People -
so many bodies…

Some seem to engage
for but a moment, of course,
before bustling past on hot sidewalks,
with varied smidgens of mind and heart;
collections of vibrating chemistry,
moving to specific oscillations.

How to make sense of it all?
We can be drawn to warm embers,
avoid icy slaps on our cheeks reddening.
Grey shapes pass us by, hardly registering a blip -
are they nothing more than the flotsam of flailing limbs
echoing our own caustic needs and wants pending?

Yet we all want much the same things in life:
to be noticed with kindness by the benign,
safe from the razor-blade elements,
find our slot in life that counts,
and leave something good
for posterity, if it comes…

For dots of humanity
of which we are a part,
in some fashion or another,
keep floating giddily past us…
Are they up for what will come
with stoic resistance, or neglect?

Do they expect some dystopia
and the terrors of a dark night?
Ask the fretting little children,
who can’t sleep for their fright!
They too need a river of peace ~
the Promise to be fulfilled

made by One wiser
than all else…

~~

I survived y2k, the rapture and the Mayan apocalypse.

9/11, solar maximum, and the media blitz of my opinions.

An x citizen to the world with my finger in the swirls of the abyss.

Turn it on
Turn it off
It makes no indifference to my smidgens of resistance.

**** me
kiss me
**** me
Love me for my limits.

I'm gonna get it until i spin it to my grave.

Unraveling the collective gavels of my praise.

Raised by my love in a staving haze, to make a play for my place at empty tables with empty plates, with broken symbols over where their faces once were.

I have and shall endure.

With or without

I was somber that Tuesday
Thinking about my lack of success,
I pondered giving up
And letting my current body
be all that there is…
A life over, a life ended.
I was watering the black-eye Susans,
they being just bright green smidgens,
Sad in September, missing my mother…
And a Dragonfly flew up to my face and landed on my neck,
Normally I would have shoed it off,
When younger I might have killed it.
It took the time to inspect my neck,
…turning about and tickling me too-
…near-hysteria waiting; waiting for it to leave,
And then it flew to an oak tree in front of me
And stopped to look back-
…at me?
Then it left.

I thought of a movie about coming to terms with death and a Dragonfly…

                                                     ­          Why did it stop and look back?
Thanks Mom for cheering me up,
…even though I am crying.

the bellRINGS
                     tinitubular
sending curlique vibrations
             of sound unseen
but felt at the very  heart
of the core
            and then there isJOY
floating around in moted
                          DEFIANCE
small smidgens fall like        
              MANNA
on the thirsting ground.
   and in this simple action of grasping at  INSPIRATION
we the poets
                    hear
                         the ECHOES  
                of lives unlived
and see the beauty of        
                               DREAMS

yet to be broken
                and in that
                        small moment
we are the KEEPERS of the
                     world  
WITHIN the bells that are
                              RINGING

Like tulips of the spring,
burns ornate pores of my dark.
An array of greys and black
to disguise flesh as rainbow smudged by the scars.

Your accidental touch,
my aloof heart,
set up the incantation.
Will you tell?
How do you dissolve smidgens of spill over my skin.

I was not meant to love,
how sorry I was that I had
such a troubled heart
A man by the sea beckoned me
And so I removed my bra to stay apart.

We danced with underwater stars
in gurgling laughter music
my body keeping time to his
this I did not know until it was
too late.
Random strains of guitar strings
made me bold enough to sing,
and in the flickers and waves
slowly
He brought me down to earth
and took my lips
as the stars stood watch over us.

I've had too much to drink
just like you
and in roughened walls
and porcelain seats
you tore me up anew.

One night was all there was.
One moment of clarity.
besieged me like a thousand drops of rain.

hastily I flew
leaving despite your eyelids aflutter
Forgive me, a thousand times over?

I kept my hair up high
after he drew it down loose,
I marked his back
with red smidgens of me
and stirred, all the more confused
He hollowed me out
and in its place
something new and strange
something close to love?
I cannot be sure.

Only that
every time I look into your eyes
I'll always look for that strange man
Standing by the sea
All this time
he's been waiting for me.

Coarse sand on both sides, a vast canvas of nothingness,
a sea of gold; swallowing us up in its own world.
An indentation of you, twigs and shells
Low-rising sun in the horizon; last rays splattering
smidgens of light down on you
I take you in – sitting down with a bottle of wine,
next to an empty cottage, shoes off, toes covered.
You’re looking ahead – at the ebb and flow of water,
at a seagull perching down in front of us,
You’re observant and you love the world, look at it
see its beauty.
I’m not that selfless. Here on this beach, surrounded by ourselves,
all I pay attention to is the rise of your mouth, curving
into a smile, at your hands, at your striped t-shirt and your jeans
I take you in – the wind’s blowing your hair around,
sun’s almost down but you’re still bright
I carve your name into the beach, and admire
my handiwork. You take my hand and we have one last
walk around, footprints in the sand, wobbling slightly
but you keep me balanced

Why do we write the way that we write
Write the way that we do
Some with visions of fantasies
Others with smidgens of truth

Why add grandiose to all this
Rather than let the words choose where they're going
Why at times a hit with a miss
All for the sake of the poem

Why turn life upside down
Then spin it around inside out
Why take what little's left of the mind
Adding the fragrance of doubt

Why do it time and time again
Crossing the line more than once
Why can't we leave well enough alone
All for the sake of the poem

Who hasn't tried to reach for the sky
All through the ink of the pen
Who doesn't know it can't be owned
But it can be given

Who takes the wonder of the word
And in their minds eye watches it grow
So the simple poet in us all may be heard
All for the sake of the poem

A crusted crumb is a
pan's pawn, the spawn
of bread, or as field
Morsel Shred would
say to Private Particle,
Speck off you Jot, Whit
but an Ounce Bit tween
the Ears, not a Scrap of
sense nor a Tinge, even
an Iota Mite help, or a
Tiny Smidgen to Grain
a Tad of respect.

Granule Silver agreed,
Smidgens, the lot and
no Scruples, not even
a vestige, aTom?

"Fragmented Granules
without a Scintilla of
doubt".