With my first breath, I become
to wander till the last
to be and be and be some more
time slow at first, soon fast

And with his last draw of this world's breath
an orphan I become
His time well spent I take my place
to hear my distant drum

Dark dying thoughts once swallowed me
like harpies chattering on the wind
But with the truth of death fresh at my door
I greet him as a friend

Together we shall walk and talk
and leaves and stars will fall
I will see the patterns unfold
once hidden revealing all

Dad is home
Dad is old
Old and living
Old and dying
Dying alone
Dying free
Free to be
Free at peace
Peace is work
Peace is hard
Hard to walk
Hard to hear
Hear the TV
Hear the groans
Groans of pain
Groans of time
Time won't stop
Time speeds up
Up at 6
Up and moving
Moving bowels
Moving chores
Chores don't stop
Chores keep strength
Strength to move
Strength to prove
Prove you can
Prove you're a man
Man must live
Man must die
Die someway
Die someday
Someday will come
Someday Sister calls
Calls about Dad
Calls on the phone
Phone calls me
Phone from Dad
Dad eats oatmeal
Dad plays poker
Poker is fun
Poker is life
Life is fleeting
Life is dying
Dying alone
Dying at home
Home....
Dying....

I will not bend, my heart is true
and I will not kowtow to you
I do not fear your will on me
I am the might of one you see

I'm not alone nor have I been
truth holds us fast from your dark sin
and so wave not your flag at thee
I am the might of one you see

So turn your words around and 'round
till down is up and up is down
mine eye will not its gaze be free
I am the might of one you see

a day will come our voice will roar
your thrown will fall, your voice no more
unmasked and all alone you'll be
I am the might of one you see

a longing for you
over took my pen tonight
for your voice was the night wind

and then with closed eyes
and full heart you came to me
your soft touch from miles away

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Into the death room I was led.

Where nature's last sparks of electricity
pulse through a familiar body,
barely stimulating a heart to pump blood
through frail and ag'ed  mottled skin.

Where light behind once azure eyes
slowly dim to opaque blue.
Eyes open, but not seeing,
ears hearing, but unable to respond.

Dentureless mouth agape,
taking almost mechanical shallow bursts of breath
in marionette fashion,
as if strings pulling bony shoulders sharply up and slowly down
were methodically, dramatically, skillfully manipulated
by a hand unseen.

Sunken face reveals the hidden shape of the skull within.
Smooth, silky flesh
stretched o're an unfamiliar, emotionless, flicking gaze.

No incoherent moaning today,
no unconscious slowly floating arms,
nor grasping of my fingers to let me know
.....I am still here.

The light switch is being turned off.

In the death room the dash between ones all important dates is born. Mary Elizabeth Fields Goodwin .......Born 7/31/18 - Died 9/17/16
…...like a babe, the dash is delivered.

Was it a full life, this dash?
Was it meaningful?
Was it loving, giving, humble?
Did this one get to do all that it wanted?
Did it finally arrive at where it had hoped it would be?

Or was it filled with regret and remorse,
or hatred, pain and sorrow?
The death room puts it all into perspective.

It was a life.....
It was a life lived.......that is all.
Nothing can be added or taken away.
Nothing was ever missing, broken, or damaged.

Who would dispute this in the death room with its finality?
Its silence,
its soul-less body that had never been perfectly still in over 98 years?  

This life that lived exactly the amount of time that it lived.
A leaf in Autumn, spiraling slowly to the ground,
with no parade, no fireworks, no angelic chorus,
just a husband of 79 years, a daughter, a son.......

Draw near and say your goodbyes now......
the death room is almost here....

It's all right Mom, it's alright to go now...... We'll be Okay.......
A stroke of the brow,
a last breath.......

Let go of a lifeless hand.......... and the death room is born.


*This poem is for all of you poets who have encouraged me to keep on writing. You know who you are.

Do not tell me not to talk so much,

while you sit there in your stoic, vague, unreadable, silence......

Playing your life-like a poker game,

looking for “tells” in everyone,

feeling lucky,

deeming us out here as damaged,

missing,

broken,

Constantly awaiting my next **** up.

That **** up that you know is going to happen.

Coldly, methodically critiquing my every move,

painting me incapable of producing a life worth living.

How clever you think you are, to not laugh at my jokes

or not carry on conversation unless you deem it worthy.

You do all of this to not give up your “tell”.

Not let anyone into your world.



Do not tell me to not flail my hands when I talk,

because you are not as excited about your life as I am.

In fact do not think you have authority to deem anything I do as right or wrong.

You do not have that luxury.

If and until you learn to love yourself

your ego will continually feed itself by debasing,  

feeling the need to change everyone around you.

