Born with gifts and flaws, we ride
The merry-go-round of life
goes up and down like painted ponies
The wheels we put in motion
will brings peace or run over us
No matter the effort, life’s tragedies
will break our spirit.
Will our hearts
become a thousand broken pieces?
Or will these cracks be
where the light comes in?

Finding yourself means being lost.
The only way to reappear is to disappear
Admit you do not know
and are lousy at predictions.
Life will reveal itself.

To know for even one brief moment
what it means to be free
Never settle for a smaller version of yourself
Measuring outcomes leads us
away from inner treasures

Woe to those
who lead little lives
Who leave more inside
than ever gets used

Haunted by ghost
of unborn dreams
Looking toward tomorrow’s
that never come

Smothering their fires of hope
with wet blankets
If only they could ride their dragons
extinguishing fears from yesterday

In a world pestered by distortions
dreams are doorways for the brave
Courage comes and goes
hold on for the next supply

Solitude the unwanted guest
at the Christmas Day celebration,
can you imagine anything worst than
spending Christmas Day alone?
Remember as a child misbehaving
being sent to, “time-out”
for added misery you were
positioned to see others playing.
Today in prison, the worst of the worst,
when they are even worse- solitary confinement.
The picture is clear in our society
solitude is negative, punishment.
Research subjects report in experiments
solitude reduces your happiness and joy.

However, the story is not over
these same research subjects
report solitude adds calmness,
reduces anxiety and enhances clarity.
The question becomes when
I go for a walk in the woods,
what  is my objective?
The solitary turtle sunning
on the  log in the pond,
what is his objective?
Next time you go for a walk
in the woods, leave your device at home
don’t be so quick to call a friend,
goggle a sports score or type in HelloPoetry.

Time has no space
to be bamboozled
No space for quaint, petty, or polite things
Things that put you to sleep
Time needs to be jolted
Time is beyond chin-up, spine-straight, eyes-ahead
Time lives in radiance
Time demands that washing the dishes becomes holy
Taking a shower becomes part of the water cycle
Emptying the trash an ecological celebration
Time our gift from grandeur
Put down your electronic device
and create your own buzz!

Fly on the window’s ledge
Stuck upside down
Twisting and turning
A ***** disease carrier
I could swat you
One quick blow
Easy, you’re trapped

Instead
I blow a gentle stream of air
You land feet first and fly away
Your struggle too much like mine
Challenged by twists and turns
Sleepwalking in daylight
Missing the universal stream
Which breathe will lift me?

To lose your self in a fabricated world
Being occupied by the mundane
Convention the burial ground
for artful living
There exist a great vortex of false promises.

Follow the difficult trail
Ripen like seed in fertile ground
Love the question and not the answer
Learn to live into the question
Watching your self grow takes patience.

A gypsy boy
not wanting to be confined
by daily prescriptions
Always jogging on paths
of his own
Still he knows, it’s only
when you stop moving,
you’re called in deeper ways.

Sitting alone in an empty hotel room
Somewhere between nowhere and everywhere
Crying for what he’s seeking
and what he’s leaving behind
Knows he can’t leave his shadow
simply by walking away
Nor find what’s elusive
by chasing illusions

Knows the only way out
is through the pain
Knows that he, like you,
Must take what’s ugly
in his arms and kiss it!

Abandon Hope
The kind that promise
something more
Things will continue
to fall apart and
come together

There is no place to hide
No longer playing
hide and seek with suffering
Then gratitude for today
The gift of the present
Become visible in the now
There form may surprise

See strength in vulnerability
Find tenderness in unknowing
Totally exhausted, now I can
begin to be here in the now
Love never dies
My suffering fades as
I awake to yours
Love never dies

Today, a moment of panic
in the midst of sheltering-in
The soft safety of stillness
gives way to turbulent winds
Emergence Room Doctor mode
frantic, running every which way,
reaching for the prescription pad.
Surely, I could write an answer.

Like a person with a broken car,
thinking everything will be ok
If only, I can repaint the car.
a new exterior, that’s the answer.

Sitting in my monastic cell
A Red Fox scampers along
the fence line
His inner fox and outer fox
scamper in harmony.

The soft safety of knowing, the Red Fox
not wishing for even one hour
to be a ******
Repainting my exterior
will not slow turbulent winds.

In the midst of sheltering-in
The soft safety of stillness
like the Red Fox’s deep knowing
Joins my inner self and
outer self in harmony.

Stepping into my own margins
The edge of my comfort zones
Where light shines in dark corners

Entering a dimly lite pub
Where shaggy bearded men
Sit at round tables
with pints of dark ale
Men who hold very different views
These men tell their own stories
Stories of abuse, achievement,
failure, heroism, and heartbreak
Listening night after night
I can no longer see
them as wrong or even different
These stories are real, complex, confused
and beautiful.
We are all each other’s stories
as much as we are stardust
Bit players in the drama
in the inexhaustible staging of forever.

