Ponder the Road
’He asked me,
“If you knew for sure that you only had X number of years left,
then what would you do with the time?”
Boring question. Tedious even.
Why ask about the time left? Why not ask:
“What would I do with the Words I have left?”
I propose that starting at the age of twenty or so
Everyone gets thirty million words to emit from their precious vocal chords
throughout their lifetime.
That’s it. When all those words are used up
the voice box shuts down. Clamps down.
You must weigh each word the tongue forms
For heaviness or levity,
For value, clarity, and utility.
Tenderness, love.
The word “like” will count for two (all high school teachers will get this); Vulgarity will also add to the growing total.
Speak silence. Only.
“If you knew for sure that you only had X number of years left,
then what would you do with the time?”
Boring question. Tedious even.
Why ask about the time left? Why not ask:
“What would I do with the Words I have left?”
I propose that starting at the age of twenty or so
Everyone gets thirty million words to emit from their precious vocal chords
throughout their lifetime.
That’s it. When all those words are used up
the voice box shuts down. Clamps down.
You must weigh each word the tongue forms
For heaviness or levity,
For value, clarity, and utility.
Tenderness, love.
The word “like” will count for two (all high school teachers will get this); Vulgarity will also add to the growing total.
Speak silence. Only.
The Silent Watch
Do not allow the traffic to torment you
We all sit encased in steel…silently
And travel on until we are through
Sitting in a body in an auto-autopilot
Silently obeying the traffic lights.
Red means stop — we all get it,
Green says GO.
Have good will for your fellow travelers--
Some move on so very slowly.
The light changes, the stop sign appears.
We will all obey or die
Within glazed stares.
We all sit encased in steel…silently
And travel on until we are through
Sitting in a body in an auto-autopilot
Silently obeying the traffic lights.
Red means stop — we all get it,
Green says GO.
Have good will for your fellow travelers--
Some move on so very slowly.
The light changes, the stop sign appears.
We will all obey or die
Within glazed stares.
A Consensus
I have returned for a consensus.
Tightening my fingertips tightly around the shirt
I have worn for a century, to shake out finally
loosening up the debris, the tattered patches.
This cleansing clearing is not something you take for granted.
When the process is set up, it may shake you….up.
The armor had piled up on my chest, heavier than ever,
A tightening around the heart. So I was guided on how to shake it out...
It appears to be a repeated, bleeding-out consciousness
That makes me feel, again and again.
Like the reptile that needs at regular intervals to stop eating,
In resolute readiness for shedding its skin.
A necessity that they never challenge.
A peeling jewel, part of their renewal instincts.
Animals never ignore their instincts.
We Do.
Tightening my fingertips tightly around the shirt
I have worn for a century, to shake out finally
loosening up the debris, the tattered patches.
This cleansing clearing is not something you take for granted.
When the process is set up, it may shake you….up.
The armor had piled up on my chest, heavier than ever,
A tightening around the heart. So I was guided on how to shake it out...
It appears to be a repeated, bleeding-out consciousness
That makes me feel, again and again.
Like the reptile that needs at regular intervals to stop eating,
In resolute readiness for shedding its skin.
A necessity that they never challenge.
A peeling jewel, part of their renewal instincts.
Animals never ignore their instincts.
We Do.
No Place
trampled at birth
he fought caterpillars
with flesh-colored dull clubs.
the ladders came and fell at his feet.
fences sprouted from stunted seedlings,
entangled his soul with cumbersome cobwebs.
he grew to manhood mentally disturbed
and died
in a normal state of mind.
he fought caterpillars
with flesh-colored dull clubs.
the ladders came and fell at his feet.
fences sprouted from stunted seedlings,
entangled his soul with cumbersome cobwebs.
he grew to manhood mentally disturbed
and died
in a normal state of mind.
Claira Grows and Goes
“Have you ever looked at your child
and just realized right there how much they have grown?” I asked.
“That must be when the speed of light catches up with you,”
my friend added with a small smile.
My lithe Claira, a little 10-year-old, has emerged as a young girl
in her own right, or perhaps a teen in her own head.
Somewhere along the line of the days that I held her in my arms
and her hands freely were... are gone.
So accepting her progress at this point is an epiphany.
This is a familiar trait—this wanting to get away.
To grow up. It’s probably in her DNA. Who can be disappointed now with fate?
When I have to dominates my outstretched hands.
The same old love is guiding me. Pulling back you see it all.
THE TIE THAT BOUND
A teen boy flowed by with winged feet
intent on getting over the train tracks to see Bonnie Joe.
The wind carried a flow
That whipped raven black hair back like a singer of the deep.
I sat in the steel tube. Before me fell a blinking gate
A strong body wanting to feel
The rumble, the escape of infinity
The shoes on a boy who will not be late.
The bar skimmed his side,
The sneakers were tied so tight.
