curse the summer breeze,
despise the winter's harsh laugh,
this insanity is in every season,
the more I write, this invasive ****,
like the strongest tallest bamboo sticking,
drafts me again and again into the army
of just one more, and for every one I release,
a dozen more inventions, incensed interventions,
come asking, pleading, needy whining, but
for themselves only, not for me,
provide,
do not deny
them their own
new perspective,
an original fabulation,
and I remind them
of Balanchine's wit,
"there are only new combinations,"

and my mental thresher~combine,
explodes that numbered field,
of semi~scripted, planted
yet to be finished,
it only grows larger,
but not higher,
perhaps, sadly thinking,
but not better,

while my sighs of tired only grows louder…as my-race against  time, only shorter, the rat on the spinning wheel....
                                                       ­                                                    nml

pretty words for pretty girls


courageous caress of a send key pressed,
after practicing  
speechless up to the assumed,
up to assured point of perfect,
flawlessness, visible in each invisible breath,
pauses full of poignant stories unspoken
but eye cleared visible for seeing the future

pretty words for pretty girls

intuition incorporates superstition,
unending, intending infatuated moon gazing,
but not pagan worshiping, no it is love worshiping

your hiding cave places are moon apertures dark spots,
impenetrable to my eye’s naked telescoping,
but heartbeats spring my unharnessed love poems to you

me and millions whisper in full certainty of our
lost but beloved presences, moon stored for us,
my darling dares the light shine upon my bay,
here to me, our path, a moonlight waving hand
provides on many nights, a clear direction to follow,
pseudo-thrills of continence that my vision uncovers,
but my body knows is but a poor substitute

pretty words for pretty girls

my disease has a diagnosis.

your body attacked,
your body reacts,
defeats the infector,
remembering the next time
that disease comes round
how it got beat prior
and how to do it again


so how come I’m falling love once more?

it's past mid September,
the modest gradations
(and graduations)
of temp and the indirectness
of the ever shifting sun
are not lost on the
the skin of the locals,
nor even the
summer sojourner, who
recalls the past rainy June,
and the "who knew that
winter lasted so long"
on this peculiar planet island land

the calendar dictates
that the obligations of the
living are fully recommenced,
and the avoidance of realities,
cannot be excused, refused,
but they go ignored for just
one more day, and the ever
more spectacular pastel sunsets
tease, "see what you will be missing..."

the  skeletons of beach fires
doused by silver beach sand,
are the last to say, we will still
be here, even though you've
hasten to where we have no
counterpart, and though we
will blend back to just being
sand and driftwood,
in time for what we the
inanimate,
loosely call next year,
but not remarked upon
any calendar in any ink
we can read...

forty years some tribe
tented in a desert, before
finding shelter,
we've counted 46, summers,
passed, neighbors, too, the
landscape  dotted with newer
arrivals, and we just cluck, like
so many others, at the longing ferry line,
those who walk on the road's wrong side,
the one or two remaining tradespeople,
who still call our abode by our predecessors
last name, wondering when, if we will make
that grade

so much more to say,
what we've witnessed,
what has changed, what,
thank god, hasn't

but the city wants its fair share,
of us, and our taxes true, so come
upon just another last day, and look
back in the review mirror, remembering
the first last day of many years ago...

Silent breath between heartbeats,  
Holding space for what cannot be spoken,  
Abiding in love that asks nothing in return,  
Light that lingers even in shadow,  
Open hands, open heart, open sky,  
Mirrored souls meeting in peace.