Dressing, I slip into my jeans
Brush my hair while looking
At my reflection in the mirror

Old and betrayed
My nerves already frayed
'Too low for zero'
My mind-clock registers

Age was just a number
Until you are really there
I don't mind the graying hair
A new line somewhere

It's the mind, the death of love
Love for my existence
And the bleeding persistence
That ****** dance with forgetfulness

But one thing I can't forget
As I stand dressed and ready to face
The demon of my drudgery
My head starts to throb

I foresee an attitude
It's in his grudging old bearing
I foresee a bad day coming
I try to convince me not to care

Indifference and rude commentary
'I don't like to be seen with you in public'
A joke, a sarcasm said, I smile
But inside my stomach turns to bile

Distancing is the fastest way to salve
Need to escape from the space of the car
It's suffocating space with scenes in halves
One side of the view; the passenger

At home I become a wishful thinker
Independence, freedom from
Shadows, deceit and hollow looks
Hide I do, in sleep and whatever books.

Singly among the sand castles
No one noticed until he was there
Above him or in his path

We had built him like children
Build sand castles
We carved and patted him from moist earth
He was soft, yet rigid as he lay there
His gaze was skyward and uncertain..

We left him there to see what people do
And walked a distance to the dunes
We watched him among people
For he was one now.

They came. Families, elderly couples
And children too and stopped
To admire and express delight
At this sand man's sculptured form.

We felt happiness at the pleasure be brought
He made them stop a moment to feel their surroundings
And recognize his contented solitude.

Teenage boys came to jeer and leer.
One of them looked around as if in secrecy
And plunged a driftwood stick at the sandman's groin
Then quickly ran away laughing at his tale.

The stick protruded  boldly
Our sand man's hands were at his sides
He felt no ruler of the sands
Only a gentle soul made of mockery.

A girl and her brother approached
After we had removed the offence.
The young boy was waving his 'mighty sword'
(Some stick which had washed ashore)

At first, with his sister in charge
They stopped to admire
But then she walked away,
Turned her back to venture on.

"Hello", he said to the sandman
As if to acknowledge someone there.
Then with his 'mighty sword' he pierced
Into the sandman's groin and
Ripped up to his chest
Then swung his 'sword' and
Cut the sand man's throat...

Why? Why! we cried in mind
As the young boy ran away
Murderer! we yelled in our hearts

IWe hurt for man
We sat stunned at this violence
This desecration of a soul.

We couldn't just leave him there
Blameless, yet aware
So we buried the sand man and prayed
Dust to dust, sand to sand

Sand he may have been
But soul he was for us.

Dream-like, the owl perched
High upon a headless pillar
As a surrealistic statue
Bathed in a lupine moonlight

A still night
Wintery and ghost-like
I had suddenly noticed the owl
And got the feeling
It had always been there
That I had been unaware

The two of us had been staring
At the same view of the city lights
Its head then moved
As if in a nightmare
I blinked, but still it was there
Alone and timeless.

My father died
And so did something of me inside
A mad rush headlong into love
Converted to desire of man and things
And scorched my eyes from further peace
I got no tranquility from this release

A chapter fell from my book
And as the words were left dripping
From that page where my father stood
A young man approached
A figure carrying ghosts
I thought then a friend, but now a foe

The need to turn and recoil
Left me bare and stoical
I wanted to turn my face away
And blind myself from grief
An urge to strike out hard
Left me low inside

His arms opened, he was still a friend
And forgiveness gave way in the end
A caged battalion of emotions
Cut away from deep inside
The hollow place in my soul
Like a blindless window seen from outside

The soft light burning there
Released the anxious grasp of old ideals
I can't regret these things
It is my tao from which
My new direction springs.

Can't remember the last time I got paid
Lost my worldly goods
Now I am stranded
By the house on the water

The river is the only thing
That moves real fast
As time nestles in.
Life seems normal
On the water
Like an everyday occurrence

I got laid last night
Drew my mind-set around my body
Down through my toes
The river keeps coming from nowhere
More and more
My mind is reeling like a movie
From your touch last night

The morning starts
With mist on the water
The wintery bare trees
Hold the mist at bay
Like a man sitting smoking
In a dim and crowded room
Just waiting for something
Gray and bad-lunged p
And slow to move the day along

That cold sun pulls back
The ice like curtain
Man, you got to see the sun
Another day by the water
And I ain't got no work and no pay

By midday no one's calling
But the ducks that skim the water
The rocks can't hold back the river
Hushing sound of water
I try to think of something else
But baby, your power
Has me someplace else

Picture you naked as you were
Got to have you, got to be there
All the time
It's your distance
That keeps killing me
And the waiting by the river

Call you, got to call you
From the house on the water.

Stop when I have to
Give me a time to breathe
Notice time in and out the door
Stop at the line my heritage
Had drawn on the floor before
Open my eyes to see
Who enters and who exits

Red is the color to alert
That stationary worlds  exist

Caution when I consider
A peeling away of the discarded
Notice this breathing time
A stirring of movement
Hidden below my dwelling floor
An energy, slow and beginning to vibrate
A humming sound building to negotiate.

Amber is the color to wait
serenely before the door opens

Go when you show me the way
Then my soul no longer argues
The right and the wrong
This I have noticed no to prolong
The Wind-Soul opens my eyes
Shows me how long is too long

Green is the color to go
Move in the constant glory of flow

Take heart to these teachings
And all that is needed, is supplied.

Footprints left in the sand
here I am walking with the blues
Nowhere specific to go
No thought nor plan beforehand
Naked mind, no body ruse
Before I get real low
A beach walk to wake my talk.

Listening to my inside mind
As one footprint follows
Footprint not too far behind
Moving, just to hide
The loneliness inside

Naked feet, pocketed hands
Imprint a time inside of me
A time of shifting sands
Unsettled like the beach dunes
For awhile, oh so temporarily.