The winter bites into the flesh.
Breath that is stolen by its icy fingers,

And the night's frost hanging in the air
Forms into an iron fist as it closes in.

Her name is pressed into cracked lips
And you desire the arms of your lover

With whispers of "summer, summer."

I watch you play
Small and mighty
Yet you are flighty
Swift as an arrow
A funny fellow
Beauty shimmers
Light glimmers
As beat tiny wings
Inebriation
On occasion
Or so it seems
You sip then zip
Away

Stand near the cotton candy maker;
What a carnival atmosphere!
Sugar permeates the air,
    
We breathe; moisture glistens on our skin,

The taste briefly lingers on the tongue. Yet,
The thing sweetly desired obtained
Becomes a sticky mess.

In "a home", on hospice care at 85, I peek in on Mom:

Perhaps my mother was having a good dream.
Maybe she was on a horse or playing her piano
or running through her childhood pastures.

We have our dreams, which sustain us through life,
Even to the end. I couldn’t bring myself to **** her from them,
So I left her sleeping.

31,025 days of life come to a close.

I love the sky, sunrise and sunset, so much
That at times I can hardly breathe.

Only when we’re brave enough to explore
Do we find the breathless moments.

I love you so much that I am forever breathless.

I am half-sick of shadows.
There, up there is my light
Where meteors shoot,
Where clouds form,
Where lightnings strike,
And stars come and go.

Man made his brow
Furrowed like a garden row.
Indeed,

He held his own perfectly
Like eyes looking heavenward
In night skies

Searching for hope.

Crawl into my branches
Let me cradle you
How can we go
From one to two
If you remain
On the ground

Like a nomad and the desert
A bird and its feathers
Like rain in stormy weather
You and I go together

If the nomad leaves the desert
Or the bird drops its feathers
Or no rain comes in stormy weather
You and I will still be together

And on the winds of weather
We fly as if with feathers
To hide within the desert
Forgotten but together

In eternal love

My Sun,
You were my perihelion
But I got badly burned.
In the rarified air I fell.
My crash to earth, dramatic.
In time scars thickened,  
Desires weakened.  Yet,
The damage was done.

Just sit and bathe in wonder.
And as you breathe,
I mean really breathe
Let wonder bathe over you
Washing your dusty soul,
Cleansing the murkiness
From your eyes, then just smile.
That will be gift enough.

Ducks and geese and floating feathers
Falling amidst the shimmering sparkles on the bay;
All to the tune of children’s laughter
As they spin and twirl and play.

One thing alone could end my love,
When Time has stopped my Heart,

Though you have left me, here alone
To stumble in the dark.

Then, I heard the Raven say,
"Nevermore!" today.

5-3-5
Watching it go in
Basketball
Arc of perfection

7-5-7 Haiku
My favorite team plays off
Enter the finals
Being champions of the West

7-5-7
Watching the ball reaching home
The basketball is flying
It is an arc of perfection

Mortal beings like caulk
Flaking with time and use;
Like artists blowing away dust,
Dusting away brief accumulations -
These moral beings. Transactional movements.

The warning was clear
If you leave
You can never come back
And with that
They killed off the character

Ever dancing, keeping time;
We are born with rhythm,

We were born to rhyme.
We come from the womb

Already much equipped
To just get to it 'n let 'er rip!

Skyward skylark,
Fly.  Skyward go!  

Freedom's reality can be stark
As only you should know.

I wish that I could fly
Like a bird from this cage

To get that true feeling
That so very few have known.

Skyward skylark fly from night
Onward into the daylight;

Fly, hit the sky to break the seal
And let the day leak away.

You make me ashamed
to ever write a line
and call it poetry.

Exquisitely, you drag
my heart from my chest
caress and replace,

Forever enhanced,
improved, and more pliable
at the experience.

Floated in pools of honeyed-colored light
Autumn leaves caught the morning bright
Thus bringing summer's end with each new night.

Summer's foliage had built a garden so full of green delight
And played upon cheeks quite fair and eyes of childish spite;
While winter becomes a garment wrapped
   around our throats too tight.

