What’s pulled us so far from shore
Tethered no more to the drumbeat of the soul
Senseless we fish further afield
Stymied by the junk of jetsam
From others who’ve been here before
And shout for joy at fools’ gold
So easy for the taking
Then turning to tarnished tinfoil.
Category Archives: spiritual
Madmen
Pain spreads into virgin veins
and newly thought-of branches.
An insistent fist,
twisted and knuckle-pressed
into the backs of us.
We have looked, dry-eyed,
into the dark drear,
contriving a laugh,
picturing courage and rebellion
while fetal in our dampened beds.
And, in the light of day, we walk,
zombified and smiling.
Something’s missing
Do you miss
Do you want
Something lost
Are you here to look
without telling?
It’s one in a million,
I sadly say.
But, star-crossed as we might be,
the future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
That’s the spirit
There’s no one to adore it.
Too hard-shelled and prickly,
I guess.
Transgressions bought and paid for.
Still, there are soft surfaces of want.
In the shower,
(hotter, hotter),
there’s that brain stem shiver.
White-eyed,
photogenic as an actor’s orgasm.
The house that Jill built
The house she built
is nested inside
the one they bought together.
It’s been long in its building,
with slow accretions
wrung from unshed tears.
A desperation. A resignation.
It has gift boxes, unwanted.
Empty bowls and jars
on brazen display,
meant to catch a beautiful rain
that never came.
Winded
Third or fourth wind,
I think.
Pissed at the life sedimentary.
A change is as good as a rest.
Round and round the mulberry bush.
Hah. And I see that my old cat
knows he’s bony now.
He challenges the thin air,
and slingshots himself
into the five yard dash.
Then, saunters to his hairy bed.
All humdrum and glum.
I’m thinking we are partners
in the big sad,
and he knows he can’t take care of me
no more.
The tree
Lest I should do it wrongly,
help me.
Get a seed,
clean and viable.
In its fleshy pith,
the veins of memory.
Show me what should be
the depth,
the best earth,
the time of day,
whether sun or shade.
Give a benediction
so that, in years that I will not know,
the tree will be understood.
Houses of the holy
Tired from rolling tires
uphill, but still…
Stunned by heart thump,
I’m sat flat, in the open garage,
on a summer chair,
watching chimney breaths
bellow and subside.
I’m thinking of all the real houses
fanned out in a matrix
on the slopes above me.
Their snowy rooves
with small ponds of molten black,
made by fickle bubbles of attic heat.
The houses, the rooves of snow,
and what floats above them.
And ah! What daydream!
One house is a piano house.
Children come and go there,
in clandestine cars,
to partake of the tuneful drug.
Their mother-teacher has piano teeth,
taut ham strings, and clockface glasses.
We met by accident.
She hit my car.
I keyed her piano.
We get along.
the weight of the world
Just beyond piled-up banks
of dirty snow,
stick trees, made of disease,
voice their last testaments,
mournful and forlorn.
And so we walk,
pushing shins and shoes forward,
keeping music’s company.
And we carry that weight.
We’re going to carry that weight
a long time.
I’ve been seen
There’s a face
peeks out from a parka
Snow day
Crossing street
Side glance, sees me, smiles shyly
Then
Head down,
Mukluk trudge
I wonder to where,
and assign a word
Angelic.
Aremyfeetofftheground 