How tiring it must be to sit in judgment of me,

picking apart my existence.  

What goes on in your narcissistic mind, that makes you not accept me as I am?

Why is my freedom less important than your picture of how I should be?



Although, not intentionally, from your dysfunctional life,

you have produced a seeker of the truth.

And Love was the stimulus.

The love that I never saw.

I learned to love myself.......unconditionally.

But where did that enlightenment come from?

It came from Love itself.

Tapped me on the shoulder,

wrapped its arms around me,

and led me to the light of truth.

You will turn around one day and look for me,

I will be gone.

You will have no one to share the rest of your life with.

This short, meaningful, time we have on this earth,

the one you ****** with and lost.......

There will be no one willing to play your poker game,

and you will have to die alone.



I believed you,

I looked at myself through your eyes

and I saw the misfit that you believed I was,

and I bought it.

After all, you are the one from whom I was to learn life.

But I did not get the education I deserved.

I was formed out of your mind,

from a mistake you made.

And I was made to believe that I too was a mistake.

Because you couldn't keep your **** in your pants.

I am the product of a hot August, unairconditioned night of sweaty lust.....and it was probably my Mother's manipulative doing.

She needed to keep you around, so why not another kid to suckle her *** and make you go out and make more money.

Was I planned, did you look into my Mother's eyes and lovingly say, let's make a baby?

I think not.

You ****** up.



Enter the rearing of a mistake.

****, you will never know just how incredible I am, you will never see me as I am, you will never see anyone as they truly are.

You are so brainwashed with you prejudice, playing your poker game, looking for your “tell”.........

Oh to hear our pens together
scratching out dreams
on Italian linen paper,
while espressos cool
in the noonday breeze.
Wiping creme from your wind burned lips,  my toes find your cycling socks
and our eyes meet as if to ask.....
let's stay another day in Toscan....
Rome can wait.

My dear friend was a day
older today
with the rising sun.

We all gathered 'round
to celebrate
and to find some fun.

The presents were grand
we sang him the song
that is always sung

I could see in his smile
that his battle
was finally won.

From the light of the candles
flickered the truth
I saw the years in his eyes

but not the years of age,
there was something more
eons of something wise

free of his past,
freedom at last
no verses were left unsung

I could see in his smile
that his battle
was finally won

Surrender now,
surrender to
what was falsely
taught to you

incessant myths
that once abound
are now to him
but just a sound

I can rest in the knowing,
his future is clear
now that he's found his light

just as sure as the night
follows the day,
and day follows the night

I only hope
he knows that his journey
has just begun

I hear in his laughter
the joyous song
of the enlightened one

and his pain is naught
but the sound
of a distant drum

and I see in his smile
that his battle
is finally won.

I wish for you
a sun filled sky
fun shaped clouds
drift slowly by

a daisy field
to lay and dream
soft ripple of
a meadow stream

Your cares surrender
to come what may
on birdsong wings
they drift away

And if I could
I'd take your hand
And walk no path
to wonderland.

These are my eyes
they see only what I see.
My red is my red, blue, blue
My vision of God, my feelings of love.
My thoughts, atypical, unique.
It is not that I wished it this way,
it is as it always has been.
There has never been anyone like me,
and there never will be.
I can't help being me,
I don't do it on purpose.
If you asked me “Do you believe in God?”
I would have to reply, “In order to answer that question honestly,
I would have to know what your rendition of God was, completely, and I don't think that is possible. ”
And so it goes,
one person looking through their own tiny little holes
at their own world, thinking that others see it the same way they do.  
Though we think it is the same, it can not be.
It is in that thought that I find Power.
In the uniqueness of being.
Together we make up a whole.
Some parts at peace and healthy,
some ridden with the cancer of hate and revenge, misled by ancient beliefs,
and yet it is there that I find my purpose for being here.
In the power of just being here.
To witness myself in this fleshy body, and in the collective body as well.

Chip away now
remove what need not be
reveal the vision
the shape
the form
the dream
the vision
my vision
my dream
Find what lay beneath “the mechanized hum of another world” (from Third World Man by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen)
this world
the one that I live in

Chip away and tell the tales
rime the rhymes
Hurrah, a poem, a prose, a tinkered set of words
While bombs go off, and shots **** the innocent
while the replacement hormones surge through my veins
I am finally finding a place in between the titrations.

I am alive again. I am here and now
Chipping away with my Andalus font size 18

The Rusted creaking lies,
whispered through putrid crooked teeth,
from underneath his ragged brim.

Time-worn top-hat sits tilted on his bony head,  
yakking jaw, spitting prostulations, intimidations,  
while swirling tattoos filled my eyes and propagandized, and hypnotized.

