all my life
wanted to write just
the way
Joni (Mitchell) sings

seesawing
rising unexpected,
write the changing temperament
in the pitch,
of now

yawing, oscillating,
speedy slow,
enunciating the whip of
love crazy

twist to fall into a
double-time
bass baritone insane
from and into a higher pitch,
switch on the
en garde,
blue ink
onto cloth napkin poetry

plain plaintive,
rendering the scene,
rendering my heart,
it's crazy high-lows,
emotion backyard
swing set

Oh Joni!
I could drink a case of you

that is was what I
told the single girls
when I was a wooing man

send me home,
high and crying,
thinking uneven,
creatively,
drinking you,
pounding the dashboard,
sing our palpitating poems

thinking up
the in-between
songs of
till next time

that they loved so much
they begged,
sing it again and again

I drank them all
and think now of poem love songs,
vintages that never caged,
never aging,
those songs I wrote for them,
back in the day
when Joni
taught me how to
see life in verse

~soft hue comes down on us swimming behind the eye
perfectly twilight as myrtle and coral drip down the cliffs;
sea, envelop us, wash us cleaner than we ever could be
tonight i drift languid under the nectarine sky, a new burning light from some ancient antiquity

calls out, amorous, to the sealine,
starboard and port, a vaulted firmament;
for hope will surface in this prescient summer
and abundance will burn in valleys of shoal
and endless sojourn.

and so, with plum-frayed hands,
in dusk's ardent whisper
'tis all remains folded in my scattered memory
rendering all things equal~

In silence I read what poets wrote,
of love they spoke of hearts they broke,

I stood and saw the lovers go,
how bitter how sad you wonder!

I could not write running out of words,
You can't make a point without your swords,

calm I sat and they asked me why ?
I fear, my darling, of what the future holds,

where life and death make a difference not,
it doesn't matter how much you try,

I'm back at least that's how I feel,
life's gone what's left is what I write,

AROODY 2020

My pen is bending
•                              •
Should
I
Write
•             •             •
My eyes are blind
•                             •
Should
I
Drive
•             •            •
When my lights dim
The clips break
•
I’m struggling  
Too hold everything together
•
My sky view shows a pilot twist
The sunset spirals while my flight dies
•
I see the windshield break
But I believe a blank canvas can still blink
•
I’m suffering
Too keep my passion from being passed on
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• The break down on the dead end •
• My pen scribbles life into existence •
•The one way spilts my paper into gray•
•My drive collided with my sight of color•
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•
The love of life
Drifts away
While my
Bullets create
Turns of O-pens
Circling back around
Too the plot of sunrises
The light begins a new trip
The wind brings back the shattered pieces
The glass is finally made to be seen through
And I start to see outside the review