One tiny water droplet dances,
On a river of rushing air.
She races 'oer  cumulus cliffs.
She tumbles down the nimbus stair,
And as she whirls mid the frozen flow,
Her body begins to turn to snow.

Relinquishing her liquid status,
Spreading forth her crystaline lattice,
She leaps from the cloud tops of her birth,
Forsakes the sky and drifts to earth.

Now me...
               ...I come...
Grumping down the stony street,
Back turned to the sky, eyes glued to my feet,
And lurking in my furrowed head,
Myriad troubles, worry and dread.
No time to look round, no time to see,
No time for laughter, no time to be.

Suddenly, a glint, flashing, captivates my eye,
Causing me to look upon a small speck drifting by.
One perfect snowflake, like a musical note,
Piroettes, hovers and lands upon my coat.

At once, the black veil distorting my sight,
Dissolves to reveal the truth and the light.
I look up, breathless, for now I can see,
The whole world is dancing and smiling at me,
And my cares, so tremendous a moment before,
Now seem quite tiny and sort of a bore.

I must thank this lovely creature who has perched upon my sleeve,
But all I found was a water droplet, slipped down into the weave.
And on that winter afternoon as I stood beneath a tree,
A small voice whispered on the wind and sighed...
                                                       ­                        ..."Remember me."

Later on, the moment past, now back my daily trials,
And I, caught up in deadlines met, far from thoughts of smiles,
Reached for a pen to make a list of certain things to get,
Looked down my arm at the sleeve of my coat,
                       ...and saw it was still wet.



(For Casey)

Random mortar shells in the afternoon.
Sparkling, steel jacketed rain drops,
Glinting rainbows of reflected sunlight.
Plastic explosive seat cushions upon which passers-by,
Rest their weary bones.
C-4 candy bars, nuclear toothpaste,
****** for dessert.
Orphanage flambe', hospital hash, blood pudding.
Human burgers sizzling on a smart bomb bar-b-que grill.
Finger food, toe jam, baby-back ribs.

Bureaucratic double talkers,
Sugar coated body counts,
Colateral stew.
Really deplorable, awfully sorry,
But it was their own faults trying to put on raincoats.
They declined our invitation to the cook-out.
Bad luck to open an umbrella in the house.

Remotely piloted funeral processions.
Radar guided hearses.
Televised in real time.
Precision, surgical,
neutralized, deterrent, disarmed,
Deactivated, stand down, eliminate.

Living pawns on a battlefield checkerboard.
Strategic, defensive,
Dominate, annihilate,
Acceptable loss, public opinion pole.

Listen to the tinkling of sabre blades,
Rattling windchimes,
In the warm breeze of the shockwave,
Accompanied by the drumbeat of detonation and concussion.
Rock...
        ...and heads will roll.

Holy, blessed,
Patriotic, brave,
Courageous, dedicated,
Heroic, dutiful,
Self sacrificing...
                         ...******.

Park people are winos and homos and cheaters and thieves.
Park people are ugly, when they walk, they wheeze.
You'll find them 'neath bushes under blankets of leaves.
Park people do as they please.

Park people can stand around naked,
Throw up in public,
And not bat an eye.
Park people pick their noses, scratch their ******, *** in alleys,
And laugh so hard they cry.
Park people remember their mothers and their lovers,
Who they left for a bottle of rye.
Strange way for someone to die.

Park people don't care 'bout nuthin,
Cept MD 20-20,
And how to get plenty,
Pre......fur.....uh......bly,
For free.

Yes, the park people smile at you,
And the strange things you do,
To get away from them.
"Spare change, brother?"

Downtown,
In the nighttime,
Urban warriors stalk unsuspecting prey.

Downtown,
In the nighttime,
Is not quite like downtown in the day.

Give ground,
At the right time,
Lest the nighttime takes your life away.

I live inside a small glass cage,
With plastic limbs and leaves.
There is no sun,
There is no rain,
There is no cooling breeze.
I'd love to go a courting,
But there's no one here like me.

