Sleep snapped its fingers all night,
but refused for a moment to alight.
Snichy-snatchy promises made,
but not meant and not kept.
Awareness - a balloon pushing
the head into grotesque shapes
thin enough to see through,
too flexible to squeeze away...
the riots of thought and remembrance.

4:00 AM
Ugly time, when reality
is caught in the headlight glare of reason;
refuses to be molded into something
rounded and melded.
Something less likely to flense our minds.

Saturday.
He fondles his roses
as little Beth walks by,
holding her mommy’s hand.
When mother and daughter
are up the street a bit,
he palpates petals,
lets thorn press into his crotch.

He is that nice old retired preacher
from the middle of the block.
He babysits Beth while her mommy
goes to the gym.

His predilections are private...
secret...
No one knows.
No one knows but little Beth...

and all the little girls before her.

Angie’s blind eyes wander aimlessly in their sockets,
one white as the belly of a snake, the other a pointless blue.
She has one dress she wears every day, and a cane that is
without tip and has lost most of its red paint.
In the building she has memorized even the pale illusions
well enough to scoot about without hesitation.
She likes no one.
She likes me.
Thinks she is JFK, talks of herself quite lucidly and with
deadly accurateness.
Found herself a spirit-lover, asked me to perform a
marriage ceremony for them. What the hell, it’s a sad
life with no one in it, although that does not apply to me,
who loves my self-imposed isolationism beyond reason.
I find a pretty stone broach, a stuffed teddy-bear holding a
red satin heart that says, “I love you…” and a doll with
ribbons in its hair - these were her dowry.
I say the words over my open Bible, inviting blasphemy
to call out my name.
Now, she has become a Velcro-shadow.
When I am ill her zeal to cure me is fanaticism incarnate.
Foolish woman, I - who chose her own path to trod,
but along the way tripped over a crippled bird that is sure
to peck me to death.

I am not speaking for others, but for myself
when I want to escape, I take a book off my shelf.
Engrossed in its pages, captured by its tale,
I can be a princess grand or on a ship a-sail.

Walls no longer form my boundaries..
inside a book I can be just who and what I please.
Boredom does not live there, fingers do not drum,
as I listen to bird wings beat or hear a guitar strum.

This world sometimes fails to be a very nice place,
but one can always find a book about a special place.
Or we can learn about those who have gone before,
perhaps setting foot on a moon-flung shore.

A book is a special friend who welcomes us inside,
offering an adventure or just a place to hide.
Books take us away from the mundane and ordinary
as they open up and share with us their story.

He made me sell my books.
I wanted words - he wanted dope.
All my lovely volumes were packed
in boxes one day when I
came home from work.

He never took me anyplace.
But he took me to Powell's
to sell my Shakespeare collection,
my John Donne, all the Emily Dickenson -
and my cherished Edgar Allan Poe...
all the musty, strange old books
I had lovingly hoarded -
many first editions.

Next he took me to a used book store
where my paperbacks could be traded
for stacks of westerns he would be
too high on crank to read.

Now my books live in the closet.
Safe...hidden, like Jews in a Warsaw Ghetto,
or runaway teenage girls in abandoned buildings.

It has been five years.
Perhaps soon I will get a bookcase
and let them out to stand beside my chair.

Slowly around me senses slip away.
One by one they succumb to the fates.
Self-hatred has engulfed me at last,
beyond my capability to care.
I loose my bowels into the nothingness
that soon will become the kingdom
where my feces-encrusted corpse
will slowly rot - releasing my responsibility.

Someone is new in the building,
I can smell the bacon.
It is a feather teasing my nose.
Will they have coffee and toast?
Is there strawberry jam?

I can remember eating bacon,
crisp, salty crunches of meat
that I can no longer afford.
Get old, my friend,
live on disability and bacon is
a mere memory.

Sometimes I pretend
I am a vegetarian,
but I have no proper teeth
that will grind things
to my need.

There is a desiccated cantaloupe
sitting like a ****** queen
on the counter by the door,
calling to me - waiting for my
sharpest spoon to scoop
its insides hollow.
I play games with time...
stretching out the moments,
for once it is gone...

Being poor is an honor.
It is a state of grace.
Littlest things become
treasures to our day.

At the market I sigh in awe
of one mold-ridden tomato,
bruised and ruined, but at
a price I can almost afford.

