Memories hang
Suspended in the blue
The ash of blood and bone
Residual dreams
My heart cleaves
In the twilight
Quiet.
Alone with the ghost of you

Plaintive cries of seagulls
Everything dies
The wind flits with wavelets
Caressing wet
Pale gauze wrapped round my waist
You hover under the surface
One shade deeper
One more stolen moment
I am surrounded by you
And the water is so
Warm…

I will not hesitate
Hold you now as you slip away
One final time
In a wake of muted blues
The clouds enshroud the setting sun
I only touch the surface
And pray you on your way

You are my forever horizon
Watch the surf gentle
Slip from the shore
Casting sand and ashes
Life
Transient footfalls
On a barren beach
Shattered shells scattered
Catch the last light
And the dusky breeze
Carries a memory
Little girl longing
For daddy’s arms
Safe haven
Oh so warm….
TL Boehm
08/11/11

Cigarette ashes
Dun smudges of nicotine
the jaundice bits of addiction
I place the pieces
folding echos into epithets
dog earred memories that curl
brittle around my fingers
squeeze another beat from my heart
an exhaled dirge
the rasp breath timbrel
above the roar of life in my ears

I pan for gold
sifting splintered bones
for moments lost with you
Searching my haggard face
for your spectred resonance
I've become that thing I loathe
folding echos into paper chains
capture only damp impressions
of tears wasted
Am I just an echo
of your terminal refrain?

TL Boehm
12/7/10

There are moments sacred
in that predawn sanctuary of your arms
I still drift away
Serene in the ebb and flow of light.
Quiet blue eyes that see only me
And the vision is enough
Your voice as you pray.
Distant drumming thunder
I dance
Hands outstretched
Fingertips wet with remembrance of the rain.
You are love without shame.
Embrace me with weathered hands
And I am safe
Tracing scars and storylines
Little boy laughter and airplane rides
Newborn pups cupped in your palms
So many tears wiped clean
From my cheeks
When the deluge in my heart crashes through....
I find sanctuary
Iin the rise and fall of your chest
As you sleep wrapped around me
And there are moments sacred
When chaos fades
And you are all I see…
TL Boehm
08/24/10

For my husband - with love....

"Baby Brianna was five months old when she died...she had multiple broken bones. Over thirty bite marks. She was beat to death..." "Susannah Martinez (campaign ad)

Doe eyed ghosts
Y los ninos mi corazon
Mall haired mamacita with the lined lips
505 madonna meant nothing to you
Bust that cap while she sleeps
Represent
And leave the little ones behind
Curled up against her cooling breast
Black blood and coffee grounds under their nails
It took them weeks to starve to death
Abuelitas they lament
Light the candles in Torreon
Would you buckle under the weight of tiny bones
Small hands that clutch the sky
Sightless eyes
Fragments of a smile stopped by a single shot
Gangstas gunning the wrong house
Little girl lost in poppi's arms
would her whispered breath against your neck
bring one tear
Baby Bartholemew in his car seat
choking to death in his own blood
Head lolling back crying for mommy
One last time
The sound...the stench forever resonant
Cuz teddy bears cant stop a bullet can they
Wrong place
Wrong time
Hand the grieving parents a tissue
And straighten her hair
For the cameras
This indignation will rise
Bile in your throat
for the next 40 minutes
Until you return to the blur
Of your regularly scheduled lives
We're so casual with our offspring
But Brianna, Bartholomew
and the ghosts in Torreon
they haunt these tears I cry

"It took us three years, but we fought to make it a death sentence. Baby Brianna's picture still hangs in my office." Susannah Martinez (campaign ad)

I will not forget....

TL Boehm
December 2010

Northern Light
Forever words
They dance across my shattered soul
Lyric motion of northern lights
Ephemeral beauty
Hold my breath to save the moment
Before this riptide sorrow
Carries me from your peaceful shore

I will remember your gentle correction
Migrant birds aloft in a silent sky
The ease of flight
Faith in knowing that angels and eagles
Are built to ascend
So are you….

I am broken now
But I will soar
In the afterglow of northern lights
Dear friend your words
Will light my path….
Forever…
10/29/2010
TL Boehm
For Dale and his wife...

".Nothing is what it seems, what we see is just a mirage, what lies underneath, is the truth."

What do you see when you look at me
Harmless dog that I am
Fawning at your feet
Piddling all over myself to please you
This shabby mongrel you shoo from your table
Haughty in your pedigreed inclinations
Wipe my spit and dander from your petaled hands
I am nothing but a casual diversion
Banished from your hearth
Steward the beautiful things that catch your eye
Chain me up out of sight
I will always adore you

You cast this sadness
whips of words against my hide
I bleed out in the shadows
You've made me crazy
When all I wanted was your love
Curled up next to you
But you were too ashamed to let me in
Now here we are
My teeth in your throat
Your personal henchman
A killing machine calibrated
By your hatred
Surprise in your failing eyes
I would have rather died for you
But you left me to my own devices
I cannot stop myself
From survival
behind the mask of civility
Perhaps I've always been
A monster of your own creation
I can taste your poison
Beauty only the cast
Shadow on your surface
Tear the mask from your face
I cannot bear to see
Another monster staring back at me...

TLBoehm
05/21/10

"Let patience have her perfect work..."

Pious words that don't hold sway in a wild mind
The slow ebb of days
The gray in my hair and in my sunrises
Amazing how the machinery of war
Is held by the thinnest web
Spidery lies heavy with dew
Catch the brilliance
of this failing light
Gossamer restraints
I'm held
Captive in my rabid fear
The thrumming heart, she reigns
I never held control
******* of a double mind
I'm deaf and dumb and blind
Relinquishing only the ghost of hope to you now
You never see the little girl
sobbing silent
swallowed up by the darkness of her own petty dreams
calls to a God she can't believe
why have you forsaken me....
Abandon this reckless soul
to the mastery of henchmen
Shallow breathing the necks they snap so easily
Just a bit of pressure
Applied to brittle bone
Birds with broken wings
I'm flying forever in circles
away...

TLBoehm
05/17/10