An exercise in line breaks.  See below

Give me notice (Version One)

Give me notice
For life is short
I might have more to do
Than rest on your doorstep
Hoping you will open the latch
Greet me with a smile
Suggest we spend the day
Viewing the community pond
Feeding the ducks
Cementing our bond

Give me notice
So I will not
Fall in love alone

Give Me Notice (Version Two)

GIVE ME NOTICE

Give me notice
Life
can be short

I might have
more to do

Than rest
on your doorstep

Hoping
you will
open the latch

Greet me
with a smile

Suggest we
spend the day

By the village pond

Feeding
the ducks

Cementing
our bond

Give me
notice

So I
will not
fall in love
alone

Cats are said to be able
to see in the dark.**
Most of us as we age, stumble
when our feet, somewhat numb
set sail slow toward
midnight's bathroom call
bouncing like boats
against strong headwinds.

Unlike a teen boy whose sharp eyes
quickly pierce darkness, I am unable
to gather flecks of sight
in deepest night.
My eyes, like my feet
find some way to fight through
years of wear and abuse to
function enough to reach
my perch of relief.

Soon the midnight treks
will become so arduous
no sexton nor settings
will keep the strengthening winds
from blowing me
to whatever shore fate
has cast for me.

“Judge not”

Harsh words

For most of us

Who judge automatically

When each new experience

Brings forth a feeling

Of this is good

Or this is  bad  

Unmuted feelings become

Judgmental thoughts

I judge

So, tell me

How do I “judge not”

Do I cover my emotion

With a shroud

So often that

I become unresponsive

Or do I learn to greet

Each new experience

With openness and compassion

Showing unconditionally

Welcoming acceptance

Ideally, learning such openness

Would come with ease

In reality it seems

To take a lifetime

Unfulfilled

There is life among the three.  Two
now brilliantly white.  Winter is hard.
Survival happens, unlike the front-yard bush.
Cold did execute leaves and branches.  Survival
keeps all three away from trucks and men with blades
destine to transport to heaven or hell
where survival is eternal.

One older unwiser, grounded along
the fence, survives with blossoms rare.
Verdant, fated to disregard, hides
among the choice beauties.  Summer will be long
alive without show.  Like a middle child amid genious.

Watch this weathered being,
lean, hiding toughness beneath
a pale denim shirt marked with
oil stains near the collar and bare threads
across the elbow.  Blue eyes
peering from below sweat-stained straw brim
reflect the afternoon sun.

Consider words through
wind chapped lips "that's good enough"
to announce job completed, for now.
Simple words destined to ring
loud as though from a pulpit.
Clear remarks, a catchphrase,
to temper any drive toward excellence
or the disease of perfectionism.

Notice the softness of the voice,
amid rut of the sow
and cluck of the hen,
unintended philosophy that
drifts though eastward wind
spoken to convey
the end of a daily task.

Within
stirs a persistent bane

birthed
while on her Mother’s knee

Now her bones
grate against the chair
amid her rhythmic rocking
that breaks the dim silence


Images reverberate

on the back walls
of her mind

Disquietude prompts alarm

as her obsessions claw
to unearth graves

of fears

she pretends are invalid

Her desire to flee

from reminders of falsehoods

and fake passions

nags her endlessly

like unforgivable sins

haunt a cloistered sister

Neither pleas, nor prayers
quell her ruminations.

Together amid greenery and blossoms
they stand shoulder to shoulder, narrow eyed
and fixated upon bursts of golden daylily.

More than spring mingles in the mist
more than heat flows between them
mystery envelops them

There was the first time she held a clock
a miniature spring operated swiss piece
forbidden, still she opened the back

Movement, synchronized with sound, churned
tick, tick, tock, tock, steady clicks
worked the hands notch after notch

Would she let what was between them
work without her fingers, incited by catlike curiosity,
prying open the back of him

Stare at his insides, his tick, tick, tock, tock
until she sees him as a machine
turning until the spring unwinds?

Politics is broken
Something is missing

Politics is polarized
Opinions are divided
Clearly we are at extreme odds

Perhaps Vernon Jordan*
Had his finger on the pulse
Of this confounding
Movement years ago

The panel was distinguished
Vernon Jordan spoke  
“In Washington, there is no longer civility”

Elected officials representing opposing camps
Engage in animus and grudges
Without social civility

Without civility
There is no healing
Nor is there compromise

Every time I hear you utter
Snort an exasperation

I notice my flinch
Tension
An arising desire
Fix, solve
Help it go
Somewhere
Outside of you or me

Thoughts roam
Across my forehead

What if
There is another way
Accepting vexations
Chagrin does not stay
When I see that part of you

If I were to live my life

on sheets of acid free paper

I would bounce

tap, tap, tap

and each line would say

in fragmented metaphor

you are adored.

