undulate and felicitate
in-a-scent of death skulls and palo santo
sometimes it all feels so fake
just momentarily
I develop a reason
to smell the burning soil
and i remember that love too can spoil
accepting emptiness as it is
like shards of glass
sorrow and madness are the two shapes
that you remember from your childhood
you have come this far in spite of your fear
so drop the ways that you continue to lie
and give this sacred vision a chance to shine

Like an alien in a spotlight
With her magnifying glasses on
My mother as she worked, up all night
Did invisible weaving till dawn

I would watch her when I couldn’t sleep
Honing in on that hole in the suit
Intently, her concentration deep
Weaving tiny threads enlarged like jute

In other-worldly light she labored
I was afraid she’d lose her eyesight
Watching her focus never wavered
Her face all aglow in the lamplight

Invisible weaving, I inquired
How tediously she plied her craft
Worked for the money that she required
Made the warp and weft of fabric last

Reconstruction, undetectable
No more burn, or tear, or fabric blight
Weaving magic so incredible
Its wound now perfect by morning’s light

She taught me much that I’m still making
From her life that now I’m grieving
Sewing, crocheting and great baking
But never invisible weaving

The picture of her life that mattered
I now see how she toiled so finely
And that the wrinkles in the fabric
Of my own life splayed out so blindly

The vision of my eyes, bedazzled
Incandescent, her face in the beam
Unaware how her mind unraveled
As Depression stole her ev’ry dream

The threads of DNA defining
Who I’ve become I’m now believing
My mother’s hand in that designing
Of my own Invisible Weaving

In honor of my mother, Edla Sylvia Fitzpatrick, on this International Women's Day

I look at the sun
and it's rays
make me shiver
Still I remain numb
in the rain

The pen and the paper
My Lord and my maker
Disintegrate
before my eyes

Like a song
pleads for it's words
A poet must be heard
Before the light
within is lost

It comes with a cost
One must be lost
Still the lines must
go on and on

Some day might
there be peace
Let happiness
increase
Still the words they
must fall like the rain

Each letter feeds
my heart
Let the words
never stop
I will be here
on the page

Always use your mind
It is an essential tool
Be willing to grab education
Your mother did not raise a fool
It is all up to you
Go forward and do great things
Just empower yourself
Be the best at it and do your thing

Flow in its intricate beauty, in its parabolic slide through an inexact thought,
Niggling here and there as it soars through the rough appendage of reason.
Flagellating the highs and lows of delight and sorrow,
Titivating the realm of ecstasy to thrill the fluttering eyeballs,
Brushing mounds of ragged hurt to bruise the tender, tender sensitivities.
Then soaring, at once skyward, in a quest for knowing,
Scintillating in a spangle of joyous, YES!
To land, exhausted and deliriously happy
In the knowledge that we two,
My mind and I,
Have won ourselves a freedom.

M.
28 March 2017
On the eve of my 72nd birthday

For no reason other than kindness, find a weary soul. Extend a helping  hand with no want for repayment of any kind. Lift up that life to a better place and set them on stable ground. Then watch them flourish and become a source of enrichment to others, through the fruit that will be born of what they have become because you took time to care.

10:06pm and they're coming at me again
a chorus demanding a chanson,
holding my brain for ransom,
the twenty six against the world's every languages' dictionary,
cacophony of a single voice demanding
provide pleasure of the interior mind's designery
obey obey the elemental electric eleventh finery
commandment
and
write anything that honors the poet's day
write something about remanding
*the world back to where we all belong

Forest inquires:

How do you decide, choose your design, find its guise,
give it a face, surrender to the poem's own
vanity,
        and choose the poem's alignment?


                                                  an­ answer forms:

this alignment idea,
you think it simple,
everybody understands
what your inquiry means

alignment -  the appropriate relative position

we live in relative position to each other, our poems too, for they are but written synapses of our close captioned interactions, seemingly random, but assuredly not, as we invest in ourselves, seeking the mysterious appropriate answer
                                                                ­                        from the Theory of Poetic Relativity

                                                   ­             i love your question;                              hold it to my nostrils,          
                                             ­             smell the coffee aroma wake up blast inherent;
                                                                ­      
 kiss its robust childlike cheeks for the simple   soulfulness essential arousal;
for you see sir you have found
the appropriate position that relates us, our mindful words;

                                 answer no good, wholly insufficient?
                                        perfect.
                          as i close this quick cooked to perfection laboratory solution, take note

                              
                            ­                        the earth has moved
                                our hearts have beaten a measly thousand times
                                    time and space have appropriated our prior
                                          
relativity

when you return years hence this poem's shape will perforce have moved. for words are weathered flux constant and yet inherently unchanged except for the part of us that changes with every re-reading  

and what was


**right before has left and the center has moved again