Don't ever say a word of ill
Against me or you'll face her scorn
No greater champion have I known
Since that autumn day when I was born

Silver hair is now her crown
And years of care have worn her brow
But in swift defense of all she loves
My mother's shield around me goes

No kinder heart on Earth exists
Who cares for old and nurses young
But those who lie and cheat and scam
Cannot be spared my mother's tongue

I never grasp why others sigh
Or why the mountains seem so close
When on any paths my feet can trod
My mother's spirit gives me hope

Over hostile lands into deepest seas
From least to greatest anywhere
No map can hide the things I need;
My mother's eyes will find them there

I pity children who only know
A mother's love that's shown through tears
Because death is mercy to all who weep
When my mother’s love is proved by fear

Though justice in this world e'er wanes
Though brave men shudder, cower, flee
I know as long as air I breathe
My mother's hands will fight for me

Burdens great and burdens small
May have beaten, broken most
But after every sting and pain and ache
My mother's back is too strong to break

So try your best to make me hurt
But mark the warning that these words give
To careless fools who may wish me dead:
My mother's wrath will have your heads

I pray for any who'd do me wrong
Because my father taught me so
But my prayers can offer little aid
As whomever harms me, my mother slays

My mother's love is deep and great
Giving her whole self, she never hates
Helping all who ask, taking pain to care
A better woman can be found nowhere

But make no mistake, lest I be unclear:
My mother's love is wise to fear.

How fast fade most pinkest trees
How digits dance 'neath Catalpa breeze
Ignoring last October's deadest death
They arrived on time then took last breaths

Scattered seeds among their foes
Had no need of planting earthen work
As cycles shadow ploughman's dream
The fickle fruitless cherry grows

He rode rough crests over wildest waves
His ship stayed unsunk under skinny toil
His family landed and held holiest hope
Now blossom buds over grassy graves

Darkness darkened darkest health
Metal sheets broke bones full force
Lungs would not get the care of air
But hours still channeled wisdom wealth

She bent the knee for sacred loves
She scraped it on the firmest strife
Her pies nor pulchritude but soul inspired
Now stillness stays beneath starry moves

When bloodiest blood ****** didn't produce
It drained itself from veins and strained
Veiling valleys making mountains make-believe
But sharpest tongue emptiness refused

What meagre maggots worthless worms
Are those of us who never yearn!
We rarely learn to live so well as they
Who gave us genes and grace and days

All I offer oft only when I try and I work
Nothing else can I do nor more can I hope
This most modest shallowest honor to give
Of them in springtime remembering is

With an archangelic blessing
they stand open naked exposed
one gaze of longing
one gaze of wonder
there is need of nothing
save one another
beneath stark colors
beneath fluttering imagination
beneath divine sky
neither highest peaks
over verdent fields
nor deepest riverbeds
under raging flows
prevents this sanctification
As trees may burn
As serpents may strike
As gilded beams beat down
Time halts or never was
Whilst raptured crimson wings
effortlessly suspend
any pretense of twoness
worshipping this momentary
omnipotence
cursing the ludicrous
notion of morrow
Their curving bodies are
but one--
*--at least for now.

I found a spider crawling up
the drainpipe and it freaked me out
for a minute until I realized
that I am bigger than a spider
and no arachnophobe at heart

I am no arachnophile either though
and so I smooshed the spider
with a paper towel into the wall
thereby ending its life and sparing
me and those I love from spiderbites

(from this particular eight-legged foe)
And likely sparing the flies as well
But that's not so great
But I still forgive myself
for messing with the natural order of things

And I forgive everyone who kills spiders
and everyone who chooses not to **** spiders
And every spider who eats a fly
And every spider who bites a man
even if that man dies.
I still forgive the spider, even if
it is not my spider to forgive.

And I forgive every web-spinner and maker
of things which are stronger than steel

And I forgive you too if you let me
but I won't forgive you if you fear the spiders
and I won't forgive you for smooshing them
if it's irrational and not for the sake
of saving the potentially bitten,
or at least for the sake of the flies.

I can't ever forgive you for that
anymore than I can ever stop thinking
about you and what it meant to be your friend.

I like to believe
that nobody understands me
and I'm one of a kind
lost to obscurity
but hinting of mysterious
significance

And I feel sorry for
my uncle's three-legged dog
and the malignancy
of fear in rural America
and the failed successes
of the Bolsheviks

I wonder about the air
in Saõ Paolo in January
and the muskuloskelatal
infirmities that creep in
and make the aged
into churlish curmudgeons

There is no way I could
hunt truffles or find a fresh
Morel in the woods when
I didn't even realize until
my grandmother died that
we own a creek

Uttering vespers in moonlight
yields some sanguine lucidity
like contemplating the nuanced
differences between polenta
and cornmeal mush

It's like I'll never write a poem
in time or finish a marathon
or kiss a stranger deeply
through the crisp ventillation
of nevermore.

We might daydream the bombastic
colors of Cezanne but all
we'll ever be is some nondescript
platinum ischemic flash,
a slimy buffet consisting in
all-is-lost

An apocryphal journey
to the center of the city
faces our insubordination to plastic
with the harshness of a dictionary
in the face of the illiterate

But in the end, apoplectically
forgotten, I come to the
unintelligent conclusion,
mathematically speaking,
that there is nothing singular

nor more available
than the finite banality
of my empty, insufficiently
obscurantist words which
flow and choke and all can know
and see clearly through

though I insist that none
of this pretence is born
of any maleveloence, and I chide
"How very meta of me indeed"

to have thought of another witty
and most cleverest retort
the day after the insult
was first delivered

But I used my last gift card
to purchase this still life
to pierce the hollow
cerulean satisfaction
otherwise known as tears

Barring diastolic ******
I'll stick around to see
how this all turns out
and hope that one day I can stop
being so completely understood

And then I can hide in the lonely
and find refuge in the cave
as a single meaningless scrawl
buried in the last pages
at the end of the world.

Some converted industrial uptown space
$20 brunch at a table for one
Nice and filling it seems, no room in my gut
Nor wondering why I walk gasping for breath
Pouring water, wishing it were alcohol
Too dumb when the check comes to add a figure

Some deep lasting sustenance from that, I figure
Stumbling home down block past shop and vacant space
Nothing sanitizes quite like alcohol
Great to see strangers holding hands one in one
Except I'd claw them and beat out their breath
Wrenched and stuffed I'd kick them in their stupid gut

That's not very nice, I know it in my gut
But somehow don't care much more to figure
Which story to tell or the smell of my breath
When tables for two require just as much space
And a spot at the counter suffices for one
Despite the sadness and lack of alcohol

I think lager, Malbec, other alcohol
And there is some deep craving still in my gut
For drunkenness or eternal truth, which one?
What luck, I'm rescued by a dashing figure
Some vibrations in my pocket fill the space
Imagination comes up to catch its breath

But that's about it, no handsome man with fresh breath
Just me standing in line to buy alcohol
Squeezing past the register makes for tight space
But maybe it's all the sausage in my gut
There's no lasting sense in minding my figure
So long now resigned to the comforts of one

The alternative is an uncertain one
And to explain I feel I'm wasting my breath
But there's no harm in ogling a nice figure
And there's no harm in a little alcohol
Oh, poor decisions, I feel them in my gut
Forgetting prescient matters of Time & Space

Perhaps there is one, sipping on alcohol
Inhaling deep breath, with a fire in his gut
Awaiting a figure to write lines in space.