everyone has gone back to suburbia,
city streets are dangerous, if you look
at someone cross eyed, it earns you death.

don’t celebrate this madness,
mourn it in black, it has a taken
a pandemic to school me again.

this a broadcast, shout out, email me
if you know how I’m feeling and can
share what other mutualities crisscross.

Do you like Jazz? Me neither.
Flouncy bouncy dresses? Nah!
Sweats? Unnecessary, I can sweat
just by concentrating.

You like me, own soulful bluesy singers,
femme fatales, who coax and croon,
wet the spun threads of subtle emotive,
who live by light of candles votive,
I live in black, day and nighttime,
write in midnight blue, a woman who!
takes no b.s. and doesn’t ever take no
for an answer...

to the edge and back (inverted diversion)
——————————————————-

your life may throw you curves,
mine, straight edge blades,
lines galore, like sidewalk cracks,
jumping from safe to safe place

but always teetering tottering on
edges, like verses in the next poem,
trying to make it just to the next line
without falling in cracks, China bound

you can follow my lead, don’t though,
if I could, would willingly plunge, deeply,
for there is no safety in safe spaces, only
in the holy dark, cracks is the true safety

you seek, where poems roll on a highway
like Reno tumbleweed, humble before snow
capped mountains, these are the contrasts
where you birth procreations, poems yours

and mine die in childbirth,
returned to sender,
returned for retuning,
despair not, they’re coming
back to this world

guises in a different colored skin,
a different alphabet, script,
the meaning yet unchained and
unchanged, despite the

inverted
diversion

when the bridge becomes a pier (Connectivity Poor!)


when:
extended arm, but finds no counterpart, empty air friction,
the bridge becomes a pier, ocean refuses to red sea split, yield,
road divides, dead-ended headed, no turnaround, only STOP! signs

when broken ends are splintered, jagged, glue won’t work, no fix,
two too twisted arms cannot hold on, too tense, too tight,  
being over-alone, solitude passed, secrets go untold

tongue buds are busted broke, vicissitudes of pandemic,
voices, once golden, now just rusted, red flecked word droppings,
only one message from above: Connectivity Poor, Try Life Again, Later!
                                                   <>
?What good is to be a King
when you cannot lead,
what good is to be a shepard
when the flock dying,
what good are David’s psalms
when God is not listening?

morning contradictories: mourning our poems, falling stars


awaken to a sunshiny Saturday,
the lazys, their coverlet of flowers,
inhibit our movements, now, as it nears
high noon, we have yet from our bed stir

August has be-come, the grass pockets
of gray and green, swaths of sunburn brown,
reveal how far along the North American
summer has poetry passed, irretrievable

reading your messages and notes from
world over, lazy licking you poems so many,
delighting, ponderous and oft heroic, as well,
weeping as too many become fallen stars

each grass blade, from earth born and returned,
the nutrients preserved in our sandy soil, intended
to nurture next summer’s poesy new birthrights,
green+browned, weep+smile, mutual contradictories

these poem best friends, passing by each other at lifecycle’s
multi-paths, metaphors for our too many morning stirrings,
most to be falling like stars that, though in motion, need not
come to rest ever, their movement attracts a one…lasting look

it nears noon, it nears this poem’s timely finishing touch,
straighten its tie, smooth its skirted pleats, a forehead
implant kiss goodbye, sent on its way to find its own weight,
no parent ere admit, it leaves, with tear-burst showers falling…

August 1
2020

noon

the men I crave
speak blunt,
wanting me for
my poetry persona,
strength sheer as a cliff,
me to be their tour guide to the edge,
my sexuality unabashedly to be their owing

they speak plain,
believing directness
is an aphrodisiac for me,
my style, direct unvarnished,
so that must be whom I am, surely

but they err deep grievously

I do love my poets so, the
ones, soft spoke, genteel, feeling
using first, no never, guile, words harmonizing,
softening the edges so smoothly rough necessary
for me to protect, confounding the harsh takers,
who never think to ask, never cradle, stroke,
don’t go below, see deeper that my nerves
are feminine, that pink is but a color,
that anyone could love, not an
invitation, a philosophy of
automatic surrender

now you know why I write poems,
to understand better the heart human,
ferret out the chaff, the bad, for everyone else.

#brandychanning

When misunderstandings flew every direction,
I tried to blame you, I gave it a shot.
But despite all the anger, resentment, correction,
Petty and cruel is something I'm not.

So it's time to step back,
Pull my head from the sand,
Outside of my self-absorbed ego, and stand...
Embrace the all,
and find it sufficient,
To still the mind and be with what is,
Pain and pleasure, in equal measure,
To God or Caesar, hers or his...

And on that June day, beside the black hearse,
I'll swear I caught sight of an eye or a mind.
Our new paths led to the first rehearsal.
The curtain opens and cold, we find,
We’re on the stage in a role reversal,
And though we may be deaf and blind,
     We hear a song,
            See a dance,
                 Universal.



#npminspire #forgiveness #taken #given

those who created wind and water had many reasons,
but their first purpose was to constant enliven the human mind
with the softest message that true freedom is never bounded

nature’s song is refrained, “man, be unrestrained,”
nature’s majesty is then greatest, for men fool
themselves with lines, divisions and walls.

Earth’s best, humans too,  best seen in its
    unconstrained, searching character.

this is the one, only truth.


12:07am Sun Jul 12