She scrubbed the floor each day they say
She scrubbed on hand and knee
She dug and plowed and washed and cried
She cooked but not too well I say

Among the brushes and the thrushes
and the hollows and the hymns
Despite the fickle and the wicked
from swirling men to swishing gin

It is bad in this world they say
It is not worth a lick or stitch
It gets all sad with pain and pain
It drowns not washes with its rain

We aren't poor with the Lord they say
We will walk on streets of goldest gold
We will sing and know no loss nor death
We won't really get old though we get old

Among the verses and the hearses
and eager beavers praising praise
Despite the sinners and the winners
with the sermons' end of days

He told the truth they said he said
He told the hardest heard of things
He gave the liars all the fires
He thought he knew the truth I say

Don't leave don't go don't move they say
Don't run away from here your home
Don't think there is a better place
Don't wait up for me at night I say

Among bitter breaths to smell and taste
and just crickets to hear just stars to see
Despite snakes and roads down ***** dirt
and scratchy gravel and hurting hurt

I left them here alone they say
I went and did though I was warned
I drove away at breakneck pace
I long stopped believing in this place

Alison and I walked together in cold European December
Seeking a modest dose of culture & enlightenment
in some grand dead palace where we could pass judgment
on the decadence of queens and puddlejump around
from surrealist paintings to Mexican food to picking up
Evi at the airport. We found the time.

We'd gone out on the first night and been the only two
speaking English at the bar, until we were interrupted
by a hot Australian bartender who joined us and agreed
to play Country Roads to our delight. We lost the time.

It wasn't lost on either of us how foreign it had become
to be with each other like that, and happy I hope:
We were instantly caught up as I kept bumping into her
intentionally, and shouting "Entschuldigung!" because
it was the only word I knew. We'd lost no time.

She told me about her piano search and looking after
the Ambassador and hobnobbing with former presidents
and dignitaries with all the uptight flair of the affairs
of state, and her own shining searching lost loneliness
that has come to mirror my own. We knew the time.

On the last night we stayed up playing checkers and rummy
and chess until she could win, sipping wine as we ignored
the gardens and museums that surrounded us, and taunted
each other about how we were ready to party all night
if only the other hadn't grown so old. We still had time.

‪ashes are for scattering‬
‪as people are for holding‬

‪too late to do different by them‬
‪once wind has had its say‬

‪constant soil remaining mute‬
‪is nourished in spades‬

The ground's still cold at the end of May,
And all I want is another day.
Winter will come far too soon,
As middays lapse into afternoons.

Crickets tweet despite the dark,
And I don't run though all dogs bark.
You never know what's past the trees,
As Betelgeuse glimmers too faint to see.

Hacking out verses numbingly hones
That strange sad effort to make here home.

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.

When all you want is just to think and make
But like a wheel in tar ambitions slow
Create your world all full of great mistakes

To be yourself when all the smiles seem fake
Can feel as if you’ve been punched in the nose
When all you want is just to think and make

****** onward for this life is yours to take
Please wait before you walk dark paths alone
Create your world all full of great mistakes

Though all of hope may freeze in frozen state
It’s still just one foot down, one up, to go
When all you want is just to think and make

There’s never so much as you think at stake
And errors which don’t **** will make you grow
Create your world all full of great mistakes

If nothing’s left to do for heaven’s sake
Eschew the past; it is your only foe
When all you want is just to think and make
Create your world all full of great mistakes

Just-
ice
to-
gether
our-
selves
a-
lone?

No.
Know:

Just
us
to
gather
are
selves
a
loan.

He fell away with his uffish head all full
and he bought what we couldn’t buy him and
he didn’t buy what we swallowed whole
or at least he sold it back or gave it away
for vorpal heresies & novel fascinations

And just like we taught him to ride the red
a few swipes away from bankruptcy and desolation
but welcome and chortled to fail if that’s
easier for now than climbing the Tumtum tree
or trying to make it in this world
well fed - given all to eat and truly loved

It’s curious how the rain gyred down today
and stopped and came again and stopped
because the cadence of his windshield wipers
seemed to coincide with the crankier parts:
only working when there’s nothing left to wipe

We don’t even give two ***** if a Jubjub bird
falls dead and he whiffles away, sword
between his legs (though that is dangerous)
and the beast escapes. He can eat the **** bird
for all we care, but for sustenance, not triumph

But our son is still lost; he’s frabjously
writhing in the tulgey fiber of disappointment
unable to slay even the puniest of borogoves
His melancholy surpasses all comprehension
and he isn’t coming home any time soon

He’s not galumphing back.

What use is a mimsy rhyme to the famished?
How often are we warned, beamishly chastised
of the brillig peril of worrying ourselves
with feeding the slithy soul
when the body burbles, always demands to eat first
and is satisfied by no less
than the frumious flesh of the fatted calf?