I learned the blues
too soon
and the pain
I gained
singing on dark nights
to the rain our plight
those who know loss
is just another cross
to bear for the dark guitar
strings piercing hearts
the cross spreading her legs
like a pair of pliers to make us beg
plucking nails from ****** fingers
picking scabs that seem to linger
through the calloused evil seasons
of high cotton and boll weevils.

~

dark early pre-dawn

body suspended between the-dark ochre earth tones of night,
and the teal pealing notes of warning of an impending morning,
signs aborning, me rising with urgency of the leaden half deaden,
torn from the bed casket to venture into a different kind of twi-lights,
nature demanding both intake and outtake, a restoration of balance

but first a bumbling wobbling, the body as carnival bumper car,
installing soon-to-be-bruising for later examination-exhumation,
lurching from handhold crevices in the walls like crazy cliff climbers,
my balance disturbed, eyes try  tearing apart the sticky glue of night,
my sense of direction keeping me from free falling into green glass
edges of glass tables, barely, and not always, red cuts evidentiary

“my balance disturbed” words fresh formed, and a poem expulsion
required to balance the unjust scales of spirit soul and the body cage,
patch an negotiated agreement between warring cousins, just a
twenty four hour ceasefire to retrieve the wounded and the
corpses unfounded in the small copses of false shelter,
like my ancestors expelled from Spain, making escape to be
strangers in strange lands, or remain hidden in place neath disguises
of clothes of new poems, prayers for old and new gods

this new poem comes quick like a young man making first love,
for the poem has been written by thousands nights of practicing,
so ready for quick retrieving in a smattering of a few minutes,
expulsion expulsion
what a perfect verbiage to capture the night terrors, the differentials,
the procession path between what was and what will be,
when my balance restored and this poem’s completion installation
in the body of my work, as a nail disguised in the works of my body,
entering by command of the pitch black gods

while the debate goes on and on,
as to which country has the longest, continuous
democratic parliament, have it on on good authority
that the subject above,
is it better to love your kids too much than not enough?
was the first among all temporal discussions ever held,
despite periodic tabling, the debate remains unresolved,
the question unsettled even after 1000 years+ of argumentation

when over time, Universal Adult Suffrage finally came to be,
the debate became renewable, enflamed, divisive most contentiously,
various coming down on each side of a point of view topically

since mother, father and child, i.e.
pretty much everyone, definitionally,
claimed total expertise,
and sparing the rod was deemed by most to be illegally,
no plebiscite, amendment or ballot initiative was resolved resolutely,
the beat goes on continuously as new children reach voting age, sagaciously repeating their view, personally

my view?

I’ve tried both and failed equally
so I’ve little to contribute,
so let it be stated in manner unequivocally,
the sweet sensibility says too well,
but helicopters crash and monied snowplows
run over other both their own and others better deserving,
leaving all of them buried in snow piles street side,
while those who blame their faults on insufficient love,
are later most demanding more attention than any,
having becoming painfully hardy, by being treated hard about,
******* themselves and worse to others

everyone knows the answer to this question for themselves
but I’ll leave you with this,
permitting a child to fail is a winning strategy,
as long as there is no legal limit
regarding the amount or frequency
on lifetime hugging