He is here, he is there,  
on mossy rock, on broken chair,  
floating phantom through foggy air,
to tear into my heart with his dark despair.

His words......his words, I can not trust
they haunt me as the moon.
His chilling breath fowl with death,
my skull becomes my tomb.

And then I hear a distant bell,
it breaks his grip on me.
I run and fall in gentle new snow
and am once again a child.

I close my eyes and drift to our place,  
away from his gaze and grumblings,  
to our mosaic covered Sacristy.

And you take my hand to bring me back.
You, with your Spring scented breath,
kissing away my hoary dreams.  
The bells clang pure as midnight snow,
and I am safe again in your arms.

On my 5th Thanksgiving
my parents took me to my Grandmothers house.
It was a short drive from Miamisburg, Ohio to Liberty, Indiana.
Over the Little Miami River, past empty harvested fields.
Dairy farms, and towering silos.
Frozen horse troughs, and soon to be rustic barns sheltering small livestock from the cold.
There was snow on the ground and roof, and the cattle, sheep and goats were already having their dinner.
There were no Christmas tunes on the radio of our Ford, but rather “Let Us Break Bread Together” by some local church choir.......... A sadness came over me as I looked at the animals in the field, and I whispered in my Mothers ear........Mommy, do the animals know that it is Thanksgiving?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

My Whippet gone,
now dust once again.

I've given him back,
from whence he came.

To run again
in cosmic fields,
waiting to be born.

*Shanzi is a syllabic poem in seven lines  4/5 5/4 4/4/5
Unrhymed
Lines 1 and 2   INTRODUCE the SUBJECT
Lines 3 and 4   AMPLIFY what is affected by the image/subject.
Line 5 thru 7    Focus on NEW SUBJECT that complements and provides a meditative conclusion.
Shanzi may be Titled

Harrogate, TN  November, 2014

Black coffee
2 eggs looking at you
buttered Wonder bread
morning paper
horn rimmed glasses.
neatly pressed short sleeve summer shirt, with a Fruit of the Loom tank.
work trousers and oil resistant black shoes
Old Spice, and Brylcream
Howdy Doody in the background
the screen door slams
a white Ford Farlane 500 starts up and pulls away

awaiting the sound of the Ford
wash up for dinner
pork chops, sauerkraut
applesauce
green beans
evening paper
maybe the Flintstones or Dragnet, but always the Friday Night Fights
late night visits to the fridge for a sip of Malox.

My Father does not believe there is a heaven, or hell
he says when you die, you just die.
But I don't believe he ever knowingly lied to me.
He voted for George Wallace, but he also Voted for Barack Obama, twice.
He served in the Army during World War II, and still cooks hash brown potatoes every Tuesday night for his local American Legion, where he also plays poker and most of the time wins. When I asked him how to win at poker, he'd smile and say... "Luck." When I asked him how do I get some Luck, he said "count your cards."
He doesn't want a funeral, no music, no wake, no one to say anything about him. He wants to donate his body to science. And cremate the rest.
He says, "shut up and let people tell you who they are."
"Everybody is OK son , most don't know it though."
"Never count your money in public."
He has a small tin on the kitchen counter full of twist ties, hundreds of them.
There are shelves in the basement full of canned food and paper goods.
Depressionites are always ready for the next one.
When my Father and Mother go to their class reunion, they are the only ones left in their class.
I asked him what was the hardest thing about being 95, and both of them said, "all of our friends are gone, all of them."
My Father is 95 this year.

Happy Father's Day Dad

*Thank you for letting me ramble here, I feel so much better. I am ready to have my eggs and coffee now."

She was thin and svelte,
And when I held her, a perfect fit.
I’d caressed her face,
and she knew me.
My fingers found her every button…..and I could turn her on.

But alas,
she is like a fragile flower behind glass.
I have locked her in a dungeon,
safe from harm.

She wears armor like a medieval knight.
and has become an urban soldier.
Though still steadfastly by my side,
she has grown cold,
uniform,
vanilla…..
a number.

But sometimes late at night,
when they are not watching,
while the cruel and shattering world sleeps,
I slowly undress her,
take of her skirt of mail,
and in the fully charged glow of togetherness,
we are once again,
one.

*Uninspired after enclosing my new Galaxy s5 in an Otterbox.

The caves of childhood dank and gray,
hickory musk linger on their walls.
I hid there..... from words.

Words of a worn out relationship,
too tired to leave,
they wore each other down to a nib of a human.

What hell it must have been
to squeeze out a drop of peace from each day,
knowing there would be more words,
and another attritive tomorrow.

Meaningless rantings echo still,
stinging and bighting at my heart.
Words,  petrified me.