Butterfly

A gray, decaying cocoon
lies snug up against
a Sunday plate-glass window.
All that can be seen
is the jeans-covered ****
of some homeless person.
Charity blankets never
cover everything at once.
At the edges
of the chrysalis is
a banner from some parade,
wrapped like a royal-blue
winding cloth.
What emerges as
the sun floats high, could
hardly be called a butterfly.
It is the old man who
sits, nodding, by a square
of cardboard, hand out for change.
His unfurled banner lies, catching
breezes nearby.
His old gray blanket bleeds
his stink into the street.
He waits for the hour
when he can can bind himself
to his bottle, squirming back
into his corner.

Butterfly

A gray, decaying cocoon
lies snug up against
a Sunday plate-glass window.
All that can be seen
is the jeans-covered ****
of some homeless person.
Charity blankets never
cover everything at once.
At the edges
of the chrysalis is
a banner from some parade,
wrapped like a royal-blue
winding cloth.
What emerges as
the sun floats high, could
hardly be called a butterfly.
It is the old man who
sits, nodding, by a square
of cardboard, hand out for change.
His unfurled banner lies, catching
breezes nearby.
His old gray blanket bleeds
his stink into the street.
He waits for the hour
when he can bind himself
to his bottle, squirming back
into his corner.

Charade

“Stand behind me now,”
I tell the charcoal scarecrow.

Bony fingers tap, trying to refract me
into my darkest madness.

In the dusty silence, trying
to supplant me, is a madwoman.

They won’t know - I hide myself
within myself.

My Kabuki face stands in for me.
Ghost worms wind themselves around me,
trying to pull me from my cherished space.

Never let them see you are crazy -
or they will expect it all the time.

Born of cosmic particles of light
she is beauty beyond imagining.
When she clasps her hands
in contemplation, suns are born,
the moon rides high on her shoulders.
Diviner of the universe, boundless
power born of the goodness
that encompasses all and endless.

I wrote poetry tonight of sunsets and ponds,
worthless topics in light of the state of the world.
Just ended a hospital stay...needed to be mellow.
But this godawful earth gives me the heebie jeebies.
Forced confinement that came with cable t.v.
I wallowed in insanity and stupidity that seemed
                  to have no freakin end
We are teetering on so many brinks, but what was on?
A series about a guy makes a chain of hamburgers
on the family name...
Watched them play on a lawn big enough to choke a goat,
swim in their waterfall pool and frolic in designer clothes.
A series about mansions that cost millions of dollars
and could each house the homeless population of this town.
     Freaking carbon combat boot prints.
Worked all my life.
Me and my three cats struggle - disability does not

               buy mansions!

The world in on a precipice so **** scary
God himself can’t tip it back.

Korea, Iran and all those Isis ******* that put
bullets in the heads of six year-old boys.

And they show wanton consumption - reckless regard
for the land - don’t tell me they earned their money
and deserve to have obscene disregard for others.

When the rich have to  pay their fair share...
when life is equitable and no one goes hungry
or sick
or without education...

Then maybe it won’t be so sickening.

Raw irony laces its high-top shoes
and laughs at me with a cynical sneer.
Dark dances are in my head -
Others, so normal...all of them...not me.
Not me, never me, is not me.
Upon my back is a pack of sorrows.
Secret wishes are scars that run up and down
my arms from self-mutilation.
Taught not mercy or kindness,
yet they live within my being...sparing him.
I can no longer sing - he crushed my throat.
I hobble on a hip that will never heal.
Buddha says, “All life is suffering”.
The injuries are well-known friends
who come to visit; come to stay.
But the thoughts inside my head -
where no one can see...these worry me.
He left me nothing, not even my innocent
kindness, for I have killed him
a hundred times in my mind...will **** him
a hundred times a hundred -
and he will not be dead, but I will have
the stain on my humanity even after
I know he is well and truly dead.
I, the murderer of the heart.

Island of Exile

In the sweet cool darkness
of my barren and lonely room,
Neil Diamond sings for me,
weaving silken beauty
from my gloom.
Cherished sanctuary
where the world
is an unwelcome stranger.
Wanting only peaceful fantasies
to caress me when day is done.
Living in a dream world
is not insane.
Reality is callous minds
who display only contempt
and empty hearts to
bully their way through another day.
Their is no kindness -
no one cares about more than
their place.
Puppets to the god of being “one”
they never look each other
in the face.
Not all their pills or pleadings
will make me walk out that door.
I will sit in my blessed aloneness
and plug my ears against their
meaningless roar.

One step closer to spring,
but still bitter winter.
Deserted playgrounds
and parks are seas
of mud and slush.

