If I had the words
A gift of wings that would not fail
Set my sword
To perforate the veil
Cut this clinging death away
Let the light fall like rain
Solace on a summer day
But I’m bound
Dragging shackles and chains
Starving for grace
As I choke on the profane

Sacrificed my petty dreams
Bled out on the altar of fools
Propitious as light might have been
I let darkness set the rules
Circumstance stultifies the child inside
Nullifies the need
To hope for a greater salvation
My spirit fights but my head concedes
Lost in the chaos around me
If I surrender who will lead

And if by chance you went walking
Through the shattered past I’ve left behind
Pick your way through emotional wreckage
Find my inner child deaf dumb and blind
This failing hope will not carry me
As I struggle toward the light
And so I wait abandoned
As the world spins fast toward night.
I know the truth you cannot see
What I carry hidden in me…
08/22/09
TL Boehm

"Slowly, silently, now the moon..."--Walter de la Mare

If only the days slipped soft
Eider down from quiet skies
“Slowly, silently now the moon”
Crests and ebbs in the star swept horizon
Mercury moments I consider the sinister things
The rush of blood banging at the back of my throat
The cadence of daybreak
And heart break and darkness hearkens
Scurrilous thoughts scatter faster
Roaches at the flip of a switch
Writhe in the light
Seek solace in shadows
Rats scrabble for higher ground in the downpour
Drown me now but I’ll never be clean
I carry the disease of this civilized beast
Scorpions under my tongue
And splinters in my skin
The higher rungs are toxic
And the air thick with afterburn
The antiphon of the apathetic
Chirrs me from daydream to entropy
Peace is hospice for poets and fools
Grit under my nails
And ***** in my mouth
Forever falling forward
The warp and weft stretched
Taut expectation
Of the cut that never comes
Just let me fall
Feather light and quiet
Let the gravity relentless
Have her way
TLBoehm
040113

I have a dream
The gentle tread
Cool marble beneath my feet
Sweet succulent scents laced in the lavender air
Velvet curtains parted
You there
Stretched out supine
A banquet of delights
you are mine
The rustling flutter of garments
Let them fall
Echoed wetness
Your hands leave their ghosts
On glistening walls
Cascading flurried ringlets
Tendrils of hair
Caught up in the excitement
Of you
And me unsullied
Pristine between Egyptian cotton
and whispers of skin
Place a kiss on the altar of we
This love begins
you know
I have a dream.
TLB
05/17/07

I have learned that blood and bone
Are no assurance of love
That the parents who should protect you
Forget you
In the wake of their own unspun lives

I have learned that the newborn life
Once cradled in my arms
Won't consider my sacrifice
In the wake of unbridled rage
Love is a hollow lie

I have learned that I am a monster
Murderous and cruel
Selfish and judgemental
Producing bitter fruit
That withers on the vine

I have learned that the world
Doesn't love a dreamer
War and tragedy churns
In the belly of Babylon
The meek are weak expendable
Casualties of circumstance
Destined for demise

I have learned there is no sanctuary
No refuge from the malice
Washing over me like sleet
On a winter day
My heart is cold stone
I am lifeless

I have learned that intoxicants
Only fuel the ache
magnify this emptiness with
shallow platitudes
The flavor of the day
Scraped off the spoon tomorrow

I have learned
I still don't know how
To give up the little dreams
In the silence of my soul
I gather them piece by piece
Hiding them from myself
For fear I'll do me harm

I have learned I should love myself
I have learned....I don't know how to love
TLB 05/20/08

Your love is a line
Tattoed down my spine
The pulse of a tentative touch
This pain is an art
I play my bit part
When you leave and I miss you much
Your mark on me
Indelible
I close my eyes and see
Your soul is a beautiful picture
Superimposed on the skin that's me
Indelible
My baby.

Write my life with your ink
I cannot think
Of a better way for the page to unfold
Each line a caress
This gentleness
Of a love story in flesh be it told
Indelible
The name of the story we write
Your soul is an epic masterpiece
Written on my flesh at night
Indelible
That's right

Indelible
Your mark on me
Indelible
Sketch my destiny
Each stroke
Set me free
Indelible
This tattooed line on me
13107
TL Boehm
© 2007

Skeletal babies too weak to cry
Hollow eyed mothers
Fractured families scratch pits in fallow ground
Earth and hope
Dust scattered chaff
Rice in bowls for ***** hands
And hungry mouths
Cracking smiles optimized
"Mister Christian" done a good thing
Sign your name and look away
Feed a family of four for the price of a gallon of milk
Minimize your guilt
Clinking trinkets in a rusty bucket
Change the channel
Change your mind
Envision God and mother Africa
Doe eyed and grateful placing the crown of the faithful
On your generous brow
While another woman silently screams
Integrity leaking
In the baptism of red earth
And *****
She sleeps outside tonight
No shame for you the miniscule
Separation of virtue and flesh
The seeping reality
Scarred body and mind ravaged to feed
The baser needs of a man
Who will no longer have her
Worthless animal that she is
Brittle field unripe for planting
Seeds of life burst the seams
And she only dreams of a day
Unstained.
Untainted
Waste no meditation on the knowledge
She won’t bring another child into THIS world
For you
Insular in your indignation
Recoil at the colossus of poverty
Knuckled clicking at your heart
While you coddle your conscience
With spare change offerings
Consider dignity
At what price
Small sacrifice to you
Another mother sentenced to desperation
Crosses her legs and prays
While her integrity leaks away

TL Boehm
061108

While I am not addressing well intentioned givers - or Christians who donate money to worthy causes - I am often deeply disappointed in those who "throw money at" a situation - and then consider the minimal effort sufficient. Yes, we need to feed hungry children, but we also need to educate young males on the difference between a wife and property. We need to help women who's bodies have been ravaged by constant famine to take better care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy and we must destigmatize conditions like *** and fistulas that cause women to be shamed and further abused. This poem specifically addresses birth related fistula - a condition in which the bladder or colon is torn during a difficult birth - usually attributable to other conditions like constant malnutrition, immature (underage) mother or a baby too large for a safe vaginal delivery. The fistula results in incontinence for the mother....

