06 Friday Jul 2018
The swallow dip of joy,
swift arc and cut through bright sky,
has been on lengthy migration
to lands unnamed.
Yet the time allotted here, however long,
confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess
may finally break me of this place.
What follows out
of the daily abrasions of adjusting
while not giving everything and nothing away
may open space enough for that swallow
to return truly
home.
26 Tuesday Jun 2018
While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,
a confused mess of fury and grief,
I had to remember,
remember those I know well who will do anything not
to change.
Clenching to what doesn’t grow,
but metastasizes, brings more comfort
than trying it all, somehow, differently.
Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,
and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring
since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss
from glistening up and pulling them under and out,
as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock
I seem desperate to hold.
Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,
those committed shackles of the past,
and give in, set adrift and enter
what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.
23 Wednesday May 2018
The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,
narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,
the Do-Not-Enters,
these are the intended places.
Go to them.
What courage lies docile and low
will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain
to have your back even as growing fear
dissolves
what you think holds you together.
19 Saturday May 2018
Not until the attentive itch
do they exchange glances to mean
It’s Time.
And off we pile into the car, heading deep
into night and whatever flight waiting
with breath, rolling, in the wings.
Winding round and up and up and round
through dark and sensation
into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,
Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,
spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,
the stars, sharp and grabbable,
become a spiral
spiral
spiral
as alive to be tucked in a pocket,
as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,
as rest in mind twenty-five years on.
08 Tuesday May 2018
What name can be given
to soul hunger for nature,
for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient
and known?
Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,
yes
even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there
part of the ever-larger cosmos,
not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.
But
skin suffers thirst for soil-
this hard concrete place rebounding with noise
can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.
Sit down with me, here,
let’s break sidewalk together,
chip away until earth smiles again at sky-
silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.
17 Saturday Mar 2018
Grabbing at her skirts with reaching manly hands
uninvited
toward a desired body-
not hers (the particular) but any-
that flipped the switch, dramatically,
from her naive Oh I’m Wanted
to the real He Thinks He Can Take Whatever He Wants,
and she wheels around, out of his greedy, cruel grip
leaps out the window onto a roofline she knows like a cat
and stops doubting her worth, while learning
to doubt his,
and smiles with bare feet hugging the tile crest
of a building she’s perfectly willing to leave, bearing
a trail of grief so light it brings only
a rush of relief.
16 Friday Mar 2018
A princess in the tower,
at a distance looking down,
wishing
and kept.
How to get out? How to get away?
Desperate for rescue, a puddle of tears
and fury.
Why me? This terror and despair.
But, one sunrise, a light switches,
the kaleidoscope shifts,
her untapped power surges
along with the sight that she is on the inside.
An inside most would never know.
Following the sun
with fingertips searching slowly
the walls that keep her,
Somewhere, like the chink in the dragon’s scales,
a crack in stone
will bring the first ray of wisdom,
and freedom for which she was born
hungry.
06 Tuesday Mar 2018
Having lost touch with the beauty of chaos
a fogged vision sewn of fear
and the iron-grip of hoped for control
eventually forces bursting rolls of laughter, or
sphincters tight enough to pop
(not so pretty- quick, turn toward the pansies planted to your left).
If remembrance of having a tail to shake breaks through,
that romp, leap, roar and thirteen-step boogie
will plunk soul back in wild order
and life’ll flow naturally once again.
20 Tuesday Feb 2018
A conditioning of impotence,
reaching for the salt when another swipes it first,
mounting silence in heavy boots, step upon step,
crags of volcanic history ignored by all
but you.
Buttons pop in flights of frustration,
and the weight of carrying baggage,
generations of status quo,
threatens to break your back
until
the ludicrous heart-heaviness and surge
for a real place in family becomes visible
for the impossibility it is.
Pitching the straps off your shoulders,
searing sight of that graveyard of the forgotten
rising skyward
into memory, you shake your head
at the Sisyphean absurdity,
turn around
and walk away.
28 Sunday Jan 2018
The mendacity of the Father,
the for-your-own-good, you’ll-
understand-one-day,
spank you on the ass ruler of the house,
might there not be another way?
Look the white shark in the eye and see
what he claims to be is none other
than the abuse he forgets
once brought him to his knees.
Question where you came from,
you may find there’s a curse
invisible, iron gripped,
you alone can shake off.
Pain, unaddressed, is only fed
to the next generation who cling,
cling to the same pedagogy
that poisoned your once Free spirit..
Now’s the time-
reclaim it.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 