternity,
we get to wander a while
with a fellow traveler,
a re-cycled companion.
Sometimes for a lifetime...
mostly for a some-time.

Hold the sometimes close
and treasure them;
they are the proof
that we truly

never

travel alone.

Your sigh roars in my ear as your shudder under my hands rocks my core.

I am cradled by
the very thought of your thoughts;
our shared humanity.

The satisfying smell
of yeast in warm milk
suckling itself into sisters;
my hands plunge into
the primordial ooze
of flour and starter
and feel life itself beginning.
Evolution of higher forms
as flour is added
and the mass of mess
separates from its creator
into a globe of supple,
warm comfort.
Sundered, one half
becomes our daily bread,
the other, sliced into twelfths
and rolled into serpentine
lengths, turned upon themselves,
drenched in sinful
garlic butter
and roasted like hell
until heavenly.

Oriental poems
whet my muse's appetites;
true amuse bouchés.

My dreams have always
been writer's dreams: colorful,
vivid, ironic,

visionary and
heavy with foreshadowing.
My early twenties

a sodden nightmare,
drinking away love, children,
family and home.

In dream of chaos,
Spirit I had not yet met
led me down the Way

I had been choosing;
brought me to its granite-cold
game-over ending.

Read my name, saw the
year of birth, but was taken
before I could read

the full final year.
But it began with nineteen.
Waking, shivering,

I could still feel the
achingly frigid tombstone
beneath trembling hands.

Despite the warning,
I carried on as I had,
fearing, ignoring

my destination.
Time was too short in my life
to be concerned with

anything except
living as I ****** well wanted.
Kept suffering deep

and often, wondered
about those friends who shook their heads
at me, and kept theirs.

Came the day when the
wonderful awareness awoke
the Spirit in me

to receive the love
the Universe had flooded,
floated, immersed me

in my entire life,
as I slaked my thirst other
ways. I drank my fill

of freshened water,
the first of many rebirths.
Pulled to solid ground,

slowly by slowly
I stood on my own again,
learning how to live

as the child I was,
adult in years, juvenile
in thought and action.

Sixteen years along
my journey brought me to a
terrifying day:

The thirty-first of 
December, modern era
nineteen ninety-nine.

I went home early,
away from Amateur Night
revelers driving,

and locked myself in,
calling friends and asking them
to call tomorrow.

I watched the ball drop
for the first time in many years...
and cried like a fool.

My Way is not yours,
and can never be.  My time
since is borrowed time;

I sign off on the
loan every morning I'm here.
Eastern spirit has

burnished my tarnished
soul, shining not removing
the dents and scratches

it's picked up during
the trip. Why Oriental
forms? You might have guessed.


Why write of Spirit
and of flesh?  Both are with me
as I carry on.

I must share borrowed
time for it to have meaning.
Blessed I am, having
found a place, a peaceful spot
and people with which to share.