See the two agencies below for further information. or google fistula foundation - or clean birth kit.  
www.fistulafoundation.org
www.path.org
Peace

I surrender
To the exaltation of light
This baptism of fire
And liquid skies
Breathe a palette lit within
To delight a child
Songs break from tears
Beauty from ashes
This your legacy

I will seek you in the solace of morning
Receive the touch
Warm on my skin
Let praise rise
Like butterflies aloft
On gentle summer winds
Let hope bloom
Across the surface of my spirit
Tranquil
At peace
Reflecting the light
That is you
TL Boehm  
04/17/13

Precious son
Priceless one
Whispered words useless to convey
I clung to you
For a moment or two
But years like a breath they slip away
Under troubled skies
I cover my eyes
Cry when they can't see
A life just begun
My precious son
Suddenly taken from me
I remember the curve of your face
As I held you close in my arms
I remember the scent of newborn skin
As I cradled you safe and warm
I remember the turbulent years the fears
I remember the rage and the pain
But I held the hope and the dream that you
Would find your way again
I'm broken inside
The tears I've cried
Useless to ease my soul
Hold this memory
So close to me
And wish my heart was whole
Precious son
Priceless one
I send a prayer up to the sunlit sky
My thoughts of you
Must carry me through
This temporary goodbye
TL Boehm
050207
For Heidi
Remembering Adam
Adam Oury was murdered in 2007. He was 21 years old

Breathe life over dead situations
Blow the roof off of limited expectations
Seed and rain change the barren ground
One word from you turns my life around

Speak your words and I believe it
Hear the promise I receive it
All my tears are wiped away
Live this life no reservation
Heaven is my destination
I will worship you today

Reignite the burned out flame
You call me out you change my name
From death to life your word calls me
From slave to saved you’ve set me free

Speak your words and I believe it
Hear your promise I receive it
In your grace I am made new
Life this life no reservation
Heaven is my destination
Forever I will worship you

TL Boehm
02/17/15

We kept it light
You and I
Wrapped friendship around moments
Of lavender and tea roses
Treasures unearthed in lazy afternoons
Morel s and the damp lull of pines wafting through
An open window
Trading simple things
You were light
Filtered through antique lace curtains
Thoughts of you melt sweet
Chocolate chips held tight in small hands
Smiling for the moment
Until the residue is wiped clean

You are gone
But never forgotten
I will see you in sunsets and surf
And the way the rain falls steady
In late spring
When the light is soft behind the clouds
You never shied from the rumbling storm
When I raged and railed against the breaker walls
You were the calm
You held the tide
Even when the deluge started to take you
I could sense it in the pull of deeper moments
You said we’re all on a journey
And you left your legacy etched in my soul
Open the window a little wider
And embrace the sky

I will think of you always
And treasures
And the sea
Conch shells and mermaids
Surf against the sand
I will keep the light

March 2013

For Pat Brodniak-Carbonaro “ Seanymph”

If I handed you the knife
Let you cleave flesh from bone
Spilling blood
And broken promises
Fragmented thoughts
Fall where they will
Would you crack the marrow
Leave me dry
Pain the only release
In pieces of me consumed
Death is a shuttered room

Singing Psalms
Your Pollyanna mantra scatters rainbows

And dirges to the troubled skies
Revel in the celebration
Of a slow descent
Skipping stones across poison water
Wings of paper cannot save you
From the fall
Rushing pulse in my ears echo
This empty shell
Illuminate my way to Hell

Screams in silence
Lady Desperation

Behind my weary eyes
Ties another knot in the cord
Hold on a little longer
Let the words
Fall where they will
Vain resurrection of the faithless
Pain is the only force
Along the course with me exhumed
Sanity is a shuttered room
TLB 012208
Sometimes there are too many 'me's' in my mind

© 2008 TL Boehm

La Luna lifts from the cosmic abyss
Pinioned in stellar skies
For a moment or two swept away by you
Sparkling life lit up in your eyes
Carry me away from anywhere
To that special hideaway called you and I

Cool Luna's fog sweeps round me
Spring night a bluer hue
You sitting there, soft breeze through your hair
Falling in love again with you
Take me away from the chaotic day
Lose my self in eyes so blue

I catch my breath and I
Close my eyes wish I could fly
As moments sweeping by
La Luna lifts in ebonyed sky
TL Boehm
050407

In fertile fields
Fragile blooms heavy with seed
Swaying lucid dreams
Coupled with a whispered destiny
Do you believe?
(Father forgive me for my sins)
I listened
Pulse quickening to the promise
Carried on transparent beams
the angelic rush of lesser light
Left me sightless
Blind witness to the culling
Harvest put to flame
Only aborted dreams remain
(My life ends where yours begins)

