The mask, my face, the oxygen flows
I breathe in a cadence,
like a drum keeping time.
If the drum stops will the breathing go on?
I am now tethered to this mechanical device
providing me life like a fetus in the womb.
Where did breath go, what took it from me?
It was the virus, this virus common to all in here.
This ward is full of victims on assisted breathing
struggling to breath, struggling to stay alive
like a fish, thrown on the bank yawns ,
hoping to take in water. When will he
go motionless. When will we go motionless?
I am resigned but I’m angry at the person
who infected me. He could have prevented this
suffering. He could have protected me from him.
He could have saved my family from tears,
from loss, from regret of good byes,
from the pain of having to watch. And those
who work this mission impossible,
have to go home and weep sadly for another
loss on their watch.
He feels no guilt, no remorse, oblivious
to the massive pain and suffering he
caused through neglect and simple listening.

The pain racks my body
Like thunder fractures the silence.
I long to separate and
observe from afar.
But pain claws me down
and laughs at my feeble attempt.
Like a demon from hell, it’s grip
is the grip of past sins.
The price is atonement for sins
yet committed.

What are my sins oh specter
that has command of my soul?
Did my desires overwhelm my needs?
Was my treatment of others
cruel or self serving? Did I
destroy rather than build?
Tell me, release me to the silence
and to eternal darkness.

But the pain persists.
The agony settles over me
like fog on the sea. I can’t even
plead, my voice is consumed.
The specter just laughs, “ your pain
is mine and I feed on your agony”.

My inspiration comes in the nighttime.
Like the tides, controlled by the moon
inspiration ebbs and flows.
But, the poet is also a victim
of that very darkness that offers
those thoughts and feelings,
then gradually obscures them
from view. I am left haunted
by the ghosts of ideas left
to torment me, love, certainty
and infinity. My heart moves on
but my hand is controlled
by that force unknown, risking
endless repetition of the
same themes. I pray for the clarity
of daylight. But daylight brings an
assault of reality without love
or certainty only infinity,
the great unknown. My hand is held
by that vice of confusion, unable to
function, to explain love
or certainty. The great unknown
wins, devours all and, then,
the night returns.

Words and the page,
wind and the waves.
Words move my hand,
a hand invisible moves
the waves. Words reduce
my store of feelings,
the tides reclaim the shore.
For the poet, ebb and flow
are his world. Inspiration is
there, then gone. Happiness
then depression. Kindness
then selfishness. The great
sin, self gratification.
When you write for you,
inspiration is wasted.
You are just a pass thru,
an instrument of communication.
All poetry is meant for someone else.
Poetry is like the wind
Over the water, it should disrupt
the tranquility while soothing the soul.

The arrow flies, the target’*****
but truth escapes the assault.
Truth seeks openness, the
space between opinion and
reality.

Opinion lives in the political world
while reality lives in the real world,
where numbers are not just figures
on a chart but loved ones missed
and missing.

Truth today isn’t a matter of
conscience but a matter of
convenience. Convenient to
the political moment while
the conscience of reality begs
for straight talk and honest truth.

The arrow hit us, the victims.
We suffer epidemics of both
crippling illness and debilitating
spin. The cure for both is the truth.

Before you, life was an illusion, a dream
well, maybe a nightmare.
You came to me, like the great sculptor not seeing
just a block of stone but seeing David in that block
screaming to get out.
You reached into my shell and drew me out
into the springtime warmth of you smile,
the sound of your song and the depth of your love.
I am immersed but I do not drown... each breath
takes in only love and my capacity increases with each sigh.
Born again is too simple for your creation. Fabricated
remade or crafted better describe your pact on me.
I feel life, outside of mere existence. I see flowers where
once I saw only weeds and your sun shines on me always.
I bask in you and your love...

Chickadee
Flies from limb to limb
A lost soul


Life is a search,
a journey, a quest
for a destination,
an arrival. I wander,
I wonder why I keep
looking for an end
and all I find are
beginnings. I search
the world for a
place to stop,
but, every stop is
a start, I search my
mind for a final thought
but every possibility
presents a possibility.
every opportunity
begins an opportunity
My mind aches for the
satisfaction of finality,
but the goal is replete
with new wants and desires.
I resolve to the truth and
the message from fate.
“The key to the end is mine.
The turn of the key is mine.
Be very careful what
you wish and look for.
The end is abrupt and final.
Isn’t arrival better”?

Am I awake or just aware? Am I moving or just imagining?
I’m in the mist, the fog of uncertainty. This is the
world of inspiration. Inspiration, like a thief, comes
in the nighttime and abducts you’re thoughts to another world,
vague yet vivid, where ideas appear in the thinning mist.
Nondescript outlines at first, gradually clearing to
disclose the tools and elements of a poem. I record
my thoughts, describing what my minds eye see’s.
Sadly, the fog rolls in again. The vivid world becomes
vague once again, outlines fade and I am alone once
again, moving or imagining, awake or aware. I’m left
with words on a page from a journey
I don’t even remember, wondering who wrote those words?

Poetry can only be judged at a distance.
No poet can judge his/her own work.
No one who knows the poet can judge.
Proximity inevitably mixes objectively
with subjectivity. The writer will be judged
against the backdrop of personality.
The chain of words will be linked to
him/her and not to the message.
Poetry results from a need, a need
to express the intensely personal
and intimately necessary. A need to
announce we exist without expectations,
without claiming a role. Just a voice
in the darkness hoping for some light.

