I close my eyes and dream
Of stars, of highs and butterflies
I feel weightless like a feather
Can play with molecules of air
Waiting for winds to lift me up
And cast me on to heavenly stop
I hope it be artists paradise
Where my abstract show survives
Or maybe a sanctuary for poets
Where my words be marinated in violets
There is a chance I be let loose
And land in learning hell of schools
Where I would toil and tackle to unlearn
The relativistic fashion of brain
I may not be tossed at all
To fulfill the celestial call
Ah, what a treat that would be
Hitching my cab to horse of divinity
My eyes open up by some earthly cause
Awakening rationality bugs
Thoughts begin to restrain
The delights of fantasy lane
Logic appears in discouraging phase
Dwindling vision's craze
Oh no, worldliness visiting me again
Rendering my existence insane
I shall refuse it the best I can
To return to the road of dreamy van
At least for a kilometer of time
Till my senses absorb the magical clime
Till my heart reveals the solution
Till I'm free of emotional pollution.

All alone in an unhappy place
Where all the walls are mirrors
And ugliness is looking back
No matter which way I may turn.

There doesn’t seem to be a door-
Just only mirrored walls and ceiling.
The cold floor hurts my shoeless feet
As endlessly I pace in circles.

The crowd of people in the glass
Have followed me for many years
Behind the curtains - in the shade-
Never coming face to face.

But here they now encounter me
With looks of reprehension…
And all I have to offer them
Are bitter tears of sad regret
ljm

“How Can I Find True Love” will always belong to the juke box in the upstairs dance hall above the general store at a little known hot springs resort called Sol Duc, in the Olympic Peninsula forests of the state of Washington.
I worked at the soda fountain there during the summer after I graduated High School in 1957. It was a very rustic place and there was no radio reception. All we had was the juke box. We teenage workers all lived in little cabins in the woods.  We cleaned the resort cabins, ran the little store, waitressed in the cafe, made Peanut Butter Milkshakes at the soda fountain and generally had a good time.  One day a man came to put the latest records in the juke box, including a new group, the Del Vikings.  We didn’t know which side of the record was the hit.  We chose “How Can I Find True Love” and played it endlessly.  Only after the summer ended and we all rejoined normal society did we learn that “Come Go With Me” was the big hit.
ljm

There is no need to shout at us-
If your words paint a picture we will see it.
We can squint and peer through lowered lids
And find the image in a myriad of dots.

It is not necessary that you push us-
We will follow if you gently lead, and find the storm
As fierce and moving as you think you need
To act out with your thunder voice and flailing arms.

Inflection works a well as histrionics,
And a subtle tone allows us space to build
The structures that your words describe.
There is no need to hammer us.

Singsong forces us to wade into the stream
And wield our nets of understanding endlessly
In hopes of capturing like silvered fish
The thoughts we’d rather cast for from the shore.

Just stand and calmly pull away
The drapes that hide the cake you wish to share.
In simple words divide it up
And we will eat it and be filled.
                      ljm

It seems as though I live my life
Downstage right and closest to the footlights.
I need the warmth of those glowing bulbs
To thaw a sometimes frozen heart.

I’ve learned my lines and know the scenes
But the blocking still confuses me
And I’m not sure which way I turn
To delver my soliloquy.

I know this drama has four acts
But this is intermission
And I’m waiting for the lights to dim
And call the audience back inside
To watch until the final curtain.
     ljm

There’s a farmers market near campus.
A young couple has a pizza oven on a trailer.
They make a breakfast pizza - bacon, mozzarella
some egg and green peppers. It’s SO crispy and delicious.
ALL I had to do this morning was say “breakfast pizza!”
and six of us were ready to head out fifteen minutes later.

Let’s wax poetic, shall we?

There are some young ladies who live in a dorm
sometimes it seems like they only have studies
but once and a while on a Saturday or Sunday
if we have our druthers, we get out, in swarm
and find ourselves some pizza-like brekkie.
.
.
Songs for this:
PIZZA by Oohyo
Le Breakfast Club de Paris by Gabrielle Chiararo

A fleet of Moon's spears
Swoop down on shadows of night
Like silver dragons

A ****** of crows
Rupture the sky asunder
Devoid of mercy

People scatter IFs
In the most fertile farmland
They refuse to grow

With branches bolts of tinder
And leaves to hide the Moon
The sacred cedar globed the grove
Without an inch of hope
A pyramid of sadness
That prayed to stars at night
In outstretched emerald limbs
To be uprooted and laid to rest
In the woodlands of paradise.
It was the tallest and strongest
The haunt for deadly birds
Who drew passion off its hate
The hate that grew in its sap
Was once rivulets of love
Enthralling it to climb the air
And canoe the clouds passing by
It climbed and climbed
Higher and higher
But came up short
To claim the magic of sky
A disappointment it could not take
For the song of truth was so bare.

The truth that captured its vein
Was but an epiphany of pain
Its monument remains a stump
Portraying amputated desire.

the girls I danced with
I never wrote songs about

the girls I kissed under bursts of fireworks
I never won carnival prizes for

the girls I entered the sheets with
I never made a deeper connection

the girls who gave me their best
I never understood their motives

and I wondered where they all went and
why we parted ways like cathedral doors
and why they took the hand of other monsters and vanished into the night.

I was too naive to notice
all the red flags waving behind me
and too dense to turn around
and open my eyes.

but now I face this dry vacancy
and I see they’re
intertwined with their domestics
constricted with their marriages
taunting their husbands
commanding their boyfriends
obsessed with their photo albums
cramming belief and guidance into their children

its the same unabridged story
told over and over
and over and over
again.

I too, sit with this adverse outcome:
this one wants me to quit drinking
and that one wants me on a diet
and this one wants me to get a better job
and that one wants me to exercise more.

I’ve never been one to rest on my laurels,
but as I lay down in this bed with this one
like so many buried cold beneath the Earth,
I can’t stop thinking of those angels from my past that have flown off into other heavens.

I was never deserving
of their time nor
their presence

and I am neither
here nor
there.