The woman with the cat face made a wish
And all the sparrows turned to fish.

The sky produced them at her command
Stacked like kippers upon her hand.

The woman with the cat tail switched it once
And paving stones turned to hot cross buns.

The woman with the cat tail switched it twice
And made Catholic bishops of five field mice.

The woman with the cat heart had a beau
Set him on a gallows and swung him low.

The woman with the cat heart clapped her hands
And made his coffin out of watering cans.

the night whispers the black water fall of ashes
that bloom into the sparrows of sorrow...


the sorrow sparrows are back again
sitting in the tangled woods of twisted trees.

Van Gogh heard their voices
bouncing off love's walls.

the sorrow sparrows are leaning into me.
my sad eyes, dream of you brother.

I lean into the soft lit room
searching for love's quiet hours,
with sunlight flickering through willow trees.

"don't cry, darlin," my wife whispers.

Round and baby smooth
Before the heavy lessons
Now more gold than globe

Earned geography
Topography in bruises
Ridged in blue and black

Fault lines and canyons
Shining yellow Kevlar-filled
Stronger in the cracks

But this recent dent
is a gut-aching crater
that wobbled my world

So, I wait for healing gold
And grow stronger from repair

Seeds planted lovingly
Don’t always grow
Somehow didn’t get what it needs
What it was missing
We don’t always know
Tended to so lovingly
Still don’t grow
Love
Isn’t a necessity
For seeds
Unmeant to blossom
Not every start
Works magically
Dud seeds

YOU,
one of the  mainstay sails of this ship,
a timbered main, like so many others,
who come here to pray and be blessed
daily, sometime twice, and rare absent
from this battlefield of word worthiness,
where so many fall, unattended, but you
are not one of them

you cross my mind,
and bring me a smile,
all the time. line by line,
your bedlam blue, is our custodian

I repost what intrigues, makes me gasp, jealous and desiring
why and how you found these words, that trick my eyes,
in disbelieving belief, that you got there first,  com~bo~ing
craziness delightfully,  and says me ****, how could have I
missed this, the that, where you are at,  a missive missile firing
in a million directions, hitting every target...

so I thank you, twice times over, you
are the sailor extraordinaire that keeps our
leaky (bad gateway?) afloat, and it is you,
X 10,000  that I wish I could repost, this worthy cause,
but here I must pause, for you have given me a pleasured
insight, in right, it is us who should be shy, for not
honoring
you ever so much more.

with affection,
even I, Left Foot Poet
get it righted, sooner,
but never, is not permissible
so let us sail on...together...

When she was younger,
my aunt wandered open houses-
asking about appliances, disclosures-
never to buy.

She walked through other lives,
voices echoing in bare hallways,
curry pressed into kitchen walls,
towel shelves labeled for Stuart and Ashley,
a dead wren curled in the attic vent,
angel ornaments nailed to a maple
with a plaque For the lost children.

She despised the staged ones-
rooms polished too clean,
gray carpets that never knew a body,
couches that never sagged
with anger or grief.

She wanted mess,
hair in the corners,
cracked linoleum like dry riverbeds,
a house confessing itself.

I once saw her return,
shoulders tight against weather,
keys like a rattle she never learned to use.
She climbed the stairs to her condo
above the clipped green of the golf course,
set her coffee on the sill,
and sat quiet-
her life ordered,
pared down,
afraid of leaving
any trace behind.

She never spoke of the reservation,
and I never saw it.
Our family folded into the city
like laundry hidden in cupboards,
tamed, pressed smooth.
She prowled those houses
the way I prowl memory,
searching for proof people lived,
uncontained,
unsanitized.

Infidelity (noun) \ ˌin-fə-ˈdel-ət-ē \
Betrayal of a vow. Or whispered otherwise, the first time Coyote tasted the salt of my wrist, when lightning seemed to have waited to arrive. Grandmother would call it shadow-marriage, the reminder that paper rings and courthouse oaths cannot bind the spirit. It flowers soft and fragrant, sweet as mesquite after rain.

Myth (noun) \ ˈmith \
A traditional story, especially one natural or social phenomena. Or in another tongue, to be called Inanna while pulling my hair back, as if the goddess herself had crawled from shadow to breathe on his neck. I laugh because I’m no goddess- just a woman with cracked nails and unpaid bills. Still, myth enters flesh like fever, and we burn until the walls drip with story.

Body (noun) \ ˈbä-dē \
The physical vessel. Or in broken voice, the altar on which every promise is tested. My body knows what paper cannot: the way desire bruises, the way grief leaves its thumbprint. Flesh remembers long after the mind has lied itself clean.

Eros (noun) \ ˈer-ˌäs \
Passionate love. Or named differently, a hunger that follows, like a stray through desert parking lots, its tongue bright with need. Eros offers scraps, sometimes nothing, and still I remain, hollow with wanting, certain one day I will eat from his palm. He is no child, he comes like a jackal-god- wild, luminous, not easily bound.

Pulchritude (noun) \ ˈpəl-krə-ˌtüd \
Beauty. Or carried on another breath, the ache. I see him sketching a body not mine, tracing hips that could belong to any girl at the bus stop. I know beauty is a weapon sharpened against me. Still, in his eyes I find fragments- cheekbones my father gave me, hair dark as my mother’s shame- briefly holy, before the mirror cuts again.

Unravel (verb) \ ˌən-ˈra-vəl \
To come undone. Or in another telling, the way every thread between us shivers like a web in prairie wind- fragile, trembling, already near to breaking. Spider Grandmother whispers that love weaves and unweaves in the same breath. The art lies in knowing when to let the strands snap, and when to hold fast, even as your hands begin to bleed.