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From a distance, she gazes with a sigh,
At the man by the sea, a captivating sight.
Lost in thought, he searches deep inside,
For the truth of who he’s meant to be,
and the path he’ll choose to ride.

She lifts a hand, a hesitant wave,
Like the ocean’s gentle touch
on the shore’s soft cave.
Yet doubt creeps in, as she questions her move,
Should she approach, or quietly slip away,
and let him find his groove?

The ocean’s vastness mirrors
her own uncertainty,
As she weighs the risk of reaching out,
and the comfort of anonymity.
For now, she stands, frozen in contemplation,
Torn between connection and solitude’s liberation.
I wrote an abbreviated version of this poem a few years ago and in rereading it, was inspired to add more.
Mr Trump now sits atop
The Armageddon bomb
With his hand above the button.
Does he know this will cause war
That ends the world we live in.

Does he think that we’ll be safe
These many miles across the globe?
And think the grid that runs our lives
Invulnerable to an attack

When secret plans have long been made
And mechanisms put in place
That only take their button pressed
To bring US to a screeching halt.

Could anybody be so blind
As not to know an action
Generates always reaction
That will be more horrible
Than any nightmare you can dream.
ljm
Go buy a generator- just in case.
why when we compose
on matters urgent
oh my love

are we not provisioned with
beginnings and endings,
opening and closings?

We know what needs to be said,
the symmetry of butter and bread,
but how to begin and how to end,
these difficulties, not easy to comprehend

how to get
to the heart of the matter,
the door to the hallway
leading and departing
to
the front door entrance,
to the front door exit,

don’t know the words to begin,
the words to end,
which way does
the door open or close?

so read this, please, sit beside me,
while you place your fingertips
on my lips
and encourage me to
just say it!
2/28/25
There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.
The wasteland looks like eden
After a long and tortured road.
We were promised no such land
Nor any home that we are owed.
Still we took that beaten path
Knowing well where it may go.

By the gods what fools we be!
Seeing neither haunted forests
Or the weeping, dying trees.
We saw instead clear flowing streams
Ignored the way they slithered,
Withered valley and the rose.
Or how the heart can carve a lily
Into a candle in the snow.
Rings of Headrick
Stabilize the flight
Of a broken equal

In zero atmosphere
I record you remembering to smile
Pixel pleasure
Whether or not
In zip ties

Cloud on the brow
Rain in the ashtray
Storms we all breathe in heavily

An end to camaraderie
By critical distance
By counting back from ten

Zero is an even number
When discord is no longer odd
this absurdity of words blowing up the windows
so that some forget their names
life crumbles in rooms without walls
we are trapped between the skin and the moon
the world prepares us for dying in the most explicit way
through its calculated violence
trapped in the hive of fear
she is also an enlightened despot
one might get trapped without noticing
when we want to be free to be kite tamers
escape routes vanish in the dictatorship of cruelty
blood is currency in the exchange of illusions
one day can last as long as a life time
the horizon brings no relief from sunset
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