heart-blind

scene
from my childhood --
laying in bed
nausea and stomach pain
a 4 day's flu
and my mother,
dressed up, pretty
in her make-up
and faux-fur coat,
feels my forehead
before she and Dad
skip out
for a night with friends

Grandma's
solid presence
notwithstanding,
I am in an awful state

heart-blind
for the first time,
I reach for the door of grace
from the inside

haiku -- bold skunks

bold skunks ravishing
tubers in the midnight moon,
shining coats -- black, white

two shorts

winter shine
white teeth
like stolen pearls

***

lady with the funny hat --
I often remember her words
making our sad dough
into happy cookies

like bright candles

fatigue
like bright candles
has a way
of burning to the core

your life
is so precious
why dally
in guesswork?

throw it all
away

it is a far more
engaging pursuit
to leave off
once started

create a new
beginning

never end,
ever wander

of lives I remember three

1) the time I was
so small
It hurt to think
of a life and a largeness
beyond my bed,
me, blinking in the darkness
at the shadows

2) that day I left home
for the hazy corona above
the prairie horizon
from the ephemeral to an apartment
from the gibberish of young man talk
to the seeded and sown
speech grown hearty
with architecture all its own

3) the day I met you
I let it all fall to the streets
my clothes, my undergarments
you ascended the asphalt ladder
and I followed,
leaving behind rules
and the breaking of rules

Little Drummer Boy

Bing and Bowie sing
-- Ba-rump-pa-pum-pum --
holiday glitz,
guileless

for Thay (Thich Naht Hanh)

shining dome
mauled bald by bears of woe
you've crawled so many miles
on so many knees
just to eat
rejection,
once, a thousand
countless times

the victory
is in the trying
it hasn't ceased
even as old age
and political cage
whitewash over
the graffiti
we scrawled, so defiant,
so fearful that our efforts
could not relieve the slipping
of those we sacrificed ourselves
to be

the life and death of birth

And death
Was grail and fallow
With soft shoe corn row
Pleiadean skiff
Coruscating riffs
Plucking tulips from carved gardens
In covered skies days wanderings
Imploring the pebbles their strange sound
Lifting up into
When it is all so out and down
And hands sans hands
Believe what they will
That the last be the first
Incendiary coil

homogenous

Crows lust
For blackage
Power outage puts them
In good company
With the fearful
And other scavengers

A murder of soaring figures
In the sky at sundown
The last bit of dirty blue
And flagrant pink and white

Soon all will be homogenous --
The loss of reason,
the light,
the denial of prejudice