Solitude Cafe

Dean Martin wants to know,
“Ain’t that a kick in the head?”
Love – it makes you wonder…

Sam Cooke declares
What a wonderful world it would be
If you loved me, too.

They both have a point.

And Marvin Gaye
Has heard it through the grapevine
That she was with someone else
While Carole King is wistful
Because no one stays
In one place anymore

Love can go both ways.
It’s good at that.
While I am only one-dimensional.
Coffee and books in Solitude Café for me
And love songs, written and interpreted
With such insight.
These comprise my world
On a Sunday afternoon.

two lost tales (of what may be)

I
sitting with mountains
garrulous clouds
spruce, climb-climbing
up halfway to the peak
the leaking, star-saturated sky
falls shuddering
to blossom again in rivulets
near the edge of the valley
these days make us
breathe out
from our ancient
hiding places

II
parched for weeks
transposing our cries
onto leaves, trimmed and folded
of thinking we've had our fill
no one remembers the time
we called the ground "heaven"
poor men of sad countenance
even a soul with gold fixtures
misses the mark
in a country where
the birds are no longer honored
the wisdom of suffering
no longer sought

a google bunnies

a google bunnies
running across the street
in the wake of a hemi-semi-minivan
don't tell me rabbits don't come
in googles
I saw 'em
one after another after another
so quick, so soft
front of foot to pad of paw
pad to pad
in the darkening
and the danger
of the fading daylight

Bernie and the Road to Sheol

The migrants and refugees
The sweat shop children and sex trade millions
The poor, underpaid, over-stressed and oppressed
The hungry, starving, homeless, hopeless
All hold hands in this afterlife antechamber
Awaiting his election
To kiss away the mess
Of our solutions and pretensions
But the Grand Luminescence
Depends on this reflection --
The road to Sheol was paved
With un-consummated intentions

I can't lift a finger

socks and jeans
warm from the laundry
I can't lift a finger
to put them away

twelve o'clock hits
sleep is a lazy toad
too tired or despairing
to hop into bed

I am a product
of an incendiary union
collage artist and high school girl

the birth was a superb bait and switch
I never found the mother I wanted
in adoption, I wanted the mother I got

I was in the suburbs then
when that meant
exclusive, shielded, gated
with no gates
only dreams of Avalon on a hill
white, white birds swooning
circling inward
to the dead-end
of a short, suicide spiral

response to web photo of whales on beach

beached and bleeding out their spouts
stomachs full of plastic -- our waste
our inconvenience

I want to get rid of it
get rid of this image,
but I find I cannot

only embracing the blood
and the suffering
-- enormous creatures
slowly losing breath, ingesting
cut glass of terror --
can relieve the suffering

because it was this
"get-rid-of" mind
that murdered them
in the first place