My life began in a *******'s tank,
Never seen a real tree.
Probably wouldn't recognize one,
If it fell on top of me.
I spend my hours motionless,
Wishing I was free.

When I came here from the pet store,
There was another in poor health,
But he passed away the second day,
On an overheated shelf.
The Big Hand took his body off,
And left me by myself.

Huge faces many times my size,
Peer into my prison flask.
How nice for them; they're entertained,
But I am fading fast.
I'm just some human's knick-knack,
Inside my cage of glass.

I could have lived in a forest,
And climbed the tallest tree.
I could have had a girlfriend,
And made other frogs like me.
I could have eaten tasty bugs,
But it was not meant to be.

And come the day I breathe my last,
Inside this glassy wall,
They'll take my body out of here,
To the bathroom down the hall.
The toilet lid's my funeral bier,
And I will float in state.
The Big Hand will pull the chain,
And flush me to my fate.

One small speck of organic matter,
Aspiring to life,
Waits upon the cosmic ladder,
To take its turn in strife.

To take its turn in the living jungle,
Its turn on the cosmic wheel.
Waiting to discover the pain of love;
Waiting to know what it is to feel.

Through an earthworm's gut it travels on,
Into the earthy soil.
Taken up in a stalk of wheat,
It feeds a farmer's toil.

Shat upon the steaming ground,
Once again it tries,
Another step on the stairs of life,
But now just food for flies.

Over and over it cycles through,
Reaching for the top.
With all the time in the universe,
It does not need to stop.

And then one day its atoms reside,
In a cell in my finger tip.
Finally come to experience life,
Within my cosmic ship.

Love, hate, sorrow and fear,
It now has come to know.
Lust, desire, joy and pain;
Center stage in the eternal show.

But I will not live forever.
Soon, die, I must.
All my parts will decompose,
And the speck will return to dust.

But from the dust she'll rise again,
Reaching for the top.
With all the time in the universe,
The circle will never stop.

I was an old warrior without love,
When Freyja took pity on my soul,
And though the time was late, my friend,
Twas no less sweet the goal.

Her eyes brought me close the first moment.
Her presence my privilege to possess.
I'll see her that way forever.
I'll shiver when 'ere we caress.

When its late and the day has been painful,
And its trials still sting and still bite,
We'll bar the door on our nation of two.
It'll be just you and me through the night.

I was an old warrior without love,
When Freyja took pity on my soul,
And though the time was late, my friend,
Twas no less sweet the goal.

4/13

Someday, you'll marry a banker,
And I will be lost at sea,
And on a breakfast morning looking past your cup of tea,
At the bottom of page forty three,
In print of funeral black,
The story of a ship,
That on an ocean trip...
                                     ...did slip...
                                                     ...beneath the waves.

A list of names of those not saved,
Accompany these lines.
Your eyes lightly scan the page,
Til they come to rest on mine.

Your husband, looking from his plate, says,
"Do I see a tear?"
Startled, you quickly turn your head.
"Oh...its nothing, Dear."

*******!
I have become the Son of Sam.
A lonely figure of a man.
A shadow in the park,
Lurking through the dark.
My victims seldom scream,
I say, "Its just a dream.
You'll wake up, you'll wake up, you'll wake up."

But now the papers reveal,
All I tried to conceal.
My family, they now know what I did.
They'll say,"He's been crazy since he was a kid."

No matter what I do,
I simply can't convey to you,
The understanding you deny me.
Go ahead.....fry me!
You deserve it.

I wish I'd been an astronomer,
Gazing through my telescope's tunnel,
Into the distant, unimaginable past;
Through dark matter veils,
And swirling, turbulent gas.

Inside hyper-hot primordial clouds,
Hydrogen atoms danced two by two,
To make the things that made me and you.
Through my telescope tube,
I would see glimpses of our future selves,
Wrapped in elemental shrouds of expelled outer layers,
Drifting mid radiating clouds,
Of star babies struggling to be born.