An umbrella with
no guiding hand
circles across the street,
as oozing hail pounds
out its melody on its ribs.

Wind is invading the dreary quiet
with its voice of doom.
In a vacant lot stands
a crippled truck that lost
its footing on a patch of black ice.

Lucky ones are home,
roasting their limbs by a fireplace
with its yellow bundle of flames.
Soup in mugs - marshmallow
on burnt sticks.

A sudden downpour sends the rope
on the flagpole whipping discordant clangs.

Coats on racks drip puddles on the floor,
galoshes stand side by side in soldierly rows.

Soggy earth is a sponge that ***** shoes
into its void.

Nature weeping in the howling morass
finds no quiet moment.

Old Father folds himself
into a corner of the doorway.
His cardboard bed is new,
has not yet begun to carry
the soak of his sweat
or the brine of his old *****.
It is a beauty - he guards
the box with a ferocity
only seen from those
who own nothing but what
they can carry.

Old Father sits like a monk,
quiet and contemplative.
His gimme-cap is a dirt ground halo.
The blanket of his beard
gives a sense of warmth against
nights too feral and bitter
for a man of sixty-eight years.
His breath sketches pictures
onto the air, and, like fog,
they drift away.

Sleep well Old Father,
on your cardboard bed, on the cement
of that doorway where dreams
are dusty shadows that become
ice-rimed memories.

Crabbed old feet - imprisoned
in shoes too small, too *****
and too red.
A bit of music escapes
from some trendy café,
she dances in the wailing cold.
She remembers when
she was pretty.
She remembers being young.

Now a ***** wall
of fears drifts as she finds
her old age has begun.

She is worn down, worn out
by the pain every old woman knows.
The laughing mouth of the grave
waits to welcome her home.

She shuffles purposely, eyes down,
seeing only that path her veiny legs mark out.
A broken old toy on a frayed string.

Flesh of her feet squeezed past
the boundaries of her sneakers.
Pitted, marshmallow feet that have traded
high heels and sheer hose for sweat sox.
She wears three pairs...all she has -
trading them each day.

She swims against the tide, determined
to make her way - to remember her destination.
Her green Book of the Month bag is clutched
to the fray of her coat...everything she has
and is - is in that bag.

Her eyes play peek-a-boo with the sun.
Images flit on her retina, frightening her
to jump; some shadow-shape approaches...
she flies apart, afraid and confused,
helpless to regain her route from memory.

The place she goes is not the place
she wants to be, but it is such a long trip home...
if she could remember where home is.

Old women are forgotten wombs
whose graceless bodies have fed the world,
then been sent to sit in its shadows...
not quite seen, unacknowledged
and without nurture.

Old women are crucified with the nails
of oppression and poverty.
Invisibility swallows them when
age freckles out-number the fresh
patches of youth.

Old women have scarred and calloused
knees from kneeling in submission to
lesser minds that felt bigger for the
looking down.

A rosary of sorrows is strung through
the weary fingers of old women.
They are hung on the crucifix of youth
and beauty to wither into dust.

Old women have crabbed and ruined toes
from shoes worn too long - that a child
might have new ones.
Alone in cubicles or corners, frayed photos
beneath their coats, old women remember
children that have long forgotten them.

Old women do not seek a man’s arms...
for that is not a refuge, but a honeyed trap
where souls are flayed and burned.

Old women talk to themselves because
no  one else has ears to hear, or words to share.
Even their echoes are faint and whispered.

Such wondrous minds...libraries of living life,
vision and experience...left untouched because
they are not behind a pretty face.

Behold the woman....she is a wealth of wisdom
and power, beauty and courage - to those
wise enough to touch her power.

Her reckoning will come...

Until then - she endures.

Love has many faces...many guises.
Nature has many hidden secrets and places.
Penelope rode the Swift Shadow
out of Chesapeake harbor, great sails
catching hands full of wind and pitching
them into the gleaming sheets - sending
the Shadow flying across the water.
She was not happy, even at the thunder
the voyage put in her heart.
At a far harbor awaited a man who had
petitioned her father for her hand in wedlock.
A painting of the proposed groom had been sent.
Penelope’s father was pleased, but she saw
in the muted colors, a pale, vapid appearing youth
with slightly crossed eyes - she wept in her room.

