By the long light, the sigh of whispers…a tip of prayer forms a wind of sound and though there be furies and the despair of journeys they abate for a moment…for a time, your time, to be with what you call a creator.

The time intentful, like shadows reaching through windows; the breaths of passion; no anxiety at being witnessed – held and soothed by that kind of warmth that is so comforting – as are the hands of good friends…

Then the mile and the mountain, the collapse not unforeseen – but neither anticipated to be taking place at the intersession of the holy; in the presence of the ineffable – wind on moon lakes, fish sleeping…

You, all the while you praying to become something other; more – better or greater – lovable and agreeable, but angels, if you want to name them this, wish only that they could trade places, to be as gods like you, breathing.

(For My Daughter Katherine)

Pure?
at the beginning of your time the sun might have agreed, and the king of light did bath you in the star streams of his blood, and you did walk from no where into the great and present here, but only to be forgetful of what has past or the true meaning of your name.

Clean?
an old woman can be sought through the peril of your mistakes, and when found at the bottom of a hill, will tell you that beliefs are questionable and mythological: that purity should it exist, is nothing without the dirt of effort – that sin comes only to those who try.

Everyone has a drawer somewhere in their house they put what does not fit
in any other drawer, as a child, in our home, we called this the Junk Drawer.

What you might find in that drawer is the truth, that there really are no
ways to organize some things, or to have inconvenience lay pretty like lace.

he was not a man with an affinity to numbers…but rather was a man pleased to plea…to make arguments and trade them like seeds with the wind…

it was one two where is old fathers shoes, and three four through memories doors and five six the chipping of sticks away from the bedlam of worrying far too much…

he was not a man who had an accounting firm to tally a better direction down a freeway towards let’s make merry, or even the tra la la land of the lazy…

If I could open my wounds like a charnel
house door, and visit my ancestors, and sit
through the boring diatribe of the dead
I would learn absolutely nothing; the old
ladies are melting, the old men are thin.

You could smash all of your icons into
pills, take them daily, and you would
still be no closer to spirituality than a
pea – like wayward Adam’s looking
for homes or Eve’s in trees.

I am not the seventh son of a legend.
I am a latch key child, expert on father’s
confession, and Mother’s identity crisis -
a voodoo doll of inheritance, a pincushion
for their various habits.

The days pass like traitors exchanging glances
from one eye to another. Et tu Brutus? You
amongst the backstabbers trade your loyalty;
claiming innocence, like the commonest of
bystanders – living life without ceremony.

Every body go fast
Everybody slow down
Everybody climb a rock
Everybody climb back down

Hard to know what my future poem might look like
however I am sure that it will contain most of the
usual characters above, plus love, and its attendant
sweat.

Maybe that’s not all true, that I will use Z, other than
as a stand in sound for sleep is not likely, no offense
but poetry, most poetry, OK maybe not yours, will
leave readers sleepy enough.

If there is a poem in the future by anyone, then it will
be a poem that figured out how to wake the damned
from their rituals of convenience, a poem trained well
enough to divert wolves from barking at breast.

(This poem generated and inspired by a Poetic Asides Prompt)

Today I saw mother walking through her usual gauze of blindness -
finger to cigarette and cigarette to mouth, breathing in friends and
smiling at the relief their exhalation brings

She lived wanting a happy ever after ending like those that slept
lazily in the final words of books she read, far from the Minneapolis
sunset, or the reality of her upbringing.

Then I understood how there were no fixed or predetermined
outcomes, how even the creative sea lacked the ability to
duplicate the form or sound of any of its endless waving.

II

Today I saw mother differently than the day before, now she lounged
on the couch of the rested upstairs room reading letters from near and
far sipping fragrant green tea.

She sang hope sounds through hazy laughter lifting the spirits of
those around her, filling the silent crevices with the putty of joy, until
laughing too long, her wounds opened again.

Then I saw I was just her son, how as honest as that was I’d never be
her everything – bright eyed dew child, her perfect one and only -
come home to save the innocent dawn.

There was a beautiful girl from Boston.

Value is a quality all things want to be noticed as having – to be a thing suffused with dignity, of being noticed as a distinction, of being worthy of the soft or hard hand of love.

She believed, and believed mightily in loyalty.

Once upon a time there was an oasis in the mind of a child, lush with forgiveness water. Twice there was a moment of bending. Three times there was a fall and a rising of breath.

For her, loyalty was like the sum total of everything.

So what that the stars were disappearing, that fog stayed heavy, that a chance at anything is in and of itself a wager with a higher authority, that nothing can be counted on

Except the apple, and the hallucinations of Eden…

The garden was bug full and worm
wood holy, and its mist rose with
tactile antics and startled airs

It was a garden that Wilde might
have discarded from an off poem,
or Byron might have thought about

but forgotten…

So let us thank children for the kind
of garden it turned out to be, messy
with pails and forgotten halos…

The hobos for planting its lettuce and
bean stalks – and for saving up to bury
so many secret pennies…

But not the man who once wandered
there, he’s busy fetching canaries and
is not safe, until his mind trumpets

warnings to wearies…

Tag me, bag me, and remake me; tell yourselves “He’ll be
alright after our effect upon him.” Swirl me in your
culture, until you have righted me from how I had fallen.

After all, I am an affect of your construction…

Cut me, paste me and reword me; wonder how I might
splay in the book you’re writing; make me agile, because
you do know better; always will.

Me? I will not deny your crayon colorations…

Make me, me. Tell my story – guide me from the hallway
I was in, away from the handle I am not suppose to cling
too, plan with others all about me.

I’ll be your concept, when drawn thicker than thin…