Fragrant flowers consumed
Emotional holocaust of volcanic ash
Scorched earth your cordial offering
Death is the memory of a smile
Shadows pass across your face
(Along this fractured path I race)
I let your passion burn within me
Fury, vengeance and rage
Your forever promise ever hellish
Echoes in my smoking soul
I let the sun set on my anger
(Falling far from perfect grace)
Let you shackle me with my own actions
My guilt a noose to snap my neck
You the author of defeat
another broken soul for your unholy altar
(resurrect this child from this dead end street)
I cling to life in the balance
Waiting

silence welling in the aftermath
Crescendoed message resonant
let go...let go...
Is there oblivion in the release
(place my spirit to worship at your feet)
Falling away from everything I know
The old man shatters within
(wash away my every sin)
(my life ends where you begin)
TL Boehm
05/29/2008

"when I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be
Let it be"

Solo notes set to rest
Crimson petals fragrant
Descants and refrains
Take the light
Take the floor
This image flickers
Suspended adoration
Sister mine

Forever singing in the secret
Sacred places
Unscathed, unscarred
Wild irish locks in ringlets
at your throat
grace notes and triplets
concrete streets and desert skies
While years and tears fall around me
I keep you safe inside

Weve weathered everything
casual insincerities
jealous suppositions
vicious cycles of friends and enemies and fools
Ticking clocks mark idle time
You so often the weary warrior
While I cower naked behind these words
Pray they say enough to cover us both
Passing off my emptiness
You fill it up
Give again
Feed my monsters fragile kindness
from your hand
You bless me more than you will ever understand
My sister Treasure
the forgiveness of a friend
All my petty dreams and inclinations
gathering dust at the end of the day
I slip away to that sacred moment
and you are there
I hear you sing again to me

"whisper words of wisdom....let it be"

Take the light
and you are free

for Terry - who gave me a second chance at friendship.
012209
quote from Paul McCartney Let It Be

Lifting
Sweet summer morning
Silent before birds singing
Welcome sunlight rising
Slipping
Over windowpanes spilling
With the anticipation of daybreaking

I am listening
To your steady breathing
Softly snoring
Perhaps you're dreaming
Thoughts skipping
like stones dipping
Under cool water trickling
Toes skimming
Wavelets tickling
All your hopes surfacing
Love is believing
In you, knowing
Forever is in the learning
Two becoming
One destiny ascending
You'll find me whispering
soft secrets warm with meaning
between us nothing
more than this embracing
Sharing
This blessing
Of living
TLB 061208
From the vault of lost poems

Perhaps you fell from quantum heights
To rest gentle by the brook
Chortling as she dashes past you
The rocks will cry out
Indeed!
You wait patiently
Warn smooth by wind and water
You cannot fathom
The way the dappled light
Refracted
Dances across your prism skin
Sets you sparkling
So brilliant I am blinded
Small stones unnoticed
Render treasure
At the touch of the Maker’s hand
Tooled, spun and refined
And set in metal
Precious
Tempered to reveal
The treasure of you
Lit within
042313
TL Boehm

I find myself
Intoxicated
Letting your words spill
Fragrant like crushed flowers
To settle at the base of my spine
The lush moments
Intimacies
And daydreams
Effervesce on the tongue
I savor the phrases
And catch my breath
There are days I could drown
Let my foundations crumble
In the torrent of you
My mouth full of succulent fruit
Un-bruised by the hungry palette
I could drown
Looking up at metaphors
You fling like stars in my night sky
The thrill of sacred and profane
Crystalized on the tip of your pen
The alchemy of lovers
Passionate
Raw
Nightmares that creep with words
Stretched over bone
And those that dance
Enrapt within
Surrender of flesh and spirit
I am lost in the power of your words…
TL Boehm
04/15/13

This is not what you think.
This outpouring of ash and smoke rings,
Whispered in the solace of shadow.
And I know you're unmoved by the little foxes.
Tails tucked they fawn,
Whelping poetry at your feet.
Feigned flattery
And fangs bared
They would feed on your exposed heart.
Pick the sweet fruit from low branches
And leave the acrid waste pooling in their wake.
Perhaps I am no better.
Scattering my humble saffron wreaths of words,
Set tiny lights adrift
In a river thick with blood
And suffering.
If I were sustenance you'd starve.
There is nothing I can give you but my simple truth:
I love you.
I am so blessed to call you friend.
TL Boehm
04/08/13

