When the snow comes
It's fur cloak of white
Muffling and blending plans
Cardinals become red birds
And
Sophisticated adult schemes
Fall to childhood dreams
Stopped
By
Pain in the back
Stilled
By
Mucus and head aches
Silenced
By
Laryngitis and miscellaneous fears
Stopped. Stilled. Silenced.
Filtered sun through mid-day blinds
Distilled thoughts of shallow mind
Yield
Little light or clarity
Sheets damp with familiar musk
Covers twisted into a personal husk
Descent
Into loathing and disdain
Stopped. Stilled. Revealed.
In sickness and in health
The union within of lies to self
Broken
Stolen
Dying…yielding
While Reading Poetry on a Rainy Sunday
Words dance and weave
Emotions
Into singular assaults
Passions
With a clash of images
And colorful sensations
Each
Kindly interrupted by its
Crisscrossing cousin
Uninvited visits
Roughly terminated
Twisting
All to be known faintly
In murky melancholy
And egregious imagining
I tried to write about abuse
How the hitting makes the
Hurting ease
The shame and fear rage out and strike
Bleeding, pulsing crimson shrieks and shouts
Curling fists and guts
Determined to be done
To be finished with the fear and frustration
Cursing, blaming, hating another person
And yourself is somehow easier
More natural
When loving isn't easily
Present..
Absent from awareness like
Light in the darkness jumping shadows
But then, I wasn't sure if I was writing about him or her...
I want to write
About you
Your laughter, maniacal antics, wit
Witticism, whimsy
The way you made me think deep
Through the belly rolling, stomach cramping “please stop”
But not really…so much fun laughter…sent
To ponder the silliness of my existence
The absurdity of my serious self
Your fantastical smile and that particular sadness
In your eyes just beyond reach, casting a spell of
Connectivity
Humanity
…
I want to write about
The innumerable truths you spoke
Written in lines, given to you…owned by you
Known through you
“Words and ideas can change the world”
My world…
Why not your world?
Damn it.
…
I want to write about you
But
I
Can’t…it hurts too much
Robin…
It hurts too much.
Screen Time Flickers
There is contemplation to be done
That will be left undone, again
Screens scream for my adoration
Demanding pixel friends await my liking
And a cute cat video and a political meme
Mimic my ideas into me
Providing for me
My thoughts and views
In screen time
And time again
Lapses through box and frame
Search to query
Filling the blanks of inquiry
Finding me glancing between profiles and bios
Building walls of windows
Leaving no space
For me to wander quietly
Among my heart…beat
And breath…taken
Before she quickly brushed it aside
her single tear drop traced a line-
like a silver scalpel slicing so quickly
through flesh
that bright bone is revealed before blood appears
- such was this tear
a momentary revealing that she cared too much
that her need was too great
that her hope for recognition, salvation actually, would not come
Not tonight
She had said no…
This one isn't mine. It's powerful and worth sharing. It speaks to those wonderful moments in our living when our passion, our creative muse demands more from us than routine, discipline and status-quo will provide us...
Pacing the Cage
Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage
I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage
I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage
Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage
Claudia’s Gift
Gilded statutes point the way with their gaze
Through Spanish moss arbors
Draped on ancient oaks
Who always listen and keep in their boughs memories
Of
Fried chicken picnics and tossing legs bones to alligators for fun
And excitement
The sound of the Super 8 tick, tick, tick
Reeling black and white recollections
Prancing bee hive red heads and Christmas present
Antics unwrapped
Flickering
Of the great family explosion
Death
Marked by tombs stones one, two, three
Then and now
Yet these hollowed bridleways sustained you
Then
Strolls on a summer day beneath gargantuan granite gods
And musing fountains
Telling tales of larger worlds and beliefs
To shield you
Gardens of stone poetry
Meeting you with promises
Of beautiful roses and tender assurances
Pledges of gods and God’s
Brush as real then as the careful breezes
And terrible tears
Diminishing into the sand under
Tough, unyielding Bermuda grass
Growing then
And now
You remain kept
In the reminiscences of that place, that restful, private sanctuary
Even the faintest music of spilling fountains
And fading etchings
And half remembered rhymes
Uphold you now
And me
For these are your favors
The fuel of muse and wonder
Poets and painters
Nurses and writers
Programmers and preachers
To cast their lot
In the brook green stream
The Voice of The Irises
This morning
Damp with it all
The purple tongues
Of the Irises
Threaten to speak of painful memories
She always loved the spring
That the Irises announced
Arriving on palates
Of green and violet
Promises of tender possibilities
But, the spring never really changed
Anything of substance and
Colors run in summer rains
Pooling into charcoal swirls
And the Irises died
With a vain promise
Whispered into tomorrow’s
Memories
Idol Life
When you've read the holy scriptures of countless wise fanatics
When you've pondered the tallied tales of positive thinkers
When you've sailed the seas of helpful suggestions and poignant promises
When you've chosen choices cast in caring coy iterations
When you've jumped up and down embracing the enthusiasm of enthusiasts
When you've done years upon years of carefully crafted…eating…praying...loving
When you've walked down endless miles of isles to alluring altars
When you've run, climbed and stood in search of joy
And
When you have nothing more to show for it than a collection of geometric idols and savvy souvenirs
Cast in cried out salt and stripped marrow…
Are you done?
Writing Poetry
Sometimes, I have an idea
A particular phrase that gets my gut
Or
A bothersome feeling that just won't be captured in prose
Then I write it down in short
Broken lines and
Phrases and
See what comes out.
Then it stares back at me
Talks to me
Calls my name or yours
As I look at its particular shape
Hear its weedy voice
I might tweak a word or two to get it to look
Or feel or sound a bit better
As it speaks about you or me
Our living, believing, breathing, selves
I name it Poem
– Because I have to --
Then I hit post and hope it has value to someone else.
(Because of a conversation between poets. Thank you. You know who you are.)