I would pray and meditate

in rhythms that dance

sensual sways to entice

you to take me to bed

and flip me slow

to look back or peek

ahead to satisfy

curiosity. You would bend

my corners to remember

open mouth kisses.

Our play would sound like

cries and laughter

from a ship of fools.

Cover me with blankets

warm from lust

lingering

and find me in the morning

with the same stare

black on white

calling, devour me

finish me,

turn me

finish me.

At sunrise the dew melts into nothing
and the field loses its silver glow
while retaining a tranquility
unbecoming of most minefields.

Brushing his face against
heavy denim material
the curious son hears his father's words,
Soon you will walk across
this field. I will educate you
to step here and step there,
to avoid the hidden dangers
beneath the grassy slopes
and native flowers.

Trust flows from innocent eyes,
uncreased by worry
or the wear of fear,
as the son requests,
Why are there mines among
the lavender and milkweed?

Because the fox must be hunted,
and the deer harvested
as food for our hungry ambitions.
These mines are triggered
by those who justify their sport
as signs of bravery and courage.

At times crazed men ignite the mines
as a show of their rage.  They ****
others among us, even children.

What if there were no mines?
We must keep our freedom,
freedom to walk anywhere,
to say anything
and to plant mines in the field
despite their dangers.

The eye of the eagle
will guide you each
step amid the lavender
and coneflowers until
you are safely to the other side.

Glancing upward, gazing ahead
the boy shares his wonder,
Will I continue to plant mines in the fields
for my children to walk?
A heavy masculine voice
cracks the north wind

If I train you well, . . .
If I train you well.

(with Eddie Eagle)
http://eddieeagle.nra.org/
(information about the Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program of the National Rifle Association,  
Eddie Eagle is a registered trademark of the NRA

Standing pretzeled
Hidden among the others
A scattered bouquet
Not wanting to be picked

Wallflowers are seen so briefly
Others skim over them
While reading the room

Wallflowers with camouflage personalities
Long for a low profile

Wallflowers are real
Thinking and feeling
Wallflowers live a life
Of unprojected desires

They blend and bend
To cover the wall
Fearful they will dance alone

Music is entrancing
Still, wallflowers keep their heels
Firmly in place
While swaying to the music
In their heart

Each day they invade
Headlines against my small mind
Stories of pure hate

What mattered/
about that night/
was that he touched/
her neck/
with care/
felt deep in her bones/
and that he/
gathered her/
clothing/
clasped her ankle/
pulling it through/
one silky leg opening/
of still damp *******/
and kissed her/
inner thigh/
like he was devouring
a freshly picked/
peach
------

There was never the thought
"I should be like them."
Uniqueness was desired
and a distinct path
until a fork in an unworn trail
became a call to another direction.

Unheeded were voices shouting of
things, material goods,
destine to rot behind you
as you ***** through the valleys.

Tromp on a course to mountains
few shall view.

“Except for needs I can pack everything I have 
into my old black sea-bag.”  * *

"I wish I had written that line,
I said loud enough for him to hear."

He shuffled around in his stool
and raised his cup to get  
hit with a refill.

Frustration wiggle I call it,
you know like when your dad
couldn’t let you struggle with a puzzle.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
announced his irritation
"Where have you been,
swimming shallow side?"

"I stated swatting away needs
like mosquitoes on sweat
when I was seven."

He peered past his coffee,
furrowed his brow
and rubbed his tongue
over his lower lip.

"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,
why do you keep saying that, I asked"

"Guess you’ve never been in the military.
College man I reckin,
fancy degrees
and you don't know Alpha Zulu?"

From Alpha Zulu by Gary Lilley

I forget how old you are
and I remember digging
red clay hard from the summer
sun and heat

What a slender twig you were
accepting my  grip around your base
and the dirt around your roots

You grew mostly without my notice
leaping upward and outward
until all who passed admired
how sturdy your branches,
how rich your needles

Now you tower, shading hosta
and embracing the dogwood
beside you
even though it puts on airs

This season you spill
brown needles
like a dog shedding
its winter coat

I expect you will
linger long after
I perish

I had a dream of white pines
writing poems
I wonder if you noticed me
if you will long for me
not passing by, I wonder
do pines formulate poems
and will you ever
write one about me.

