I believe in myths.

Every naturel blonde was first someone else.  By that I mean, she was known as Norma Jean, maybe Katy, in high school (see reincarnation below).

My teenage glory days, when I was the king of cool,
will revisit when I am 75 years old, the man-in-demand (wink), wearing his lucky wide cord corduroys and letting my man-bun,
all the way down, at the prom in the senior citizen home, getting lucky, say once a month...

God, yup, after all, he/she cometh to me regular-like,
when he needs a poet~father to take his confession,
and pays me most excellently for refusing him forgiveness,
with the most excellent poem suggestions or lesser valuable things.

Love at first sight, of course, happens to me all the time,
twenty, thirty times when I am walking home.  I tell ya, it's exhausting, the stress of living in the big city

Not only will I win the lottery someday,
will take down both,  Powerball and MegaMillions,
in the very same week the odds for which
there ain't enough zeroes in HP's servers. (See God, above).

Reincarnation. One time they Hale(d) and then hanged me (my "namesake") and I said: " I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country."  Well, the selfies all show oh-boy-o-boy, was I ever grinning and winking.

Only boys are bullies, girls get off easy, by getting called
just mean.

One day my city's teams will win the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals and the Superbowl all in the same year but only after I die and me, well, only after they will have buried me in Wyoming or France, just for spite, and nobody will hear me screaming.

My children will speak fondly of me even after they find out I died broke, well maybe not fondly, but they will most definitely call out my name, regularly.

After my demise, all the typoes in my poems will magically disappear.

All these good things will come to fruition, because I am a believer, and walked the humble path. The autopsy will also show that my tongue was permanently stuck to my cheek.

Incarnate

She is
She is the carne of my body
She is the innate of my soul
She is my woman incarnate

she is all I need
in form realized and invisible imagined,
angel and thank god,
devil as well...

June 2014

little remains
of my grandfather's house:
raw rafters, warped planks with hints
my uncle invested in paint

the windows all gone, time
and twisters took them, and much
of the roof--what is left of that sags,
a silent submission to gravity

a woodstove survives, cold
to the touch, with no memory
of the fire it once birthed, the precious
prairie timber which fed it

now it knows only mourning
doves' song; winged squatters
unperturbed by my presence, as if
they know I lay no claim to now

the old boards have stories
I will never hear: the birth of babes,
reading the Word by kerosene lamps,
the last breaths of men

the songbirds may know,
but they woo the living in flight--a
future of nesting and fertile eggs; they
owe no belated dirge to long lost kin

she returns from her classes,
ballet, yoga, core something and Zumba for flavoring,
her hair, an upward, toe pointing cannon of mop mess,
her face glowing flushed,
one look and I know she is both,
morphing high,
wipeout exhausted

a little ritual she performs somewhere between
"it was great and she (the instructor) killed us,"
auto sub conscious,
she looks herself over,
twisting elegantly like the
Argentine tango dancer she is,
in the mirrored closet doors

raising both arms to see (show off)
the sums of her endeavors,
the exoskeletal musculature
she has earned,
a life long effort,
like a prize fighter as he
macho enters the ring,
an alpha male gesture
if ever there was one,
made over to say,
hey boy, look at me!

and the boy looks her over,
always thinking, but never revealing,
that it is her muscles of mindfulness and mercy,
that take his breath away, the ones that are worked out daily,
the ones that surround and work the heart beating,
the lung inhaler of humans in need,
exhaling the richest
oxygen for others to breathe

and the boy does his service,
providing a "wow" or "very impressive,"
only you and he know his real thinking,
and his muscle memories secret,
you to keep, just between us,
and his secret identity, only love poetry...

8:52pm 7/20/17