The goddess dressed in white
carrying the moon
walks up the stairs to my bedroom window
Plants it there

The room is alive with shadows
Echoes of the past

There's a pain
Where pleasure used to be
An exquisite ache no one can see
A lonely breeze that can't be touched
An endless night that can't be unlocked
The mind plays tricks with the shadows on the walls

Anxiety it comes and goes
that we all know,
But it continues to echo and grow

There's a frigid cold
Where warmth used to be.

The moon goddess winks at me,
"Go to sleep,
Goodnight,
Be free."

She's my walking rose
Walking down the road
Discussing right and wrong
Trying to figure out how to stay strong

She wants to grow,
She wants to know
How it's supposed to go,
She turns her color on
Turns a shade of pink yellow white black or red
Only the rose knows,
walking as she goes,
her time is brief
she thinks maybe that's a relief

Her road is long
When she's in the middle of it,
She knows though
It's all a dream as it passes on by.

My rose
She wilts in the dawn
Rises in the night,
I tell her I have one more road to go
My walking rose
She whispers, "I know."

It's raining,
Ambulance sirens drown the,
Silent slumber,
No one is on the road,
A mobile maddance,
Mad chanced,
Or mild happenstance,
No change,
But the toll keeper keeps,
Jingling coins,
What have you got to pay?
The windowless hospital waits,
With a unacknowledged anxiety,
No one is on the road,
Will this be the last time or,
Are you trying to make,
Every one stare longer,
The rain wont stop,
Shot, shot, shot,
Drip, drip, drip,
It'll be a few days,
Till the rain,
Decides to quit,
The toll keeper has better things to do.
And the ambulance rolls on.

Cannabis Cannabis
Are you my friend?
We've  been asking this question
Since who knows when

From the bedroom
To the bathroom
To the den,
Sitting out on the porch
Or out on the back deck
Out by the cactus
Out in the pasture with the brook running through it
Or in
The redwoods ecstatic in the moving fog
With the walls closing in
To the poetry within,
Contentment, lethargic exhaustion, anxiety, with the music moving,
self consciousness exquisite,
ego disintegrating
Remembering, forgetting,
Remembering
Back again
Oh, cannabis cannabis
Are you my friend

We've had the dance
I can't deny
From stems and seeds
To Humboldt flower dispensary
Many stops in between

You've played with my mind
Sometimes I wonder who I would have been

Cannabis, oh cannabis
Are you my friend? (Old friend).

From over the bridge
the sky curved into the river
and the winds from the distant hills
carved a smile on his face.

So here he was, at last, all by himself
played upon by a feeling
of being not shadowed anymore
but by the one his very own.

light as the bird, came to his mind,
and making sure no one was around,
he spoke aloud
I'm light as the bird.

Yet a shadow was preying upon him,
an unease, a discomfort, a disequilibrium,
as he heard within, his son saying,

Baba, you need to take a break,
to be with yourself, to be away from us,
to soothe the frayed nerves..

So I have been set free, he thought,
but are the birds really as free
as they appear to be?

So here he was, but his mind was drifting,
and he was calculating like a child.

how many feet below is the river,
would the fall hurt, or would one have to wait,
for the impact with the rushing surface
before the final touch by the boulders?

I shouldn't be perilously close, he stepped back,
muttering three incoherent words..
components of love.

Back to the Rest House,
he was packing his bag.

He was not sure, if his reappearance,
at so short a notice,
would at all be, a pleasant surprise.