Lack of choice is a prison. What’s missing is hope,
what’s left defines us. We are what’s missing.
Life is a thief, stealing our dreams and
replacing them with reality, a barren landscape,
desolate and confined. We live in solitary,
bounded by our own thoughts of a fuller life,
a life with love. Love is choice, love is freedom
to feel and dream. Pardoning ourselves
allows love to rescue us. Once rescued we
are free to hope and dream, to feel
and be felt, to pity those souls whom choice
has abandoned.

In the crowd I cry out my fears, I scream I shout but no one hears.
I then reach out and try to feel but it’s only air and nothings real.
I hope and pray to God of love but no sign comes down from high above.
So here I sit in the crowd alone, not myself but just a clone...

I fell in love with her name
I fell in love with her presence
I fell in love with her pony tail
I fell in love with her kiss
I fell in love with her smile
I fell in love with her passion
I fell in love with her commitment
I fell in love with her devotion
I just fell in love...

I know what I know and know what I don’t know.
I want to understand the infinite,
the concept that time goes on forever, it’s endless.
The idea of the infinite haunts me,
I can’t understand it, label it or grasp it.
I can only accept it. We call that acceptance, faith,
that great catch all for that which we can’t or don’t understand.
Thwarted by the infinite we overdose on the finite.
Books, movies and pictures, all imploring the world to
remember that we existed. We even create yards of stone,
each stone calling out our name to anyone passing by.
I accept the fact that my mind will never conceive the infinite.
But, it’s still there, haunting me, driving me to fight it and  
fabricate new ways to thwart it.
However, perpetuity is a fools errant, even if it is carved in stone...

When glaciers melt and oceans rise and people live only on mountain tops, even then will I love you.
When we’ve poisoned all the air and we’re a planet gasping and choking, with my last breath I will shout I love you.
When all we know has passed away and we’re traveling through nothing going nowhere, at the very edge of that black hole my soul will scream, I love you.
But my scream is joined, the silence broken, the dark closes in but the roar splits the darkness, a sliver of light, love escapes.
The person wakes up terrified. Was this just a dream or does the battle continue?

Guide or friend, guest or host, family or stranger,
all different but strangely the same.
No difference in the beginning or end. Just eternal sameness.
Death is just the beginning of the unknown.
The unknown is so vast we can’t even contemplate it, for fear it’s enormity will overwhelm our small minds.
A mind overwhelmed is a mind adrift on a sea of sorrow
in a storm of regret, while the islands tend to fade
into the fog, leaving only the pain.
Is death the end of beginnings or is it the final beginning, the
end of endings? Is it that bridge to eternity where seas are calm,
our course is set and our destination forever?
Fear of death is the fear of forever. Fear of forever is the
fear that the possibility of eternal life, without strife, just
might be true. Hope is our connection to the eternal.
Life favors certainty, death only offers uncertainty.
Certainty is the gift of yesterday, tomorrow only
offers uncertainty and maybe our ticket to forever.

When glaciers melt
and oceans rise and people
live only on mountain tops,
even then will I love you.
When we’ve poisoned all the air
and we’re a planet gasping
with my last breath I’ll say
I love you. My love is beyond
words, beyond the ability of
ones heart to express.
Endless, infinite, journey thru
thru the stars, skirting black holes,
moving from light to light, galaxy
to galaxy, eternal love,
infinitely together. A bond that is total,
a heart that is one,
absorbs our being. Two bodies
but only one soul.
Identities not lost,
but blended into ultimate beauty.

Freedom is just a word that we use every day.
We use it when we study, we use it when we play.

For many folks a word’s a word that shows up on a page.
For other folks the word’s a cause that made a war to rage

To be free to shop, to play, to exercise free speech,
please stop and think then realize why that’s within our reach.

Americans have traveled to protect our native shores.
They’ve fought and bled and died for us in countless foreign wars.

They never stop to wonder why whenever duty calls,
they stopped their lives, grabbed their packs and marched to duties halls

To have such friends, who care so much, for all that we hold dear,
you’d think we’d pause and contemplate that word we often hear.

Freedom is a battle cry from soldiers young and old.
They fought for us, they died for us, their stories seldom told.

When we see the word on printed page let’s think about what’s free
and think of those who paid the price from sea to shining sea.

The tent of love is fragile, but a refuge from
the world of storm that swirls about it’s ropes and stakes.
The supports strain and squeal, warn of failure
but the show goes on, in spite of the warnings.
Then, love, under siege from the storm seeks refuge.
Stop the show! Call in the clowns! If the clowns come in
the storm will vanish. I deny it’s there. If so, then
who is the clown? What happens when the tent collapses,
the show stops and the clowns don’t appear?  I am
alone amidst the  props I thought were real.
I was real, love was real but for now it’s
over until the next show.

My ears hear the sound
but my eyes see
only the motion of her lips.
Her voice is like music
drawing me in like the doomed ships of lore.
We kiss, that great dam of emotion bursts,
A tsunami of passion floods my being,
I am swept out of reality
and into the moment.
But the moment is fleeting, the passion recedes
yet the music continues
to, once again, draw me to that shore of mystery.