Jo Thomas sat on the trestle
pulling her hair back
wagging her feet
to and fro above the river's
below.

Recalling the boy she had met there
five years ago
and how he had left
her

It seemed , to her,
like a lifetime
since she had held his gaze
in hers.

It had only been a month.
But, to , youth, to
young love
a day
might be a century.

She heard the whistle,
two of them again,
he used to call her from the woods
with a shrill hello.

She felt the tremble
of the wood
she just sat there.

She wanted to belong to him.

So Jo Thomas
gambled , perhaps
they could be
in eternity.

what was  in the longest sleep I have ever had?
dreams of mistletoe or camels
the brunch with the Dalai Lama
or George Harrison's hair
in my hands,
and had I any dream?
I don't know....
just rest
for me,
a quiet peace.
a piece of God.

i need to become
my own sullen editor
say no at times
delete my rhymes

in the meantime I suffer the indignity
of truth in brevity

In your bleeding cross-section I count
three centuries of wooden wisdom
since that mother cone dropped
on soil no one owned.
Black bears scratched backs
against your young bark. Ohlone
passed peacefully on their path
to the waters of La Honda Creek.

In my lifetime you groaned.
Your bark filled with beetles.
Woodpeckers drilled, feasted.
Needles, whole limbs,
you shed your clothes,
stood naked. I cut your flesh.  

You walloped the earth, creating a trench
two hundred feet long where you lie.
As you fell in your fury
you destroyed my tomatoes,
smashed the daffodils,
snapped a dogwood.

Better you crush my garden than my house
which did not exist nor any of this town
when you first advanced one tender green.
I want to believe the sawtooth less cruel
than another winter of storms.

All good fathers must fall.
Your children surround you,
waving, blocking the light.
My children count rings,
hands sticky with sap.

fingertips,
twitch itch and burn
with need

need to touch
torch-hot flesh
to feel, white-hot soul
ooze through thin-skin membrane

toungetips rake softlips
stealing murmurings
of heart and head
leaving desire
simmering  there instead

yearnings, deeper delvings
desperate dionysion delusions
draining staining steaming seeming
never ending mind bending soul rending ***

stealing silent sombulent kissses
of fearful guilty farewell
trip tip-toeing doors silently closing
need hosing, shamful moseying away
from who the....what the...oh hell!

fingertips tapping drumming
hunover mind blown but still hummin
no excuse away from home and lonely
awaiting the bill, cash only,
cause credit be evidence of crime of illicit time

now despondent knowing heart-sore
bad to the bone core, never wash away rime
dang, stuffed up to one's own detriment
balancing on earth-quaking, slip-sliding
no-place, nowhere to be hiding, mudsliding firmament
thinking deep, dark, stark stupidity rules
now just me the jester and the fools
all counting the cost and consequence
of one night, tispy cheap drunk nasty, nasty  thrill

the heart
cannot repair
the heart
in much despair
the heart
missing these pair
the heart
feels the unfair

exiled from the venue
our writing brothers
their words expelled
by unseen smothers

swift the extradition
of a movement quick
the removal done
with a rapidness of click

no more seeing the
works they did ably create
our kinsmen vanishing
off the forum's slate

the heart languishing
without our kindred
being around
the heart so dispirited
their expression fell
silent of sound