I stare into those big dark eyes
Slowly my soul flies
Two tiny sweet babies of mine
You make the night sky shine
So precious are the sounds you make
That causes my heart to break
Separate beings are we
Intertwined we shall always be
Even As the two of you grow
You will always know
Whether together or apart
Three separate beats but one heart

I never thought it could come back
The sadness and emptiness it grabbing me with their claws
Tearing up my soul
I gave you all I had
You told me once I'm at the edge you'll be gone
But now you've won
I was cheated on by you
You're the reason I'm dying slowly and losing everyone I had by my side
I'm now dead and I'll never forgive you
Your coming back and I can't stop you

She raised her hands in hurry like the hackles on a dog
As everything repeated, disappeared into the fog
Another conversation turned to water with the air
And all of what she taught them wasn't present anywhere
She couldn't not remember when the past became today
The sum of what is hopeless and a place too far away
My sons will be my sons and even death cannot define
The battle I am fighting to restore their weary minds
And if I am alone inside a war I'll never win
I'll put my hands together and remain outside the skin
She'll never be forsaken by the thoughts that give her rest
The only thing a mother has, her sons to ever bless

Come Moroccan blue,
Wrought a Tokyo twilight;
The tangled neon, Guangzhou,
Ought London fog or gloom –
Entity’d ‘ever end with me.

So when gods plays jokes
Come a second near and nigh,
I’d nearly utter, “amen,”
Atop a belly, soon and son’s first cry –
I am a father; above, eternity’d grin.

So my plane kisses pavement, tepid,
Wrought one mother waiting; and
All I’d ran from, all abandoned,
Is now the only that’d welcome.
I’d never thought to nest, and yet –

Arrived, with straw in mouth.

How we treat ourselves
Is the tenor upon which we represent ourselves
The hell that raised us
Doesn't have to be the hell that sustains us
We are blessed to have our own minds
To choose the course we want for our own lives
Our course was meant to be a horizontal one
And it can only be undone by the One who called us to be his daughters and sons
We are not judges
We weren't put here to condemn
I believe it behooves all of us to leave that for Him
And while we may disagree whole heartedly by someone else's choices
What right do the rest of us have to be disrespectful and poisonous
We may have taken the traditional route and even made our lives better
But to make light of someone else's LIFE
Does little to make any of us better
It makes us lesser
Because in the end we are all the same
And we are all just one bad decision
From sharing the same blame

Dads,
Some kids we raise
Will abandon us,
Despise, deplore
And anger us.

     What can we do?

Some sons will denounce
To even some score;
Some daughters will leave
To dance and *****.

     Dads, we're trapped forever more.

Some daughters will stay
And tend the home;
Some sons will sit
In cold cells alone.
They're worlds apart
From what we'd expect.

     Dads, I'm not finished yet.

Some sons give sons their father's name,
Some daughters so proud they keep the same;
Some teach and preach and heal and toil,
They've learned their lessons well.
You're so puffed you're buttons pop,
You never want this life to stop.

     Dads, take it from me.

You've done your duty,
You've won the game,
Take it from me,
No two are the same.

Too little,
The rabbit,
Bukowski,

counted,
scheduled,
realized

that the clock
is unkind
and fate
unkinder,

In college
I went home
regularly

but the work week
doesn't have winter
or summer break,

and this town
isn't home yet
but it's the closest
thing to it,

Nights like
this I smoke
cigarettes on
my porch,

think about
what being a good son
is,

think about the nights
I didn't show up
for dinner when my dad
got home from his
forty hour weeks,

but it's all the times
I was there that bother
me the most.

How I fear for you

(And I have heard
the bullets
whine and miss).

Youth is a necessary fiction
of light and hope,
but fiction nevertheless.

War, death, disease,
disappointment and dread
stalk that silver road
you imagine before you.

I hope you evade them all,
and anyway it is pointless
to tell you to be careful.

Your lives are your own.

May your dreams,
against all my experience,
be just as you imagine.

   mce