To my kids,
There is so much you do not understand in your skins. I could give you some kind of divine download, fill that thing between your ears with everything there is to know but then what choice would you have to live free as I intended you to live? I gave you the earth and everything in it. I created you in My image that you see with your eyes " male and female as partners " not slave and master, and that part of you inside that you don’t see, deep in you, its that part that knows Me, your soul and spirit. It’s that place we connect. I surrounded you with everything you needed. And before you freak out, all you vegans, I created the animals and I killed the first ones so you would be warm and covered when you chose to walk without Me covering you. Clothes were totally optional. You had Me, you picked heifer…still scratchin’ my imaginary beard over that one. You chose… Sure, I had angels in full body gear standing around " but I wanted you because I love you. I want your companionship. I want your intimacy. I don’t want your laundry list of “He’p me GAWT, but if it’s the only thing you can give, I won’t turn you away. If only I could get past your religion, your doctrine, your fears where you could believe Me, all the crap you put each other through would simply be unimportant. Some of you scurry around and scream about me and my Old Testament, bad ***, flood the planet judgment and you totally skip the part about how I sent someone to you, just like you, a real human with real blood and real tears to stand in for all the stupid stuff you’ll ever do or have done. It was so simple, one death, one sacrifice and we’re all clean but you have to work it and manipulated it and qualify it until denominations and gurus and Oprah and Chopra have your minds so twisted you couldn’t see Me for who I Am if I sat on a unicorn, clothed myself in grape leaves, and led the Macy’s Parade. Don’t you get it? I’m not mad at you. I don’t hate you. I am Love and I am incapable of hating you. EVER. All I ever wanted is for you to simply love Me back. You gotta trust Me. You can’t look at earthquakes and floods and famine and the rise and fall of the dollar bill as punishment from Me. All this stuff is temporary, except you, and Me. We are Forever. This planet isn’t your Paradise, kids. It’s just your training ground. I have amazing plans for you. And the sooner you grasp that, the sooner you stop swallowing the pills and the cheap thrills and stressing over the bills, and wringing your hands over “My will” the better off you’ll be. Oh, and as long as I’m monologuing, get off the backs of my worshippers. I’m perfect. You aren’t. I’d rather have you getting together in my name and singing and dancing, Kids your praise, when you just abandon your petty egos and party before me, it makes my heart swell with all the pride a Father could have. I’d rather see you do that " with the mistakes and the fussing " than each one of you alone under a tree somewhere barking about our “relationship” or watching the church channel 24/7 and calling it “comin’ ta Jeezus. I created you to work together in my name. Don’t freak out so much about the name of the building or the color of the wafers, or the drums and piercings. I will know if you love me. Quit running, quit hiding, quit comparing yourself to somebody else, quit blaming everyone else for your own mistakes when you never ask me to help you deal… Quit asking me to “fix somebody else” because if they like the thought of being critter fritters for eternity then that’s their choice to make, not yours. I do not impede on your free will. I won’t impede on anyone else’s free will. You can’t earn it. I don’t give out gold stars for good behavior. You either respond in love, or you don’t. The only thing I crave is that you get it, really get it. I love you. Always have, always will. You can’t do anything, you can’t **** enough, you can’t lie enough, you can’t destroy enough, you can go straight to Hell if you want, but I am everywhere…even in Hell…I’m with you. Of course, it will be your choice if you want to refrain, you know? See? Once you lock in your answer, you don’t get to phone a friend…You have a choice even I don’t have, me the almighty, the limitless with a limitation…you can choose to love…For me? It’s not an option…because I AM LOVE.

Your Abba....

Have I forsaken
The sanctity of dreams
Enabling the cacophony of small chattering crises
Droning desires dominate my days
Clinging to incantations and litanies of little lies
Repetitive resonance no substitute
For your whispered word
Sipping the residue of wickedness
from this burnished cauldron of the world  
Toxic stupor no replacement for you
Enabling vulgarities to reign supreme
This was never my lucid dream

I am blinded by your radiance
The mirrored pure light of your soul
Resplendence magnified
Purified in a river of pain
You cleanse me from within
Erase my melancholy days
I am uplifted from this abyss
You breathe my lucid dream
TLBoehm 061807

Memory go easy on me
You know I was just a child
And the visions and schemes of little girl dreams
Burn unfettered and wild

I know I’m grown I see the crone
Looking out at me from my own eyes
And gone are the days spent in that haze
Of star filled nights and sunlit skies
Destiny was not kind to me
My generic life is a brutal surprise

The world spins fast and and life won’t last
Love arcs brilliant like shooting stars
When the sparkle is gone I try to hold on
With a death grip on my own prison bars
In the flesh that burns it’s a hard lesson learned
Time won’t temper the fatal scars

Blow this kiss good bye I smile, I lie
Drop paper dreams in a shallow grave
Swallow the pain again and again
Pretend that I’m not a slave
Till that 45 spins and the music begins
It’s just the ghost of me I’m trying to save

TL Boehm
05/22/13
45 a magic ebony conveyance that when subjected to the stroke of a diamond tipped needle released pops, ticks and wonderful music.

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....

Three day's deep in the wilderness
Water too bitter to satisfy
Can't cry out for the latter rain to fall
With a voice so parched and dry
Dreams broken and Hell before you
Face down on the barren ground
You struggle to breathe a ragged prayer
Your heart screams but your lips make no sound

Would I bleed to save you?
Sacrifice my life to stop your pain?
Or would you struggle to see the Jesus in me
If your eyes met mine again?

Troubled dreams in the morning
This ragged life a scourge I dread
Lose myself in the worrisome world
My heart beats but my spirit is dead
Abandoned to deeper sorrow
Whispered words flood my brain
I find that you wash over me
And I pray for you again

Am I my sisters' keeper
Would I bleed to stop your pain
Hold your tear stained face up to the perfect light
Die to see you smile again?

Am I my sisters' keeper?
Precious sister, I would give
The last ragged breath I have for you
so that you and your dreams can live...

Yes. and then some.

call answered.