The echo of the lie
Carries on through time

Lie upon lie in time
- Stain

The filthy froth
The couplet wrought
- staining

Froth the filthy foam

Grief on grief
It is heaped
- stained

Grief, O, grief carried on

When I see you again

I'll choke back the years . . .

of fears
of tears
of needing
of wanting
of not having
of not knowing

And you will explain
What actually happened.

I saw strange things in my dream last night.
A book read that "life is more random than we think.
And, yet it is not so random that we have no control."

A woman (she was random) said to me, "Nothing
In dis life be random."  I guess other than her.
There was a door randomly appearing leading out.

I took it and saw many random things strewn about.
I began picking each one up, turning them in my hand.
"There are so many random aspects to each", I marveled.

Life and sameness are just controlled random abstractions.

The poetry of life, like a big dog, sinks
It's teeth into you and shakes you.
Bitten to the bone you are infected.

Springs and spirals cling and climb.  
Ever upwards, ever onward day by day.
Greening our everyday lives along their way.

there is wonder of all kinds
never boring
beating my wings
moon over life

The scissors marched across her forehead;
When Mommy stuck her head in
Baby Girl said

"Not now Mommy. I'm cutting my hair."

And sure enough, the horror was true.
Baby Girl's hair lay there on the floor
In little tufts of such pretty curls.

A tear rolled down Mommy's cheeks like a tiny pearl.

My oh my
Look at those pretty birds fly

But here am I
Stuck on the ground

Sigh

Love ignited flames, the torch threw
Sleep sweet, my Only - to rise anew
Faith & steady hope, I know to be true

But, my Only, I will be missing you
For my love, my Only, you died too soon
And I will wait, if need be, for an eternity

It has been said that
A man will shape his tools
Then his tools will shape him.
It is true of male or female.
Necessity is the parent of invention,
Invention becomes the driving force,
The power to move forward towards
Life.

At times the
Abscess of my mind
Must be drained.
For, yes, at times
I feel quite insane.

Pin to paper,
I must lay down
A lot of stinkers
Before I can write
A masterpiece,

And let the ooze out.

Some of us do not function well in chaos
Some of us can function quite well
And some maintain the status quo

Some of us will rise above
Even as some will sink below
There will be hands to slap away

Even as there will be hands to hold
And as time will undoubtedly go
What, in the end, will be your story told

Experiencing love for the first time,
The heart constricts, the throat catches in a dry strangle,

Lightheaded, one grasps to breathe in the dense, thick air.
The full sensory of time and space constricts, pinpointed on the ‘THEM’!

And then you touch and evaporate into a mist of sensory overload.

Life is just uncertainty
Everything, a mess
The alternate thing is only death

Run your fingers through my hair
And rest
Answers are everywhere

One night I was swimming in my bed
At least I was swimming in my head
When a great bird flapping, suddenly
Flies off the screen of my theater-eyes
Its flit was quite swift, and it was fleet
As I run after it on bright shiny streets
I realize that I am in a hospital dying
Running after the bird was me trying
To stay alive

Alt. ending:  To stay alive, kept me from dying

Dropped from the same tree
Within the same orchard
The nuts soon cracked open
And out they popped
Dried and shriveled up
The fruitage which carries
The same DNA of the tree
The meat inside is rotten
Eating it is very bitter
And all who do eventually
Die from salacious lies.

Fleeting moments cannot be captured
Never really possessing true permanence
Haiku-like moments experienced
But never touched by hands
Mere reflected glints on a heart
Recalled within the poetry of a mind

Rain-scented perfume, this
Aromatic smell of rain-soaked earth
Monsoon-infused, centuries-old.

A man turns his head towards the laughter
As he crushes a batch of ancient clay.
Knowingly his attention returns to his family.

It is the smell of the baked, parched soil
When the first rains arrive after the drought
Which concerns the artisan of scented oils.

The enticing fragrance fills the air
With each precious drop of heavy syrup
Eked from the ages, eked from eternity.

