therapeutics of old

Progress is not progress;

just trade-offs undisclosed.

A shortcut is indeed short;

cutting out all soul scenery.

We move too quick too easier;

discarding healing's slow work.

seasons of life

No matter how distasteful

we all will live that dreaded cliche

      -that our lives are just seasons.

That summer when I found womanhood

Within the crotch of a ginseng tree and 

      -fuzzy yellow iris tongue.

The fall when boys be James Bond

and I reflected it, silvery and raw, back 

      -it was always Peter Pan.

Till winters when I walked through

iced puddles, wet feets, shoes

       -peel Chuck Taylors off.

Fushia springs in tree house safety

busting with our hopes and dreams

      -never contained again.

    

survival of the flintest

nothing cries like a city on the brink

short on time and change and mind

fret forever in yesteryear or worse

in some pipedream tomorrow

leaning on the backs of some other

those people, these things, technoadvance

save us, save us, it pleads.

tis a child's cry of "mommy!"

every head will turn till

they see it isn't theirs.

pull out a single hair with wet bulb

at the end, we are caverns inside,

just like weeds, pull up the root.

no skin in the game for our fellow man.

follow your dreams

Disembodied snakehead

in my alligator hand

Cottonmouth, Yellowback,

all I know is it's mine

from the black beady eyes

boring into my own.

Artificial Artic cold, close

to dolphins in a tank, 

Back and forth, audible

thunk of bottlenose on glass,

thundering applause

college basketball on roller skates.

That's the pacing of my dreams,

so it best I don't follow them.

days

funny how dates stick out

like nails from the wooden floor

holidays jutting out each year

as those steep and drafty and dirty steps

our first apartment together at the top.

seven years exactly, just your style

lucky numbers to ritualize,

you would die on the day 

i filed for divorce, anniversary

us strangers still, now floating dots,

more days on the calendar, 

that pass like rough spots

on my bare feet in the dark.

Tis a Digital Age

how can i talk of time

at a time like this?

Narcissus, staring 

down the reflection,

not frilled dafodils,

beauty is to bare all,

but confined, controlled,

and cyborg ways,

to the digital void

lost among echoing 

screams or pedestaled-

lifted till the inevitable 

fall from grace, from space,

to perhaps a nostalgic

"Remember when?"

but more likely, alone,

crying to go viral again.

(like me,  love me, this avatar, i made)

mirrors get tossed

the hourglass turns

memories no longer

objects of mind, but

photos to accept, reject,

emotions a status, not season

not cycling that lovely curve 

towards death, to be precious

is to be fleeting, rare. Yet now,

our footprints and life,

presented as permenant, 

not the brief smushed mud

it's always been, now we no grow

wrong step, wrong word,

not the lesson it once was

To cancel a human, how can we?

Humanity, we are the abyss, 

and we will look back on this.

what am i even

wake me up when it over, if it's ever really over

no matter the blocks and fences and miles,

documents i sign and years that pass, perhaps

i can burn the remnants, delete you from my life,

does it kill a little piece of me and does that piece

even really matter? i might be fine. just like that.

small lil stocking snag, but god, if it becomes a run.