TB
062909

Somewhere in the cacophony of moments
That flash of imagination lost to white noise
The slow bleed of nights and days stains pristine dreams
The rush of brilliance grays
Surrendered to the litany of decay

Songs unsung caught in the back of my throat
Strangled words
Toxic on my tongue
Hand over mouth and shackle my mind
Truth in the mirror that renders me blind

Little thoughts they scurry
Furtive in the failing light of hope against all hope
Reality reigns dragging chains
She etches her name on my scarred heart
Until death parts us...
I am the eulogy of dreams

I've never done this kind of thing before
Desecrate this grave
We can save her....
Resurrect the desperation
Dismiss this ignorance as bliss
The fatalist in me screams
Some things are better left buried
Dreams and lullabies lie skeletized
Revived as nightmares
Will **** the marrow from a broken soul

Already I scatter
Ash and shadows
Requiem for life unbreathed
And you wait for me
To break the ground
And exhume the muse
Again....
TL Boehm  
04/30/12

Wanna lay you down in the moonlight
Let the wind in the pinon sigh
Make love with you till the morning
Underneath an amber sky

Child of cobalt waters
Soul of the northern lights
Won’t you let this southern daughter
Keep you warm in the desert nights

I hear your voice roll through your body
Like thunder in a summer storm
An echo that wraps around me
And the silence keeps me warm

I still smell your skin on mine
In the morning when I’m alone
I still see you through closed eyes
And I feel love I’ve never known

Wanna walk with you through life
Share the darkness and the dawn
For you are the words and music
And the meaning to my song

TL Hughes Boehm
1/29  2/27/88

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...

Is it divine dissatisfaction
Or just a chemical reaction
To a system overload
Run the meter to the red
Am I all up in my head
Do I shut it down or implode

Can’t settle for status quo
There’s so much more I want to know
This is not my reality
You can hang by your circumstance
Or cut that rope and take a chance
Could you handle being free

Cyclical day and night
Spinning at the speed of light
Lost in the blur of our lives
This black hole gravity
Has done its work on me
It’s a pull I can’t survive

So rescue me from oblivion
My heart is open to let you in
Change my linear destiny
No more victim of circumstance
Give me grace to take the chance
We were meant to be free
022214
TL Boehm

I saw it today. Stark aberration in my periphery. Flaccid and pale it was, like wan chicken fat under plucked skin. It blotted everything in the rear view mirror, jolting my reverie of quiet snow dancing across the road, resting on quilted cover lawns and frosting happy trees with dollops of white on spruce. So many distractions in the metal box, the meandered chatter punctuated with hiccup sighs and upended sentences. Now this…my neck in all its grisly middle aged wattling display. Like roadkill on a scenic Sunday drive. I’m mortified.
Wrenched from my tenure of “office know it all” or at least “figure it on the fly” chick in the high desert to this lakeside time warp, this place of gravy and pitched roofs, I’m totally off my jalapeno. Gone are the adobes and red or green breakfast plates to be replaced by the Sunday tradition of one hour with the silvers and breakfast with Bob " Bob Evans that is. Amazing how rote runs a brain. An epistle, the gospel, a homily and polite pew sharing with communion wrap up " it took a full minute for anyone to register  that one of our seasoned pieces of lumber was not slumbering but without breath altogether… and still so many went forward for the cup and the wafer in routine obedience.
Margaret asked me later “is he still gurglin’?” as though slumped over parishoners in a diabetic episode are commonplace, and sometimes a body leaves with an EMT escort. (He’s ok. At least that’s what we were told)
I keep looking out the bedroom window, the cascading sugary stuff glazing the scene framed by mauve curtains and punctuated by the few stoic sparrows too resolute or stupid to fly south to green paradise. I’m grooveless unpressed vinyl still waiting for the imprint of music. A rhythm above the chatter both inside my head and outside.
I’m a quiet creature - at least I crave the solitude and peace and I am diametrically opposed therefore to the queen of this house who savors light and movement and the noise of constant conversation. She’s been more than kind to open her home to us and I’m sure it’s difficult to have scuttling creatures in your home who prefer the sunless corners, the basement, the predawn holy places where nothing moves except the snow before the plow to the endless drone of voices. She’s flown solo in this house for nine years. Now it’s full of people who make no noise, no decibel print and it must be irksome to her.
I try to compromise, to curb my urge to run from the meal table and **** the myriad things that wait in my personal life. The bills, the bank issues " who knew our financial institution was unrepresented in this chile-less place? Who knew everything cost twice as much as it does way out west? Who knew unemployment insurance does not ensure a survivable wage?  All the tiny things I hold at bay until I can sit no longer. Patience. I lack it. I can learn to compromise, but I cannot quell completely who I am. It has been that attempt over the last decade to stifle what is inside that has made me itchy and twitchy and ****** now. That and that damnable wattling neck.  Yes, I’m stripped of all I was when I was what I was in the middle of the high desert and now the only thing left is the stuff simmering in my head…
Peace.

I have only my soul to blame
On addled nights when my weary heart rattles and bangs
In its bone cage the thrumming beats
Terrified finches flailing in the wake of a gloved hand
And I am sold to the child clutching wrinkled wet bills
And sticky Christmas change
Who’ll forget to feed me by New Year’s Day
Small songs left unsung and talons cramp from a perch unfit
To sustain me

I have only my soul to blame
When lofty thoughts plummet
High places and walls fall the buttresses too frail for
Architects flights of fancy
I was built for low shelter
A dugout in the western wind
Small solace in the face of tornadic spin
Scatter the crops and erase the traces of gentle humanity
Frail daisies wont sustain me

I have only my soul to blame
When words that course through veins
Carry more than the love of blood and bone
And I am alone with nothing but whispers and wrinkled wet sheets
Rhapsodies and rhymes they crackle like the shucked husks
On the threshing floor my dreams no more worth
Than the paper scribbling balled up around my feet
This written lie
Never penned to sustain me.
TL Boehm
11/30/13

