Life is fickle
has a thousand
and one role
challenging
everyone to climb
its  wet and slippery pole
how would you do that?
you couldn't even hold

but life says:
I was born to test
whether you are
cowardly or bold
and I welcome only those
who are on my side
willing to play and roll
as I set myself in motion
in weather hot or cold
my wiles and secrets
could never be understood
or ever told

don't bribe me
I don't sell
or hand out
any gold

now
here's the waiting pole
if you have the guts
let them unfold!

Voices in my head constantly tell me I'm not enough, gorgeous enough, thin enough.
They tell me I should change who I am because I won't be loved looking rough.
They tell me I should have a smaller nose, smaller thighs, smaller everything.
They say "you're prettiest friends are your thinner ones. If you wanna be like them then stop eating every single little thing."
I'm disgusting, they say. I'm unworthy of love and I'll never find it.
"GET YOURSELF THIN." they scream. "AND YOU'LL FIND TRUE LOVE IN A BIT."
The voices are cruel. They never let up. They tell me "All of your thin friends get the guys attention, you don't because you're ugly and fat."
"They never give you a second thought because you're too big." They spat.
I know I'm ugly and fat. I'm not thin. My mind is a toxic place so I'm giving up and giving in.

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.

I fear dying,
before my potential is reached.

accepting I am human,
& accessible to sickness
& pain forces me to lean a little more to the sky above.

trying to find my voice and allow the vulnerability of my brokenness from within speak,
is an unknown breach of territory.

I am private & in this I am sensitive
to protect my inner self from feeling and being
exposed.

I hide behind a mask of uncertainty
so my sanity is protected

but I no longer can keep the
human sides of me secreted

here I stand,
unclothed & ready
to let every side of me, shine..

Sincerely,
a servant

she was the moon
radiating the night sky
and dancing among the stars

you were the darkness
the shadow that waxed and waned
through the phases of her life

she grew to believe
that your presence
is what made her whole

but like the full moon
she shone brightest
without you


x.

To whomever is the next unlucky boy to momentarily fall in love with me,
     You should know, that when I fall, I do not simply slip down a step on the stairs. I plunge into the depths of the ocean, sink to the bottom of the mariana trench.
     I will relinquish my heart, body, and soul to you. Whether you reciprocate or not, I will give myself to you completely, let you see my soft spots and my rough patches, the lines around my eyes and the fat on my thighs, the scars on my wrist and the hair on my arms.
     You will give me an inch in return for my mile, but it will be the most precious inch I have ever seen.
     I will say I love you too soon, but I will mean it with every fiber of my being.
     When you lie through your teeth I will believe you, because you will have told me that you will not lie. I will always believe you.
     For a few months everything will be perfect. Then I will try to formally gift you my soul, unpatch it to show you my all. You will look at it with pity, refuse to meet my eyes for a week. Eventually, I will find it buried in the trash, between moldy red apples and an empty box.
     You will say that you love me. I will quietly beg you to show me, to prove yourself. You will pretend not to hear, and I will believe it is my fault for screaming so loud that you went deaf. You will silently agree.

To the next unlucky boy who briefly falls in love with me,
     You will say that you've fallen out of love.
     I will cry,
     say I hate you, I will never speak to you again.
     Sometimes we will pass each other, I will do my best to avoid it, but I will look you in the eyes. For a moment I will feel the chords between us that I cut connect again. I will have to cut them again.
     I will tell myself I do not love you, that I never did,
     But I will never stop.

I have a collection full of every unlucky boy who has ever had the misfortune of falling in love with me. If I was to fall off a building  like humpty dumpty you would see their names are tattooed on the grey matter inside my skull, engraved on every bone in my body. My body will move on, but the memory will never leave me.

(Inspired by and dedicated to John Edward Smallshaw, and his "Spice")


I am a summer-man,
Because I'm blessed to sit by the sea.
Let it and the other two Musketeers,
boon companions to me,
Sun and Wind,
erase my discomposure as I
reside in the Poet's Nookery.
Let them have almost
all that troubles,
but not all.

I am a summer-man.

On the bay, on the beach,
I see birth, I see death,
osprey nests, carcasses of
mussels and horseshoe *****.
This, somehow reassuring,
the cycles,
this circularity,
the tides and inevitability.

I am a summer-man.

Student of languages seasonal,
Peaches, plums, cherries, poetry
and loving Woman.^
This, the  summer alphabet-soup
of my multiple tongues.

I am a summer-man.

Sancerre and Pinot Gris, super cold,
Paul Simon, Nina Simone,
with proper aging,
getting  hotter,
Salsa and Afrikaner hints,
super louder,
Even "Still Crazy After All These Years,"
that-who-wud-be-me,
chills outer.^^

I am a summer-man.

When ever this lad's writes appear,
it proves once again,
there is no truth that his  
name was once Dr. Seuss
In a prior life, even if
each is signed by
Ogdiddy Nash

I am a summer-man.

Disrespectful of the calendar,
if I can, try to make
summer season stretch-marks from
May to October.

I would add April,
but the IRS is already
****** at me.^^^

Though the cherry blossoms of May
now gone away,
the lilies of June
arrive, but but for a week or two,
soon, like my mom, withered away.

Acorns in August^^^^ have arrived too swiftly.

This summer, beloved,
and love of summer,
deep-rooted.

Season of my Peter Pan Poetry Galore Festival.

A love,  incapable, impossible, of ever
growing old, ever growing cold,
it cannot wither.
It is summer heat reminders exposed,
how it misses its man,
that hide in the flames of
the teasing, popping, reminding
Winter fireplace's crackling popping