life continues even when dead

Leaves don't fall, but the tree shrugs them off

as one shugs off a comment, a joke too true

that burns like a salty sweat drop in the eye.

Sun never sets, it only moves homes daily

as childhood friends don't disappear but

go on living lives instead, just reemerging

From many years mist, a grocery store

so muted and different yet still the same,

it's not a secret yet no one really knows

the way things work when we finally go.

never good enough i guess

Wish I knew you in highschool,

Wish I knew how to love then,

Wish 650 miles and 15 years

would disolve like Kool-aid,

bad childhoods, and sleepless nights.

But maybe I needed to fail

a hundred seasons and thousands

of days, before I could meet you.

can i join you

I don't dream of silent times

or quiet life, instead I open

eye wide enough to jump in.

Back into nightmare dark and

ripe, the things that keep me

sane. We seek what we know

and I know you. Your fears,

Your dreams, and all the things

You thought would fade away.

How you cannot scream enough

because your lungs are still full

of all the words no one heard.

How your body knows hunger

Like a worn out baby blanket.

How on a locked porch you held

on to your sister and yourself,

and slept on the dog's bed, yet

You never wept. You didn't stutter

at a challenge, you only gained

more fire. Crafting a new path.

hold me

I look at him with

disgust, dismay,

Because I'm the one

dumb enough to stay.

teach me preach

He is empty bottles

Stacked up a mountian

Sided with the butchered

Cow that ran allied with

it's downtrod eyes,

hooves which clack

On the ground so dry

It's hard as his arteries.

He instructs me like this:

"Any pistol in the house

you pull the trigger but don't

you ever empty it. You shoot.

Don't hesitate. Then run up

and put two in their head."

This is how he loves,

How he protects and 

shows up. Gosh-

I don't know if I can.

word

What is this strange set

and character I was cast

As a witch cast a spell or

casts out a fishing line 

and reels in an outcast. 

It's movie reels, just acting

out my role and places

set. It's not real. Set

the table, set the stage,

It's just a stage, just a

phase, phase of the moon

circle back or back out, 

it's inside out, outlast at last.

Please make it last, make out 

a line, make a straight line

Still last in line from onset.

buyers remorse

i want to be waxing poetic in love

minutes so joyful i pray for more 

eyes so wide and slept not met

and all the other things i said 

i didn't want cause i didn't want 

to want or worse to have a need.

if only he saw her through my eyes

She is cotton candy clouds

Curtianing red trees, fluffy,

Full of life, the insects and

Black-eyed squirrel, stare

me down so small, below.

She is goddess chariots

Blazing rainbows in the

Sky. Glowing hopes of

Last year's resolutions

I couldn't even achieve.

She is sighing lemongrass,

Sweet and bristling with

such a bite. Stripping sloped

walls and trenches and dams,

musketballs, musketrat, me.

She is a single smile

Raining down even when

Her voice, her Confidence

Waivers.  Yet I am just

Grateful for her kind time.

sunday sullen

Sun shadow displays both

Playful and sullen, like

The stripper wife, 

coy smiles and frolics

But the dancing sun rays

Don't disguise feelings 

Of the person I once was.

Warm like lapping tongues

Of kittens purring,

worshiping a dollar or two-

"It's all about my kids."

Feels true, but social services.

Block. Limbs of willow trees

And two skinny knees-

We wrap as one around 

The pole. More decorative

Than structural.

temperance

Every moment in life is worth the time,

patterns on patterns unfolding.

Go down to the river, girl. 

Wash your face, your panties,

your soul, back to the time when

Pain felt like love. Grown scarcity.

Now love pains. In the infinite,

How composting rot nourishes roots

Alchemy,  moderation with all things

Even sobriety. Toes in the water.

Ten

 "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."

There is trash on the moon,
Lunar litter left by astronauts
decades before I was born.
My days are like that sometimes
A million microchoices,
Evaluate the equations
Reaccess trajectory
Or there's garbage down
The generation line.
To pause and reflect
Adjust and do better,
and try again,
there is no try, only do
Each day a new beginning,
Again,
I try, To submit to
a higher power
than hubris of man
Which sullies the cosmos
Just because I can.

10/11/22

Today would have been our 10 year wedding anniversary,

But it's not.

No tin gifts, crocodile tears, second honey moon guilt trips.

Nothing, again.

Don't even think about what could-have-been or wonder.

I know.

It would be a decade of the first four years, toiling.

No where.

Today would have been our 10 years wedding anniversary, Instead.

It's just a day.

youth

A freedom I once knew

hummingbird flitting

Long nose nestling nectar

From seed to speed

Petals and pedal dangerous

Whim flashing fast and

Hold tight to the rope.

A leaf dried, scattering-

Inbound, unencumbered.

Time soft and fuzzy, just

Rabbit fur trim and 

Touching skin, the wind.

A freedom like that is

Only appreciated when 

gone long.

Seven

 "Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings."

Always thought humility and humiliation

Were the same or at least cut same cloth.

That lowly low, opposite of our highs, 

Groveling on broken knee, scratched from

Crawling here. But humiliated isn't humbled,

It's prideful and important. To think even one

Self-absorbed, in there own life, soul took time

To notice me. But yet, humble is also to be heard.

It's just that I'm saying the same as everyone.

Just another in this ant colony, bee hive, city of

groupthink. Humble is that grey matter between

The black and white or right and wrong, 

hero and villain, just breathing and being, it's

To be both and not or. Never or. It's a fat maybe

On the sidewalk and a someday in the mail,

It's that I would ask, and maybe would come

Only if I worked for the yes in dishes and soap,

In sweeping the floor, and arriving on time,

Shutting my mouth but thinking my thoughts,

Ok to just stay around. One of the grey matters.

canonball dreams

Not everyone can

Be ready

To leap

Into the

Open and hallow

Thing

Called life.