You don’t get to be happy
You don’t get to quit
You don’t get to walk away  
Breaking my heart bit by bit

I don’t plan to light a candle for you
In the dark night I won’t cry out your name
I don’t want to be the bigger man
And concede to your sick little game
My love was real and I gave it
You took all I had and you ran off to play
Now you come back and say I’m your best friend
Like I understand why you let your eyes stray
What kind of fool do you think I am anyway

I was ready to give you forever
I sacrificed and I waited for you
You couldn’t even give me your honesty
You don’t even care what you’ve put me through
All the days and nights wanting are wasted
And I’m marking time just getting by
But you come at me with that fragile smile
Blind to the tears I cry
I’m broken but you can’t fathom why

Will your little conscience  
Keep you warm at night
I won the war
But lost this fight
You sent up the white flag
You know it ain’t right
But you made your choice
Better hang on tight
Out of mind when out of sight
TL Boehm
11/06/13

I used to think that I could fly
Held aloft when I closed my eyes
Earth a bauble below me stayed
In perpetual retrograde

I used to dream of heady things
Effervesced on gossamer wings
A world of petty dreams I made
In perpetual retrograde

When I awoke it was too late
Vision fades when you hesitate
Capricious fantasy will fade
In perpetual retrograde

I'm earthbound now and gravity
Has left a terminal mark on me
This truth is a fatal move I played  
In perpetual retrograde

TL Boehm
08/29/12

Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. - Maya Angelou


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.

I am uplifted gifted
When thoughts and prayers have drifted
From lonely hearts to heavens ears
I am the child wild
The severed ties nowreconciled
Sealed with a mothers tears
I am beyond the sum of earthly years

I am the beat the heat
The caress so soft and sweet
Chasing terrors in the night
The chaos haunting taunting
Defeat that stands there flaunting
I'm armed for the fatal fight
I'm a soul that's built for flight

A phenomenal woman that's me
Reflecting only what I see
The measure of your destiny
Giving the love that sets you free....
TL Boehm
100706

I’m not your whipping post
I’m not your stepping stone
You think you got me cornered
But I’m not in this fight alone
You’ll find me standing strong
In the middle of the danger zone

You better bring your A game
Do the worst that you can do
Cuz I’m standing locked and loaded
This is war and I’m gunning for you
I’ve brought more than slings and arrows
My sights are set and my aim is true

This fight is a love thing
You will never comprehend
Rest assured the force that’s coming
Will put your armies to an end
Its ground you cannot take
And a position you can’t defend

Not even death will stop it
You won’t get what you came here for
You think that I am shaken
But I’m not afraid of you any more
You may **** but you cannot keep
I’m not your prisoner of war

TL Boehm
02/15/14

You were my quiet chaos
Calm storm in the heart of a girl
You led me skittish
Ungainly beautiful
Like a newborn fawn for you
Lose me in this wilderness
Reminisce that kiss
Lips parted never met
Would you have lingered
Hot and sweet in my mouth
Like green chile praline brittle
Your idiot savant I played
serious for you
Danced in my dreams to your beat
stacatto pulse alone together
But like real magic
You disappeared
Rumors of you
Sleeping under your daddy's truck
same jeans and tees
worn at the knees
Curls tangled around your face
Your eyes that fevered chill
Where earth...
and stars...
and forever collide
I could see beyond infinity
Yet you'd look at me
Soul empty the well dry
was it the ****, the speed or the need
Casual intimacies
I was totally partial to you
Wild inside but you never knew
Left me parched in the pouring rain
The last day
Breath on my cheek
Words you didn't speak
My skin craves you hugging me fierce
Dreams broken they slip away
Aching for a second chance
Stinging question lingers in my brain
Will you kiss me
You'll never ask again...
TL Boehm
091409
for Chris Martinez

You are never happy
Again, he chants the sad mantra
Of a life spun out in threadbare patches
Pain etched in weathered eyes
Gray green like late summer grass
Burned by the whirring blade
Again she says…if only we were friends
Under breath held to quell the deluge of
I can’t be your everything
Then anything
You ever were is nothing
In the soft blur of days that drip
Empty windows scarred with the memory of
Rain.
And I
Am so brittle
Harsh light behind your eyes
Hostility disguised as loving correction
The caress of fire on kindling
My petty dreams the memory of smoke in your lungs
Just breathe me in
Shallow
Ripples across this thin skin
Break the surface tension
I ache to be something more than
Empty words
Penciled afterthoughts in margins
Eventually illegible
In the steady decay of days
I am never happy
Lost in the transience of you
03/11/13 TLB

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply, those who want to deny the world must have embraced what they now set on fire.”
MillyQueenie
So you slither in
On silken hinged conviction
Your pain the knotted noose
For the necks
Of sinners and fools
Too stupid to put a foot on your throat
Constricted benediction
The little foxes pant for air
Flailing in your scaly wake
They writhe in your grasp
And you revel
Blood on your tongue
Puffed up with your own poison
You open your mouth
Spray acid on the Bride
Satisfied you savor the screams
Your pride a blade that cleaves
Tender flesh from fragile bone
As if one innocent life freely given
Offers no succor for your temporary pain
Tear the tender lambs from the fold
Cast babes to the stones
And throttle the hope of reconciliation
Agape love a whisper on lips
Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean
Dress me in unspattered white
Lift the veil  
And see me lit from within
Who are you to hold me back
With vicious words and venom
Drive another spike in the flesh
Watch me bleed
I’m on my knees for you
Prayer still slips from swollen lips
Forgive them….
My bruised heart will never harden
Against your clenched fist
You seethe and rail
When love would simply set you free
Perfected love casts out fear….
Covers a multitude of sins….
Love is patient…
Kind…
Still blind I cradle you coiled in my fractured hands
And pray for that day
When you realize
And rise….
TL Boehm
092909

Um....yeah...Guess what THIS is about....