Cut from the same cloth by scissors of hardened steel.
Boiled in the cauldron of bubbling blood.
Borne forth upon the highway of broken bleaching bones.

The conquerors come.
Different name,
Always the same.

Glory, justice, honor and god,
Truth, freedom, liberating tide.
Country, family, home and hearth,
These are the tales the historians lied.
Straight faced...
    ...without so much as a snicker.

What glory in old men's broken hands?
What justice in stolen wasted lands?
What honor in puddles of baby's blood?
What truth in an indifferent god?

We have been here since the last black star exploded.
Here, in this expanding expanse, we ever shall remain,
Until the final neutron decomposes,
And there is no more love,
And no more pain.

Hush!
All is dark!
Mother has put out the light.

Hydrogen and Helium,
Bound in Gravity's ambitious grasp,
Go from absolute cold to incredibly hot,
In a blinding fusion flash.
Billions and trillions of twos become ones
Joined together in fiery suns.

Oxygen, neon, aluminum and sand,
All forged together in the maker's burning hand.
Carbon, copper, yttrium and gold
All made to order in creation's white hot mold

And when the iron frying pan invades the maker's heart,
It only takes a moment and the maker comes apart.
Iridium, platinum, thallium and lead,
Go rushing through the cosmos,
To announce the maker's dead.

Gone but not forgotten,
The Maker's flesh and bones,
Billow through the Milky Way,
In search of other homes,
And come to rest in a spinning cloud,
Of gas, debris and stones.

Within the swirling chaos,
New centers begin to form,
Another million years or so,
Another maker born.

This maker warms a rocky earth,
And brings forth lakes and trees,
Birds and cats and Summer nights,
And eventually you and me.

Little bits of makers past,
Make all the things we are.
Two souls become one in a fusion flash,
Love...born in the heart of a star.

Oh ******, detested fly,
I do hate you so,
From the gossamer that is your wings,
To your greenish, blue-black glow.
With your thousand-eyed empty stare
Inflaming my disgust.
Oh ******, detested fly
Die you must!

To say its nothing personal
Would be an outright lie.
I hate you with a hate so pure
As you light upon my pie!
The vermin oozing from your feet,
Contaminate the lovely crust!
Oh ******, detested fly
Die you must!

Perhaps a mighty truncheon
I'll swing with my righteous hand.
Perhaps I'll blast you off the wall
With a well aimed rubber band.
However I dispatch you hence,
On this you may place your trust...
Oh ******, detested fly,
Die you must!

How fine when your mangled torso
Is delivered to the trash,
And serenity descends once more
Upon my corned beef hash,
And all within my kitchen,
Is safe from your probing lust.
This is why, detested fly,
Die you must!

My funeral will be held in the backyard.

My urn will rest on a small table,

Covered with some odd colored cloth.
(Their choice, I'll have no preference.)

Some of my friends will come.

Nervous laughter will be heard.

Stories will be told.

Later, everyone will go home.

Wheeling through the dark blue arc
Of a wide cloud spattered sky,
A solitary vulture sails in circles
With sharply discerning eyes,
Come to clean the carnage below
Left from the struggle for who lives and who dies.

No harbinger of Death's cold finger, she.
Humble, faithful servant
Turning old back into the new.
When the vulture comes, Death does not linger;
Death's odor departs
And Death's cold finger
Is made warm as fresh earth,
Where flowers bloom better than last year
Because the faithful vulture has kept faith with her thankless work.

Death dances round me,
A specter, a shadow,
Always just past the corner of my eye.

She weaves a tapestry thread through my life,
Taunting me meanly,
As all I know and love dies.

She arrives unexpected.
She arrives unannounced,
But sometimes her calling card comes in advance.
Surprise or no,
She still sparks a shock,
Whenever she enters the room.

Death dances round me and round me...
And round me still again,
Til the band strikes up my song,
And curtseying politely,
She insists I join her in a waltz.