Your part is fleeting
Each part an essential moment
in the mystery of time

The two greatest
English words
Summer afternoon

Served
in tall glasses
of sweet mint tea

Under pastel
yellow and green
beach umbrellas

Accompanied by
wordless songs
of rhyming surf

Laughing gulls
on currents of air
mirroring contentment

Time drifts easy
healing old bones
scared by harsher days

Worldly concerns
disappear in
sun-bleached sand

Long summer afternoons
ready us for
Life’s winters

Poets feast on words
Words rolling off our tongues
Guarding of languages future
Turn the language coin over
asks yourself, what does
American language breed?
What seeds grow in the dark
corners of these fields?
Gorging on cliches
“You killed it”
“ Guns blazing”
“Battle ground state”
“Target audience”
“ Drop dead gorgeous”

Words as things
to be cared for like:
putting water in
the dog bowl,
opening the door when
someone’s hands are full,
stopping to listen even
while rushing.

Language meditation
Words breathing in and out
What words are worthy
of our breathe?

Planetary fitness
Issues like Covid-19
and global warming
Calling the next generation
To be one choir
Singing,” We Shall Overcome”
Walking together in
solidarity and solitude
Know we all descend
from cosmic stardust
Warped in love
for each other and the earth.

We all lean a little off plum
Swaying to the music
of a manipulating song.
Songs played on
jukeboxes for profit
Songs leading us like sheep
to green pastures to fatten us,
Drunk on the elixirs of illusion
Ready to follow the wrong God home
Sliding from off plum to crazy

It’s a struggle to keep from being
overwhelmed by the tribe.
Being yourself is harsh living
You will be lonely, frightened,
and tossed around
Yet, no price is to high for the
privilege of finding yourself.

Place is where what lies inside of us
communes with what seems outside,
A living frontier where voices come
from place and us as one
A companionship of presence
The raw coming together of us
and the natural world.
Finding our place gives birth
to a living conversation about
what is big and ultimate
Each privileged to be with the other
A holding ground to drop anchor
Our sanctuary and refuge
When turbulent winds blow.

Place is where what lies inside of us
communes with what seems outside,
A living frontier where voices come
from place and us as one
A companionship of present
The raw coming together of us
and the natural world.
Finding our places gives birth
to a living conversation about
what is big and ultimate
Each privileged to be with other,
A holding ground to drop anchor
Our sanctuary and refuge
When turbulent winds blow.

Winter eternal
Darkest night
Just before spring
Farmers know
Fallow prepare the ground
The earth wages it’s tail
Day and night

Fallow preps me too
In the midst of busy
before collapse, sit down
Have faith in spring
Stillness the batteries
in our own flashlight
A little light enough
Bush the button, look around

As covid-19 transforms
Question arise
What before and now
Sustained or deflected

If table tennis
at the senior center sustained
What is where it was?
Does it’s absence leave a hole
in the cup of my soul?
What is a cup ?
What is a sieve?
We’re all these things that
occupied my time merely deflections?
Ways of avoiding life’s sorrows, loses,
shadow side?

What happens on Sunday afternoon
if the Dallas Cowboys are out on the range
and not in the stadium?
Will millions of people drink dark beer
And stare at blank screen?
Perhaps something will call them
out of an NFL trance!
Finding themselves out on the range
with the Dallas Cowboy players
All of them sitting around a fire pit
Singing, “ Ghost Riders in the Sky”

No longer deflecting
Watching the sunset
Their  horse, bedroll, saddle,
campfire embers glow,
A lone cow ambles on the horizon
Awake, alive, sustained
Grateful the NFL season cancelled

In school, restlessly sitting in our chairs wondering why?
Do they never talk about what it’s like to be us?
I mean, on the playground at recess
Purposely tripped, we fall.
Bullied for the third day

What part of this curriculum teaches, the art of being alone
with ourselves?

With every event all these thoughts
and feelings coming at us!

All of us have this inner awkwardness
Never quite at ease
Never far from the outside story
that never matches
the inside story

Ignorance a deep not knowing
Resting on a bed of facts
Wisdom comes from tending
the interior garden
Endless inquires of our inside
seen through the eyes of a lifetime
The world gets more mysterious
as we tend to it
Solitude and questions become
a foundation for living differently
Take the words you hear lightly
You are destine never to become
the C.E.O. of even your life
Watch your mind flutter with chaos
Have the faith to doubt
Responding not reacting
to your one and only life
Empty of outcomes
Present to possibilities

In school, restlessly sitting in our chairs wondering why?
Do they never talk about what
it’s like inside of us?
The art of being alone with ourselves depends upon
Our own deeply earned truths!