Plywood windows

If I could wear soft and loose clothes
every day
                and be taken seriously,
forgetting for a moment
that comfort is for lesser creatures,
I would be less ill
                              at ease
and more sensitive to
zippers and seams.

I lost a drinking habit years ago
and found every thing
                                    sharper with age,
which does not clot the
bleeding, or numb the
site                     I remember I last had it
with me,
my cups are bone dry since this thirst
has all
but evaporated
making the air thicker around me.

If I found a diamond encased
in every silver lining,
                  carbon acting under the pressure
                  of those that have convinced me
                  to forgive
                  in these conditions
                  with sparkles on top,
I would have tasted love
                  on the rocks,
and choked on the hardest facets.

Time is our only personal property.

In-kind, community property
has foreclosed upon the pearl gates.
These lips have been boarded up
to deter any passer by's
                                       from dwelling.

It may not be safe
to live this way
without proper uniforms,
window dressings
and with naked wrists,
lacking a steady leg to pivot upon       
                             in order to see things
as they are
and find slighted contentment
enough of a shelter and shield
from monsoons and bad moons rising
every weak day.




Photo credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Kinney County, Texas. 2014 [Public domain].

Re-cited Rite

I have read the Legends
shared around the world
in so many ways
as I have had Sundays

And took notice
today
Nobody is looking
forward
to the second coming,
a sequel
is too much of the same.
None await a haloed savior
to share a repast
this silver evening
under the Hunters Moon.

Faith, as taught to us,
has burnt the crust
of broken bread,
the wine has overflown
its chalice, insatiable desire
the mortal hands quiver
and become stained clasping
the thorned stem too tight,
the feeling is lost.

Though dutifully,
we cradle the spines gently,
as if History could crumble
in our salty psalms
And the words
on the opposing side
of scritta come through,
like the shape of your body
inside its cloak and robe,
alluding to a language shared
in mythos by Ahmen.

And I find another Sunday
to read seven ways
of looking harder at the structures
and steeples
we have built
in order to live with
introspection and novelty
recited inaudibly in tiny volumes
the atonement we create to
consume us in ritual.

It feels right.




Painting by Ambrosius Benson (1495-1550), 'The Mary Magdalen Reading', c. 1520 in Public Domain. 

Pace

Around the mountain
The way to proceed sideways
Looking at the rocks.
*
Loosen the rein
the heavens unlock in gasp
exhaling hail.
*
Each step taken
is a charge
without receipt.
*
Certain of what we
do not want and cannot take
our bags bulge with These.
*
Lighten with laughter
Serum of Sun, what is done
is never complete.



Artist Unknown, 'Pavillions in a mountain landscape' c. 1550 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art [Public domain].

On the cusp

Setting one's sails
toward a life
and geography

we have long sought
becomes legacy

Maybe on Mondays
the horizon is too far away
to project any other color
but grey.

Anchoring ourselves
against the skylight
to the hours of shrinking shadows
where we are finding
bending light
a production
there was stillness to be
stolen, every now and then
dangling

the arc of our residence
may only be seen from great distances

and the greatest home
feels like there is nowhere else
to go.




Painting by Elioth Gruner, 'Fristy Sunrise', c. 1917 [Public domain].

Time will never Tell

With these hands
I have cradled the past.
With these hands
I have buried memories.
With these hands,
still-lined with life,
callused by death,
I grasp air in my palm
and feel it trapped there
squirming in a fist.

With these hands
I held my babies-once, long ago-
now forbidden to touch
With the same such tender care.

With these hands
I sealed my ancestors in dirt
now sealed away from all five senses.

With these hands,
I make words
that lose their matter while gaining typeface.
I multiply my meaning only to divide
by the given definition of what it is
To pen or poem.

With these hands,
I scratch the wet shoreline,
I was here
With these hands.
I open my palms
erasing my place

just in Time.


Image by By DashaVZ (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mists without a Gist

What was that mist
that frost kissed
air where you touch
the exo-soul
and hairs rose
up to hold
indiscernible
pin droplets
that stab without
penetrating
any depth
in essence
or presence

that obscure eminence
amorphous atmosphere
vials of voluminous
sound, found abstruse
as your own voice
seeing you project
yourself from
somewhere else
ambiguous as
the mist that
never touches

ground.

Image By Fabio Cipolla (1854-1924), The Maidens in the Mist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Currency

If taking time
or stealing a moment away
is a luxury
interest grows only with age
invested in decadence
a mass
of intangible
wealth...

There is always more work
to be done,
and not being done
is a better way-
let us never finish
before we have spent
our Time
as if it were all we had
with Us.
Image credit info: Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [Public domain].