New red ones, so trendy, had to be so right
With laces too long. One tangled in the track nail.
He kneeled in a genuflect for mercy...tugging the shoe off....a fail.
I got out to help an escape.
The eyes hollowed --the mouth an Edvard Munch gape.
My face now covered with blood and bone.
Going home..gone home.
A BLIZZARD OF ICE
She looked up at the eyes. Stoic -downward glancing at her so nice.
Standing there in your blizzard of ice.
She never got a response. She got a gaze -- a sailboat in the sky.
But you stared at her like it was the first time you saw her soul out there
like some stars hanging over a rough sea.
The black sea she knew, she may drown in, so she chose to stay on the shore. Too deep to tread water.
This is it, the real tearing apart, like ripping of a common sheet of paper. A contract - covenant signed centuries past..
The stripping of the vessels that sail to the heart.
She tossed over the rescue boat while she entreats you.
Who can perceive the depths of what is seen in your dark swimming eyes
She is drowning unlike the sirens on shore.
The water is chilling as she sinks under.
NO BULLETS TO THE CHEST
Sometimes I feel like the Costner character in the first scene in "Dancing with Wolves".
My GPS failed, it lost me in space, the street names not matching up
with the screen..do I even recall east, west, north, south anymore?
Too much soap in my hair , dripping with soap bubbles. My dark hair gets
darker when wet, much like the deep dark color of my youth, then it dries.
She cut my hair too short, I trusted her to do it right.
Coming home to my apartment, so dark, the light off.
I looked down at my feet in the dark. Do not fall, I commanded, do not trip.
My dog Zeke disappeared one day. I never saw that brindle coated gem of a canine again.
Still miss him to this day.
The night sparkled with fireflies, twinkling in my little girl eyes,
but the Connecticut summer crop of mosquitos drove me indoors.
a poem I did not write, but wish I did
And now grown bolder, in your eye I gaze,
My lips I bring closer to your lips ablaze.
and all I can think is of is kiss, kiss and kiss.
To kiss your sweet lips in an orgy of bliss.
What shifts with the wind?
what stays unmoved?
A SECRET BREEZE
One of my wishes is held within dark trees
That hide the evil that the world
conceals in a secret breeze.
Covering my eyes of brown to adorn masked gloom
dragging me sliding me to the edge of doom.
I shall not be hindered to dance that ballet
I shall not be withheld till a someday
into a vastness I may steal this spray and pray
Allowing a sea to float away.
And shall my hand wear a golden band
as I swim to blue waters of an island
or stroll upon a sunny road ending in sinking sand
Perhaps I may turn back
where no one can find me
I have hidden directions to the track
that may outrace me, no ghost to miss me there.
To sprint to me. I hear a threat, a dare.
He should see that I always knew
about the rough texture of what was true.
A QUESTION
A man stood at the door at eve
and he spoke as one who cares
He wore a ring upon his hand
I bled into one holding air
the questions lay on his lips
Asking for a shelter for the night
as I looked over his shoulder
at a star that hid its light.
Like a man carrying a torch
asking me to stare again at the sky
"What will the night see
between you and I?"
I gazed at him, Could this be my bard?
with one who speaks words true
asking me to begin a thing that feels like new.
Kabuki Theatre
A child walked through bright daffodils today.
Was that me so far away?
Why am I now here?
Alas, tis the energy of this 2020 year.
Must I cover my mouth until my hair turns white?
With my smile forever out of sight?
Let me be,,,make me free to breathe.
I choose to fly away like a blue bird
where no muffled voice can be heard.
And we will all pay the bill
while the greatness of the USA will not be still.
THE WALK
The heavy shoe trails as she walks
running fast away from talks.
But the feet tramples, stumbles
in a row, one unknown.
Damn, do I have to move within
to hear the strings pierce a violin?
Keeping the paces
as the shoes lose the laces.
So where the hell am I bound?
to find what I have already found.
Must I go back and retrieve what I lack?
Now an ache slows my feet
dragging me again down that street.
The beating heart seeks to relieve
all of it upon this summer's eve.
BLOOD PULSE
She writes the glossy print story
about the woman who won a
trip back to the shore.
The sand pebbles each held a roar
as they fell through the trembling hand
back into the deep
Her blood pulse and seep
why weep?
Who can she save?
when no slave will see the wave
Not a dream
Not wishing on a star
all too far.
From a cliff I viewed a body
heading into the graveyard
to behold an effigy of me.
STARING around in a raging war
that desires a word
As it is washed ashore
a word that will not be heard.
The sea may never fade
instead will melt into the night.
Just human tears to soak ancient fights - a dull array
To go one more round in a fight
Who is hearing now or so long ago?
Talking about little things like men
in a marketplace to plan an overthrow
and scribble forensics at a bomb site.