25 Saturday Jun 2016
I have searched, reached,
spoken, cried, and delivered.
My arms have ached in fullness, emptiness
and longing,
my legs have quaked miles into the journey
with nowhere but onward
left to go.
Muscle blood bone
register waking
like petals opening toward light.
What I now carry will remain behind
in this daily offering
of God
back to God.
21 Tuesday Jun 2016
A black and white world
hasn’t any lines to blur-
what relief to fearful minds.
And if a smudge
tangoes with reason,
snapping the bra straps of rationality?
Waters might move in,
fill bleached arroyos,
and offer liquid to dry, cracked,
sorrowful lands.
Take the risk.
Invite chaos to play.
18 Saturday Jun 2016
I am a shooter.
In all the ways I hate myself, in all the ways I hate others,
in any destruction of life in which I partake,
in my cruelties and holding on to misunderstandings,
in any willful resistance to seeing difference as beautiful,
in my own brokenness, impatience, refusal to love,
I, too, am a shooter.
And how
may
my life-
this singular life-
be a devotion toward loving and mutual living
on this planet,
the one inhabitable wondrous place
we all share
and call home?
Born into violence and out of grace,
how may my breath move
from the one toward
the other…
With each day
I ask,
in the face of violence,
for grace.
14 Tuesday Jun 2016
If dreams rise
of planting marigolds in snow,
yet the spiders that plague you still
have not yielded
understanding,
can we love each other in our differences?
While you wrestle with your ghosts,
and I with mine,
is there a golden bridge between us
where
the songs we sing,
the tears filling our eyes,
the breath aching our lungs,
the laughter erupting before placid waters
may join?
We mustn’t forget
how many languages we share
even without knowing
any of the words.
17 Tuesday May 2016
Young rattlesnake,
short chub and one rattle,
this day is dedicated to you.
Afternoon sun warms bare legs,
ferns stretch rootlets in wet shade,
cat licks paw pads,
and this heart pulses to new limits
of loving.
Every shedding of the skin adds
another rattle,
and a greater knowing
that less venom
is more.
14 Saturday May 2016
Bending over to pick up pennies
lost pocketfuls of change,
and left the pavement littered with leftovers.
No longer affording such loss,
I remain upright and accept only dollars.
09 Monday May 2016
the first memory,
a fear of ghosts,
might choke you in your sleep.
wake up.
one step forward with a little foot
and another,
and another with your foot, not so small-
recall your body
to pierce darkness inhabited
by the terrifying,
and purposely forgotten.
wake up!
repossess what’s yours, kid.
throw your little arms out into night’s gullet,
rid the rotting presence rising
from beyond the grave.
we’ll approach together.
your journey neither begins
nor ends
trembling in a spindle bed
below third floor timbers,
its vacancy above met
by broad staircase
channeling
down
what no one else will face.
07 Saturday May 2016
In the dark unfolding familiar
and friendless place
where place began,
a necessary and
deceptive
seed was planted.
Nourishing form, forgetting spirit,
growing grew and suckers spread.
A viral overload threatened.
Silently
soil
fed
resistance.
Until…
One day,
she runs.
From sick enclosure out into night,
thinly covered,
taking nothing, no shoes,
she bolts in a snap of a now! beyond
hallways, doors, gates,
with pounding heart, searchlight eyes, flying hair,
bare feet slapping pavement,
escaping by back ways known
intimately as the corners of her old room.
Rushing behind houses, through hedges,
ducking limbs, all chance of observance
and grabbing dominion.
Outside the limits,
with no objects to keep her,
by her own deliverance
she finds
her true way Home.
03 Tuesday May 2016
Love’s no merry-go-round,
no sign up for the day and walk away thing,
no remembrance on Tuesday and a forgetting the other 6;
Love’s no yes-dear, whatever you say dear.
Love’s a wild one
whose hair, let alone heart will not
be tamed.
Because she expects the best of you, the most of you,
the oh you don’t feel like it -ha!- that’s funny of you.
Drag yourself to the ledge and peer over.
The view is not for the faint of heart.
Wishing yourself there is a waste of the work
your cells do without stop.
Come forward, rise up,
no other task is worthy of you.
29 Friday Apr 2016
A watermelon, round.
A sword,
heavy-hilted, ornate, decisive.
Raise the blade,
two-handed,
and drop sharp steel through rind,
flesh,
rind;
Sacrifice the god of nice.
Free her from the bondage
of acceptable mediocrity.
Spill seed,
honor sweet juice.
Initiate of destruction-
break open the tidy container
or
she will rot,
denied of her original gift.
This inborn generosity
invites feast.
Fill your belly.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 