And when I'm hurlin words and throwing blows  
Thumping drumbeats against my chest
I long to fall in your arms like a frightened child
And let you rock me to rest  

Inside outside upside down
Confusion coiled around me tight
This crawling terror got me paralyzed
I'm defenseless in this fight

All the frenemies and the wannabes
Levelin those guns at my head
Spillin  gasoline on a grass fire
Ain't no life with the walking dead

Then through all the noise inside my head
Your whispered wisdom rings out to me
Send that white flag up and surrender
Cuz I have come to set you free
TL Boehm
03/17/13

Perhaps it was the blasphemy of lovers and fools
This dalliance of ravens and necromancy
The brush of pomegranate mouths
Amaranthine against the backdrop of ochre and tintype
I dance the silent rhythm
Innate the rush of blood in veins
Salome
I am your feathered death on prism wings
Small consolation you cannot see the soul beneath the veil
Spin a legacy of heretics starry eyed and hungry
For flesh and soft skin
Spills the stain on pristine canvas
The palette of indiscretions
Peep show intimacies
Vibrant I am unfettered light
And you are blind
In black and white and gray
You twist this myth
Ropes coiled serpentine
Hungry eyed you feed on dreams
Cellulose crackling in the heat
Borne on desert winds
I rise to claim you
I am the moment
Pigment and poetry
Alive and fluid in your mind
Inescapable
Whisper my name
Salome
031113

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

Would you kiss me
Gently
On the back of my neck
My collarbone
Whisper soft
A feathers’ touch
Would you close your eyes
Breath to breath
Linger
Lost in the moment
Embracing each taste
Sensations
Sweeping down my spine

Stopping
Before the mundane
Mechanical act of *******
Leaving foreplay
For the desperate
Communicate your forever love
Not your temporal lust

Just seal me
With a kiss
Goodbye
To keep me
Until the time is right
For the two of us
To be one.
2006 TLB

He was born from spring rains
When new leaves unfurled
Heady sweet mimosa and willow
Filling the air with peaceful green
Lacing the ground in spinning shifting patterns
Scattered sunlight as drops dripped from trees
Knee deep in rivulets bubbling and rushing
To my back door.
He called me out to play

I ran with him hand in hand abandoning
The mundane four walled pristine
Plaster world I passed as real
Feeling cool fronds brush against my hungry cheek
Neck tilted
Back arched
Swallowing the droplets as they trickled from
The branches
Unmoved by the rushing water
The thunder
Spring rains turning to the deluge
Of a summer storm
Innocence swept away on the furious current

Now I dream in green
Fervent unseen passion
Masked by my lack of reaction
Yet the back door stays open
As spring rains drip from leaves
Rustled by a gentle breeze
Could it be that he...
Comes calling me to play

TL Boehm
072206

Scribbled epithets
Pressed wet with tears
Sacred spaces carried by hallowed hands
Whispered winds that hover
Can't cover this fragile soul
Fractured by the passage of years
Each stone a death remembered
Casual depravity
Swarming queenless
Cyclonic before the storm
The walls we build
Never strong enough to stop the tide
Empty breath
Bubbles up to a silent sky
Potential of a life unlived
Slips beneath the surface
Swirling backwater memories
Heavy with fresh earth and leaves
Surrender the imprint
Of your body to oblivion
I can only wish you peace
I know will not come
Forever beyond
My aching grasp
If I could pull you
Warm inside
Some secret place
An open heart
Rubbed smooth
Sweet balm for your weary soul
I’ve lost you to the droning insanities
Shipwrecks and effigies
Cast up on the shore
You are forever dragging chains
No ascension
No freedom
Fruit plucked
Before the ripening
Bitter offering
For barren ground
Always hungry for more
I scribble an epithet
Pressed wet with tears
Plastered prayers to fill the cracks
In my fractured soul
Surrender your memory
To the silent sky
Send them love....
Good bye...

TL Boehm
010809

Single minded sister
Solitary soul searching
For my whole
Set my purpose defined
Within my spotlight mind
Could see that when you found me
My perfected sight was blind
Serendipity
Filled the emptiness in me

Wistful litanies
Distractions the futility
Of intimate action
Wife and mother not for me
The daydream others
Ceased to be desired destiny
Surprised to find in your eyes
Serendipity
The reflection of a family

This frantic spinning pace
A circular path I race
From frustration to futility
You took my hand and
Changed my course
With measured steps
you run with me
Serendipity
Without you where would I be

TL Boehm 070408
- For Dave

You can shed your skin
Begin again
But you’re still the same inside
It’s the same old lies
Behind your eyes
There is nowhere to hide

I thought I knew
The ghost of you
Crash through me the other day
Avert my eyes
This thin disguise
Won’t let you slip away

You took a chance
That circumstance
And thin ice would set you free
Can’t cover the cost
Of a soul that’s lost
And the cracks betray your destiny

Now I face this mirror
The reflected fear
And I can’t wish you away
You’re the greater part
Of my petrified heart
Flesh knotted you’re here to stay
TL Boehm
04/10/13

“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.”