God is comfortable with diversity
God sees straight
As well as crooked
Black as well as blue

God recognizes
And appreciates each of us
Who walk on earth

Think of another world
Where judging others
Rules the day

What does it look like,
Look around you
It looks like today’s world

Might perceptions change
Where people see each others
With total wholeness
Respecting others
While dropping away
The compulsion
To categorize

Might perceptions change
Might people view others
With wide-eyes
Accepting crooked and straight
Black as well as blue
And become comfortable with diversity

She heard that he’s a poet
and wondered if he would write a poem
about her.

A wave of her
shoulder length strands of pleasure
should flag down nearly any man
with an ounce of testosterone.
She wondered if she had a poem in her hair.

She spoke a few soft words
layered with one of her smiles,
the kind most guys adore
because they don’t know if it means
to come closer or to leave her alone.
Perhaps a poem rested in her smile.

If she had cleavage like Jayne Mansfield
surely he would
form lines about her in his mind
and feel compelled to tell the world
how she captured his lust.
She wished for ******* with a poem in her cleavage.

She touched him.
He seemed open to her arm around his waist.
A poet felt like any other man.
She pressed closer;
perhaps he sensed a poem
in the warmth of her lean figure.

Later in bed,
he stayed close, their legs entangled
unlike anything she could remember.
She wondered if there had been a poem
in her *****.

She wished she smoked
and noticed that he didn’t.
Perhaps if they shared a cigarette
he would be enticed by the drift of the smoke from her lips.
Was there a poem in her sensual exhaling?

He seems so Hemingway,
mysterious, yet open to each moment.
Her mind played his movements
like a video tape recorder.
She wondered if she should write a poem about him?
Was there a poem in this experience?

Political grenades
Are thrown from afar

From another direction
Come claims
That similar bombs
Are cast
Toward them

Will the center hold

We are living
On a political tilt-a-whirl
Exposed to unbelievable
Tosses and turns
Intended to throw us
To one side or the other

We are living
As though plagued
With a political psychosis
As though beset
With a political schizophrenia

Will the wheel slow
Will the center hold
Will our democracy continue
Or will the center fold

There are poems hidden in the limbs of the willow
Lines of rhyme flowing from the music of the wren
Sonnets sitting like angels atop clouds resting on hilltops
Waiting to instill those with pen and ink to script lyrics to enlighten
There are triolets among the petals of coneflowers, pink, red and yellow

For poems are the breath of our life, the sustenance of the soul
Wars recalled in verse, memories intended to calm
Songs of poetry sing messages cascading from the heart
When gods, or monsters, or disease destroy the planet
The last words, lines forming an elegy, will drift from the debris

Swoosh, wings glide
across my quiet spot
water babbles near
I imagine
wise owls
limp along willow’s gray limbs
bask among first streaks of
sunlight,
collect my vibes
gather my pains
my joys
together for me
send them
to me revamped,
wrapped with hope

Without kneeling, without the sign of the cross
without self-examination
her worn keyboard becomes a confessional.
Lithe fingers tap, tap, tap out
secrets in lines of tasted desires
and opened dark doors.
With a series of deletions and replacements, key by key,
bolstered by the fervor of the moment
tales of her recent transgressions emerge.
Like a cat leaping toward it's victim
her index finger punches the enter key
as details of her indiscretions, come to rest on-line
as obvious as hunters' prey in an open field.  

Cyberspace, like a priest without a collar,
accepts her admissions without the comfort of absolution
still her guilt is released.

Bed sheets labeled wrinkle-free,
skin stroked
with lotions from
bottles stamped,
“reduces age-lines.”

Crevasses form
and crows’ feet caress eyelids;
folds spread
as little rivers
from her mouth.

New lotions,
more massaging
feed her desire
for perfection. Her glance
catches flaws others ignore.

Love falls short.
Heat from her lover’s body
warms her palms;
fetid kisses barely
brush her lips.

Wrinkle free love;
another misnomer.

To follow her is to
Twist and turn through life

Attempt to squirm free
And once more
her exotic scent
captivates you

At least your suffering
Is keen and intense

Every physical contortion
Only constricts her hold

Most predict despite
Numerous gyrations
The end will be catastrophic

Years crumble
under today's
hot emotion
rage, origin unknown
new mask
presented
as defense or offense
no one remembers
slapped on the table
larger than years together
ignited with minute fuse
enough to dissolve love
enough to send him off
enough to leave her
basking in righteous
ideology and anger
loves crumble
spirit driven
like it was born
love birthed
out of thin air
crumbles
into thin air
years gone
in the flick
of time