still Sunday autumnal,
hymnal seasonal dark
at 700 am

the grand kids
going apple picking,
under parental supervision...

so the day looms small
with largely nothing,
nothing scheduled
according to Siri,
Goddess iPad
who loves all
in the same colorless voice
equally

poet quiet plays
with the pink plastic wristband,
his workplace awarded him
as a signature that
he was a
green donor
in a cause
that should not
even be anymore
a causal giving or taking,
but a once-upon-a-time,
just another busted,
another eradicated evil

rearranging the pillows
most quiet like,
the woman sleep slips,
exhausted from
prior eve's fierce exertion,
heroine worshipping
a fellow dancer artist extraordinaire
bidding her adieu
after three decades,
to standing adoration justified...

the yellow/whiteplaybill, ticket stubs,
just this once,
just this one,
will be preserved,
a bracelet
of achievement honorific terrific

(if his truth be revealed
this very last performance of 30 years
of creative perfection,
made this flat footed man
weep as well,
leading his mind
directly to composition)

thusly,
set the setting and the
variant,
nay,
the deviant lyrics
coming fast,
sleep sliding
from intangibles of
a waking mind
to pink resurrection,
as intangible electronic impulses
herein shared...

his recollecting,
deviant lyrics,
for they deviate
from the most tiring truth
that life is mostly drudge,
many defeats, few victories,
but they come with patience
and ****, hard work,
and a rainbow primal color
some call luck

so begins the deviant...

If pink is for breast cancer, what then...

*are the hues and tints of the
multiple myeloma invaders that
destroyed the soft marrow
of a poet's fathers bones,
a man so kind,
that all children who knew him,
honored him
walking slow behind his hearse,
so deserving of a longer life,
a far better, better end,
can you not see the tear grooves
his absence has gifted me as
his pink flesh colored-bracelet

what then,
are the shades,
or just the
color unique
of the slow dementia
that consumed
a woman, happenstance...his mother...
writer, art lover,
a verbal expressor,
a most in/appropriate disease,
robbing her of the
greatest human right
to articulate,
so I wear this poem
as her her gifted headband,
an inheritance
upon the poet's
pink proud forehead,
worn evermore

do I get a pin turned
ceremonially, right side up,
having made it this far?
will they take it away,
when I quit claim
this existence,
or if the poetry ceases...

and he wonders
when is the deviant course
the exact right one,
what color,
what instrument, what jewel
should he chose
for just opening his eyes,
on this,
his 23,378th day of existence

unable to sort
identify the days,
sign each one
with the color apropos,
how to mark rightly what matters,
how to signal that life tenuous,
is worth recording,
and giving quiet thanks
for the few colors and memories
and words,
the instrumental
symbols
that lyrically
variegate us each,
and let recall
our unique
deviations