The witching hours between
Onyx nightmares - and dreams that sparkle at first light
Find me catatonic amongst my secrets and inuendos
Ragged shell
an insinuation of skeletal existence locked
Emotional rigor mortis
Hushed, suspended and supine
Stasis waits, hesitating
For the thrumming drums of life
a message of motion
sensual resurrection
That whispered music
melodic song my confidant
The rush of blood
This exhalation across lifeless lips
Speaks nothing into the void
So I do not breathe
In my skin that crawls beyond darkness
Recoiling from oblivion
I thought you loved me
Yet you are without utterance
And my heart breaks straining
For a note of music
and the silence ringing in my ears
A regretful requiem
Careless undertones
mimic this rumor of survival
Suspended I am
Unsung
TBoehm 022008

© 2008 TL Boehm

I have winnowed words from red earth
Birthed mad poetry in silence
Rumbled under sullen skies
Cast my cries to the birds of the air
The cadence of  mind
Blind expectations
Venerations
The ache of angels and soliloquied
Mantras of savants and idol fools
I’ve plated my thoughts with bits of
Sugared glaze to coat the rendered
Offering dolloped in the sickened
Fawning
My voracious ego tasteless
Vinegar on the palette
The sweat of my brow spat out
In a shallow glass
The circumstance of banality
Nothing more than the dull ache
At the base of your spine
You dismiss me by degrees
Inconsistencies
Secrets grow fangs and
Spider themselves webbed
Close to the bone
Crunched underfoot
Weary words spin in the thin air
Senseless surrendered chattel
Trace my petty dreams in the dust
Of the space between
You and me and we
Will never grasp the significance
Of a blade of grass
Or the depthless black ocean
Where your terrors luminesce
On the cusp of a pirate moon
You breathe the algorithms
Temporal
And I have lost my taloned grip
On your poet soul
TL Boehm
04/2013

So we live in these two worlds  
This aching dark this perfect light
A standard of love unfurled
No more struggle you’ve won the fight
Tread the threshold of forever
Your joy has just begun
There is grace to surrender
There is one more song unsung

Where is God in the chaos
When torment takes us down by degrees
A little more broken every moment
Down in the dirt and the fight on bloodied knees
God is there in the heat of the battle
Telling you you’ve already won
He is your words when you cannot speak
And your music for songs unsung

And I will dance in the depth of sorrow
And I will sing In the midst of pain
And I will live today and hope for tomorrow
When I will see you whole and rejoicing again
Tears are temporary in this place  
Your celebration has begun
Standing with Him face to face
Singing sweet songs unsung

TL Boehm

02/09/14

No bits of lace and ribbon
No flowers for your hair
Just tiny trucks and airplanes
Toy soldiers everywhere
No ruffly pink cotton dresses
Pearl buttons sewn with care
Just big Tshirts and faded jeans
That’s what you’ll choose to wear

You won’t understand the love and ache in my heart
As I help you grow up to grow away
Bu I would not trade you for a ray of light
In a life of black and rainy days

Hey there rock and roller
My little toy soldier
I watch you dance alone
You’re my ray of son light
But one day you just might
Burn brighter than I’ve known
Will you still be dancing
When you are grown

Rubber scorpions in your pocket
Mario world in your dreams
Catching stars and crashing cars
A warrior on the TV screen
Pokemon are the only monsters
And when you fight you always win
Will your real world be as cool a place
As the digital ones you’ve seen

And I offer up a little thanks for you
Every time I close my eyes to pray
Keep on dancing to your song boy
You’ll never grow to old to play

TL Boehm
9/95  3/17/99  10/25/99
For Fred Boehm " watching Fred dance…

Matthew 19:5 …a man shall leave his mother and father and be united firmly to his wife and the two shall become one flesh…

Are we simply stardust
Celestial fallout somehow sentient
The connection that effervesces between us
Happy accidents
Or is there that spark of the divine
Helixes and Holy angels
Spin a different plane
Eternal DNA
Existence beyond physical
This side of forever

Sacred accretion
Boundaries blurred
Do I begin then where you end
The weak made strong
Sight to the blind
And love the ultimate healer
For hearts torn asunder
Broken parts made whole
Bound by ties that set us free

I cleave to you
Under sparkling stars
Gentle passion envelopes us
Pulse and breath as one
You surrender pleasure to me
Wild moments sublime
We scatter seeds of immortality
Fertile earth
Breath over water
A single spark in darkness
And the universe
begins anew
TL Boehm
11/3/07

I watched the mama's desperate
Wiping tears from babies eyes
I watched our old ones suffer
While our heads were filled with lies
From the safety of my dry land
I watched the waters rise
But my heart was torn and broken
Tormented by the cries
Of a city put through hell
While the hope of a people dies

I listened while my nation
Played a deadly game
Fearless in the face of creation
Too lazy to take the blame
While parents and sons and daughters
Died in the street without a name
Tides relentless covered families
But nothing washes away the shame
Still lives hang in the balance
Some things will never be the same

I feel the desperation
Of thousands of shattered souls
Who trusted that salvation
And protection was the goal
Now scattered, lost and lonely
Too far gone to ever be whole
And the sum of the lies they've swallowed
Is bitter poison that takes its toll

And yet I still believe
What sparks the heart of a man
Beaten down a thousand times
And yet the warrior stands
There's a place beyond survival
Where the spirit reclaims the land
I still believe in the love and life
Sparked in the heart of a man
TLB 082906