salmon of the stream.
<>< <>< <><
sweet slow summers,
shy skittish kisses by the swing set,
picking and skipping rocks by the shifting stream.
the soft petals of callow youth fall silently on oblivious grasses.
time has no patience.
how your bloody clock hands are choking me!
now your summers are begging,
and your kisses are begging,
and the stream is crying and burly.
and i beg of u sweet summer water,
let me swim upstream with the spry scarlet salmon,
through the salty blue pacific,
slip by the frothy currents,
and sleep eternally in silky grey sands of innocence.
Forty-Two
Natural woodgrain, smoothly shaped into
the form of the thing it will be.
“It’s a good line,” he says of the boat,
running his hand along the raw gunwale before
eyeing it once more from the stern.
The sawdusted floor dwarfs his house, and that’s
room one. He’s reorganizing his tools, and we
walk among their groups to the door and gravel path.
He almost died on his fortieth birthday.
He was not, luckily, in this cabin, where pain would have
rendered the phone bric-a-brac among the books.
His mother had said he needed a doctor, and
his father had helped him off the floor.
“Forty-two is time for a partner,” he says, a
second tumbler of fine scotch in his head.
Another friend has another someone
to meet, he says, strumming a few chords.
But what would he do in Wilmington, he laughs.
He has an open-air bath tub, a reloading table,
a coop with three chickens, DVDs from the library,
a whiteboard wall with three dozen recommendations
of books and poets and conversations and films.
Tomorrow someone will pay him a few grand for
new molding, and three more word-of-mouth jobs await.
For now, he sleeps in his loft next to books from seminary,
dreaming perhaps of a boat that will wend toward
in-season geese, maybe soon.
The sage, the kid, and the pebble.
I am not a poet!
Okay, the voice stated.
Then it waited...
...Patiently...
For the kid
To listen
To the sound
Of the gentle breeze.
I am not a poet
Alright, said the sage
Who sat with no rage
Quietly
Beside the kid
Waiting to
Hear what more
She had to say.
I am not a...
Aha, I heard you
Like for the first two times
If you are not a poet
Then...what are you, kid?
At this the kid
Stared, gazed,
Into the sage's
Supernova like eyes
All three (oOo)
(the third eye was open, too).
The kid picked up a pebble
And tossed it
That pebble bounced
Across the water
Like a tiny, smooth ball
Until they finally heard a
*plop*
The pebble went
Deep into the belly
Of the pond.
The sage chuckled.
Smiled at the kid,
And then said,
You are not a poet,
But a good pebble tosser!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDk4P5pzC_E
All Rights Reserved.
Written on Juneteenth.
Earth
Dear Earth,
How much are you worth?
A rabbit is shot,
but stew is put in a pot.
A lion is maimed,
but that lion is tamed.
Your heart is fading,
and people keep trading.
Metal for machines,
New submarines.
An explosion to rattle an army.
You suffer me.
You suffer us.
When is this enough?
When will the cogs turn?
How many forests need to burn?
We are a bruise
causing all the blues.
We are leaving you behind.
Going off to find
another place to harm
to make another farm.
But you still fight back,
making an attack
that will keep the good
and i have understood.
We need to stop.
We need to make a new crop.
We need to change
and We need to behave.
You have nurtured our hive
and because of that, We are alive.
But now let us give,
and hopefully, you will forgive.
between
wrapped in night silk
jewel eyes glinting
from beneath heavy brows
prowling the shadows in
between pages, lingering
between lines to someone
else's lovesick dialogue
soaking in the letters
and standing among
dog-eared stories, stalking
the world for more
more
letting myself take it,
digging my fingers into
the words like they're flesh,
like i can rip them from the paper
consume them
just become them
if only i could flatten myself
into a heart-shaped sheet
and tuck myself safely amidst
the flowery writing
, but,
i can't be confined to the parchment
which might be why i
was washed away into
the midnight sky
originally posted 2/25/21
Empty Lakes
I can't seem to escape these mistakes.
Like a man who fishes in empty lakes,
Every moment I'm haunted; morning, noon, and night.
My dreams bring with them no delight.
The darkness seeps in, like winter on roses,
And with every pondering, my open door closes.
I feel trapped in a box, with no hole to breathe.
Washing blood from my hands, but holding the sheath.
They creep in my mind, and tap on my skull.
They won't let me fall to a daydreamy lull.
I try to get out but they pull me back in.
They burst in my eyes all over again.
It seems I'll never escape these mistakes,
Like a man who fishes in empty lakes.
Shadow Dance
Shadows sweep the boulevards; Winding their way around lampposts,
Climbing along trellises, slinking up shop walls.
A single shadow, attached to human feet must get lonely.
Feeling cold, hard stones, metal and concrete along its edges only.
Darkness is simply the only time shadows can get together and play. Oh, the dances they dance, such a glorious array.
We humans truly miss out on the nighttime display,
Of laughter and gaiety in the streets once past day.
A shadow does not merely disappear
When the sun refuses to shine for a time.
Does something not exist just because we cannot see it?
Does it fail to exist all due to lack of [sun]shine?
But this, dear reader, is the timing of true mystique.
These are the things we shall miss if we stop too long to blink.
Soulmates find each other in this darkness at daylight’s end.
Meeting up in full moonlight, as the shadow dances descend.
The timbre of stars is like nothing a human ear could ever recount,
For it only alights when shadows abound.
How else to explain the ignition of touch,
That occurs when two “strangers” meet after the dusk?
Oh, dappy mortal, who thinks this mere fate.
Did you not realize your shadow had already found your mate?
When humanity steps back, permitting the ethereal its part. Well, this is when true romance is aware in the heart.
So upon next moon’s cycle, when dusk begins its measured fade,
Take a tiptoe out into moonlight’s cascade.
Beware ne’re to disturb, this ethereal dance,
But instead, simply view its gossamer beauty as pure happenstance.
For where mortal and spectral gaze upon one another,
The spell hence is broken, the magic disentangled.
Thus rendering the chance at true love eternally strangled.
But for those mere observers who catch a fleeting glimpse of the phantasmic,
urely will know love’s quintessential magic.