For three days the mighty sailing ship ate up miles
of sameness...blue water with no land in sight.
On the fourth day a fierce storm kicked up the waters.
The ship swayed and mightily fought to keep its keel.
But at last the sea won the battle and threw the ship
to its secret deeps, where bodies were held down
by watery hands.
Penelope found her heavy skirts pinning her
beneath the insistent waves - she knew she would drown.
Suddenly hands grabbed her, held her close and lips
closed on hers...giving her sweet breath to sustain.
When she opened her eyes she was in a cave where
a man...creature... stood before her.
He was not of the earth, but of the deepest sea.
A scream echoed from Penelope’s lips through
the cavernous space.
Touching her gently he told her his name was Sir Brine,
prince of his father Neptune’s kingdom...

And so, in the fullness of time, Penelope became a bride,
resplendent in sea foam and pearls...deeply in love with
the man who had rescued her from the sea - and her other fate.

Small house
isolated, scabrous.
Chickens in the doorway,
half-naked children in the yard.

Never enough.
Gone before it gets there.

Echoes of laughter
mark the morning.

One child after another
darts inside to beg
a mother’s kiss.

Daddy swings his kids
round and round, throwing
them over his shoulder,
where they giggle with glee.

I guess they never read
the government pamphlet
that diagrams their
socio-economic space
at the bottom of society’s
pyramid.

Don’t need no pity here!

Fat little gray clouds
smear the sky.
Adjusting
to a comfortable position,
they settle in
and spend the day weeping.

Rain here is
soft and welcoming,
cold as ice sometimes,
but warm as a toasty spa
most of the time.

From my window
I see umbrellas that bob
like a *** boiling.
They weave in their
ceremonial dance.

Rain whispers secrets.
Rain reads fortunes.
Rain cleanses the sidewalks
and waters the roses.

Warm inside, one might think
the rain a kaleidoscope
of unsurpassed beauty.

Homeless Old Mothers and Fathers
find it tedious and hold soggy
papers over their heads as they
seek a dry spot to wait it out.

It rains all day - grab a comforter
where you can snuggle and dream.

I was just five years old,
and Montana springs can be very cold.
It was time to go hunting for some
poor creature, men with rifles bold.

Off we trekked to the Bitterroot Valley.
A line of cars and pickups a mile long.
Hunting camp set up by the men first.
Then the women with bustle strong.


Daddy led me by the hand to a place
where the water was knee deep
to a giraffe...but I had rubber boots with
a yellow ducky,  that never made a peep.

Suddenly adults were flying and crying,
running here and there in fearsome flight.
I did not understand what gave these folks
such a sudden and terribly awful fright.

Seems I stepped in a rattlesnake nest,
I thought they were cute little worms.
I wanted to get one for daddy’s fishing,
so I started to reach toward the squirms.

Now, baby rattlers can bite seriously,
but I had red boots with a yellow ducky,
and their furious little bites were not
able to bite, through boots...Lucky.

But those fingers reached out - well,
they were snatched by an aunt who wailed,
and no one told me why they were so tense,
to each other the story was detailed.

Innocent as lamb was I about those
reptiles that looked so cute and harmless.
I never knew my auntie had saved me
from being bitten and  being armless.





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Moonlight washes me
through the window.
Reaching out cupped hands,
I gather it...drink it...bathe my face.
Silky ablutions.
Moonbeams strike the silver in my hair,
throwing back a milky reflection.
For a moment I am a Goddess
instead of an old lady.

Hours rise up and pop
like fuzzy bubbles of
newly-poured cola.
One minute, life-defining,
the next - pretty air
that tickles the nose.

Sister Sarah weaves the world
on her own loom...
she shades in no compromise.
She blinded by truth.
Blisters are rubbed onto her soul
as if by shoes too tight to leave
a breath of reasonable freedom.
Her gentle goodness shines
through the stain of her
exceptional abilities.
Sister Sarah smiles and the world
becomes a complex kaleidoscopic whirl.

Sister Sarah is a reward...
a tipping of the scales of justice.

Morning melts and dribbles
through the blinds,
where it rests
in molten puddles on the floor.
If you are very still
you can hear the tap...tap
of its fingers as it
tries to seep under the door.
Afternoon is a
pyroclastic lava flow...
devouring each bit of flesh,
******* the breath
from laboring lungs...
melting flesh into tallow
for the candles of night,
to be lit upon
the sacrificial altar
of your tongue.
Hide  wherever you want -
go ahead, find a place.
Count to one hundred,
hands over hidden eyes;
childish giggles bubble
from your lips,
but it will find you,
no matter your disguise.