Captured in the tiny bottle, power-filled.
The process has survived the fall of civilizations
And empires and conquerors.

It is said to have healing powers.
Aged like the land and its ancient people,
Deep and rich, the liquor of the essence of time.

It must come from this land, this people.

And so it begins, the greening of spring
On still as yet cold ground.  Shoots bursting
And unseen buds developing in hidden places.
The greening first begins in the sheltered spaces
Along the walls, in unnoticed corners.  Nursing
Its offspring that had clung to life, it is given wings.
The greening of spring now takes its annual flight.
Thus, soon this secret work will bring all delight.
Yes, how could I not extoll such an inspiring sight?

Though we may suffer
We see not death.

Heart be cool, it is not yet.
Heart be cool, perfectly.

And heart, be calm continually.
We suffer, but not death, as yet.

A voice, as if afar, speaks
Sweetly to me, "So, be at rest."

He was secretly gay
I don’t care one way
Or the other.  Brother!

But he’s the one who
Set himself up as
The judge of morality

All the while he knew
He was completely past
Having to live in reality

All the boys and men
That power can control
At will are never set free.

Some rush to the train wreck
To seek a sick thrill
Others flee the train wreck
Afraid of what they might feel

Some rush to the train wreck
Not for the thrill,
Not afraid of what they feel
Because they genuinely care

About those in the train wreck

Ballerina clouds dance overhead
elephants, rabbits, pigs, and bears
Pirouetting here and there
with an alligator nipping at their heels.
When quickly appears giant hands that come
to gently clear them all away.
And the sun suddenly shows its face
as it comes out to play.

Night, crowded with a pale haze, a lavender mystery
Even darkness was grateful that the moon wasn't having it
As it beamed through low whispered wind and intrigue intermingling
Continue your deep slumber, uninterrupted by any queries or controversies
The last few lights go out as dreams are counted one by one, longings promised
Yet, unfulfilled and unfulfillable when the night sky has other plans for sleeping heads
The oldest secrets are explained in unknown languages in encrypted symbols held within a fog
Across galaxies streaming onwards from its origins into the present constellations of understanding
The moon and its mythology wrap the night around a soul that wants to hide among the warm lavender night

Cultivated soil
Rich in love
That first seed
Planted
We will never
Be the same

With a soil
So rich
We plant again
Our harvest
Was precious
As we reaped

This fruitful
Field of ours
Thus became
Complete
We will never
Be the same

We are a garden

Two lives fusing
      as one
Intertwined
“Ieo vos tien foi tenes le moy,”-
“I hold your faith, hold mine.”

Written in 2014
(Dedicated to the memory of my Daddy, Dan A. Hacker, Jr.)
The heartbeat grows before we ever arrive;
Finally, the tires crunch on the briny soil as we pull in.
Daddy walks around and opens the door for me;
He is wearing his sliver aluminum hardhat;
I slide down the seat and clumsily out of the truck.
The heartbeat is overwhelming now,
Too loud for a human voice,
Provided anyone was inclined to speak;
Daddy is already checking gauges.
The smell of shell and oil and salt and gas
Blend into the cologne, it is the scent of my daddy.

Water, the same color as the sky,
Completely filled the pools of light.

The rays of Sun are want to try
And push to break through the bright.

Yet, languidly our time we bide
Until the pools are full of night.

The heat of summer is heavy;
A spider has hung a dragline;
In it a lone leaf dangles and spins

Amidst the humid breeze.
A rattle and hum soon rise as insects  
Calls out, "Beware! Beware, as you fly!"

For a silky trap awaits the foolish
Or the absent-minded soul
Quickly caught unawares.

A simple concrete step, a stoop; it is just a step, a stoop
Until it is associated with memories of sitting, watching,
                             and waiting.

Watching life as it parades past; neighbors, strangers, cars,
things that are blown about.

All become associated with that well-worn act, repeated with
                           religious devotion,

Of spending time on a simple neighborhood stoop.