I am hungry.
I think homeless.
I wish naked.
I am flesh.

I am calling.
I think answering.
I wish cries.
Here I am.

I am pouring.
I think satisfied.
I wish darkness.
I am noonday.

I am scorched places.
I think strong bones.
I wish spring of water.
I am child of what does not fail.

Greyhound station the midnight customs man
goes through my backpack looking
for a glock or **** I guess; instead
he pulls out Thich Nhat Hanh's
Teachings On Love.

You teaching love?
says he; I say

learning it

I am glad
we are
doing this
instead of
Facebook

Bald headed mountains with thin tree hair.
We're okay, though
we didn't think we would be.
I got a message today
from an ex-coal miner
with anti social paranoid depression:
keep them coming,
he said, of the poems;
and I too felt less alone.
The snow darkens sky,
lightens ground.
I don't know about you but I think
I've been making too many excuses.
Sometimes I sleep in the coal mine
because I want to, that's all.
Three brown birds say,
"See me!"  "See me!"
Snow falls on my head and I'm thinking:
I don't want any more birds to die for me

I am sitting by a fire with a cup of chai,
in Africa somewhere, thinking
of twenty dead children.
The Turkana women keen in the dark.
‘Woitokoi,’ they say, ‘Woitokoi,’
a call of lament.
Oh, mom.
It’s your babies
It’s your babies

I rarely turn on the radio, but do tonight.
14th of December.  Cooking coconut curry.
I watch the last red and gold fall behind skeleton trees
and step out into the cold with my guitar and Willie Nelson’s
‘Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.’
Is anyone watching the sparrows falling?

You mothers who have lost a child,
you fathers who have lost a child,
have gone where none can follow
but One who loves you, loves me,
even school shooters, maybe;
One who hates evil
for what it destroys,
One who
(for this love
and hatred)
listens to His son say:
Father
Father
Why have you forsaken me.
One who says to you now:
though father and mother forsake you
yet I will not forsake you--


I am sitting by a fire in Shelton, Connecticut,
thinking of twenty dead babies.
Oh mom.  Mom.
It’s your babies.
It’s your babies.
It’s your babies

I'm not making
an argument
for the Communist

I'm not trying
to Robin Hood anything
from you

I'm just saying
sharing is so much happier
than nonsharing

Please
take what you want
off my plate

Lust is toxic
sad and
hollow.

Love says
somebody else
throw the first stone.

I wonder what You're writing in the dust.