I do not want to follow them.
I want to seal the caves,
dynamite the portholes,
never to return to the words.
How so, these many years,
I find my solace in words?
But my words, are my words.
They do not berate, or demean,
for I watch them like children
crossing a busy road.
I place them on the page
with care and respect,
yet I know not from where they came.
These words that save me,
words that raise me,
words that knead me, into me.

1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back,  everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.

2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.

3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.

4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.  
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.

I never though I would get this far,
on a dream and a bag of tricks.
A word whispered in my ear,
and some borrowed licks.

I searched and searched for some lasting peace,
when all the time it was here and now.
Hidden in plain sight,
for me to find somehow.

Then I let go of my tug of war,
no more push or pulling anymore.....

I’ve always been right here, right now.
I’ve always been right here, right now.
And I'll always be right here, right now.

My thoughts always got in the way,
incessant voices from the past,
till I heard the silence,
of peace at last.

"Someday-Oneday" would never come,
though I thought it always would,
so I'd rearrange and rearrange
the best I could.

Then I let go of my tug of war,
no more push or pulling anymore.....

I’ve always been right here, right now.
I’ve always been right here, right now.
And I'll always be right here, right now.

*Haven't been writing poetry much lately......kinda dry. I thought my followers would like these song lyrics.

This is a calling out to all of my fellow poets, from the dungeons of home renovation. You no doubt wonder where I have been, I am deep into duty, and my writing has taken a backseat for a while. Spring is passing me by and I need your prose.......please dig deep inside and give me back my Spring. Thank you.**

Tell me of Spring dear poets,
do the colors drip with dew?
For I'm locked inside my responsibilities,
and must do, what I must do.

No one should miss a season,
for there are so precious few.
So pen for me your visions,
whether dremt or whether true.

Puce fresnel washed its light on his over sized African patterned dashiki,
while paisley notes poured from his reeded dreams.
Like the Hamelin piper I was mesmerized by hypnotic tones,
every sweet and spicy slur, every bend of every breath,
I followed him down history’s path and heard the world come boldly through.

“You got to keep the magic”, was his advice .
“Don’t give away too much of the theme.”

Through fake fog he swirled his love,
his passion, his calling.
“Summertime”, played on an oboe
is like hot liquid southern summer ***.
It crawls up your spine and explodes in your brain,
and you understand the songs meaning without one word sung.
Hundreds of years of vassalage reenacted in every blue colored measure.

This man did not think of himself as a descendant of slavery though.
He was, like all of his brothers of color,
a descendant of great Princes and Kings,
stealthy Hunters and fearless Warriors,
grand Land Owners and Wise Men,
Great Leaders of Peace and Brotherhood,
and he lived out his life as they did,
changing the world one note at a time.
He played the music of all people,
“World Music” it later came to be known.

Listen….he is in the rhythm still.
Wherever there is an ethnicity holding on to their heritage in song.
Wherever there is an indigenous rhythm, a harmony, a feeling……
Yusef is there, and he will be there forever.


*Yesef Lateef
Born October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, TN
Died December 23, 2013 Shutesburry, MA

Musician, author, spokesman, educator

Instruments: tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bassoon, bamboo flute, shehnai, shofar, arghul, koto


Recalling a magical night at Stratton Mt.,Vermont, in the winter of 1975 when I opened for Yusef Lateef.

Don't look so sad, I know it's over
But life goes on and this old world will keep on turning
Let's just be glad, we had some time to spend together
There's no need to watch the bridges that we're burning

Lay your head, upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops blowing soft against the window
And make believe you love me, one more time, for the good times

I'll get along, you'll find another, and I'll be here
If you should find, you ever need me
Don't say a word about tomorrow, or forever
There'll be time enough for sadness, when you leave me

Lyrics and music by Kris Kristofferson 1970

*I tried to write something for this great Country and Western singer, but I think this song says it all.

She is leaving,
leaving things behind,
they are just things she says.

                  She is leaving,
                  had enough silence,
                  deafening silence she says.

                                    She is leaving,
                                    and he won't know it,
                                    he doesn't even know she's already gone.

                                                          ­          She is leaving,
                                                        ­             starting over anew,
                                                           ­          to sleep alone, but sleep she will.

                                                          ­                                        She is leaving,
                                                                ­                                  naked to the sun,
                                                                ­                                  to be what she wants to be.

                                                            ­                                                                 ­                       She is gone......

*.........for a friend.........

Who will pick up the torch and light the way again,
keep us on the path of equality and right?
A soldier of love and truth has fallen,
the world is a more fragile place tonight.

Oh young ones look deep inside yourselves with wonder,
at why they could not break this little man.
Take up the reigns and lead the march to freedom,
pick up the torch and light the way again.


*"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."-Nelson Mandela 1918-2013