Bad hair day

He just came to bed.
The clock is wrong.
I am late
for nothing
so I get up before the alarm
and there is a notification
waiting for me
about a suspicious charge
to approve via Texting Y or N.
The internet is not working,
the wifi dissipated
my money evaporated.

My new husband
drinks, thirsting for his further demise.
My daughter starved herself
famished for failure.
My son avoided the real world
where the day breaks
optimism down into an icy rain
while the wind is whipping up
a bad batch
of loose and split ends.




Painting by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), 'Nackte beim Kämmen' in Public Domain. 

Spark-ling

For the small moment
You did it,
rekindled the small boy scout fire,
Had fun, for a time,
Were occupied
Stoked and prodded.

Handy to have more than wood to burn.
It was not enough to last
Through the cold night.
The steam and smoke billows and blows out.
The rain sidles in with heavy
Clouded feet.
Light becomes heavy
And I reminisce over
That time we shared this manmade heat without duty
Or blame,
Was love.

Togetherness said nothing
To explain or justify its purpose
Save
Sharing the warmth emitted from
One another.

My cheeks redden for other reasons
Than blood boiling laced with whiskey

See, we don't see
The same
Pleasure or Pain
Under heat, inside pressure, cold edges and sharp sounds
like sticks piled inside the stone hearth,
a resonance is echoed in our porous bones.

There is a classical tune
Evoking
Times past and a comfort
that stays
Lost in our presence.



Painting by John George Brown (1831-1913) 'Camp in Vermont' c. 1879 in Public Domain. 

Erasure

There was a line

on the shore that clear day

We both knew

where to stand

Once

the tide came to meet us

in the middle of taking in

both sides, the ways of life

varied as the grains

all touching one another

in such a clutching way

that the differences and space

only demarcate

the same

Way

these lines cross.

Painting by Sydney Starr, 'On the Shore' c. 1900 in Public Domain. 

Hatchling

An open invitation,
gilt in possibility
lures the timid beast from its musty cavern

The cacophy of air rushing around the
least resistant, matters are pushed and pulled upon
Certainties, tossed about

Potentials

The sudden hail defies the timid pleas
to unfold and stretch into
a solid lain beam of radiant heat

How could the mortal help himself anymore:
Gather, hunt, peck and reorder survival skills
Such as Love and Hate

Coming down

In various degrees of murder and rebirth
Springs forth
Colorful codes saturated with noise
and clashing heads with tails

The now bleeding ink pools
and blurs your name
craddled under ashen light,
limp and holding onto remorse
absorbed into pulp and grain limbs.

The sky showed no where
Safe
Welcoming
these evolutions
without debate thy will has been
done.

Spring inflates its toll
on the feral sheltered soul
Whose i's have been gouged out in disbelief,
and now blinded by the most elemental
Considerations.

The beast grows
weary and anxious
trying to stand upright
under these conditions,
dissuasion and doom
overshadows the occasion
to fear or be feared.



Artwork by William Blake, 'The great red dragon and the beast from the Sea' c. 1805 in Public Domain. 

Sprung from shallow graves

See, so busy not
Doing, having not enough
work to kill the Time

                           Space grows between Us
                           All ways of masonry wall
                           builders Handiwork

Stepping on our souls
Shaky grounds cause pause,
no mans land turning Over

                           'Til awoken from
                            Trenches such like ruts we run
                            down the clock counting.



Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840, 'The Cemetery' c. 1825 in Public domain.

Hades hand-basket

One basket for All
Eggs, incubating too much
heat with Entropy

And it could happen,
And it did
Worse than we
Suspected it
Could

Do-
No more
Harm or foulness
than the
Fear hath
Undone.



Painting by Alice Pike Barney (1857-1931), 'Girl with basket' c. 1888 in Public domain.

Aerodynamics outside Elsewhere

It had happened before
certainly,
not All
at the same time.

This time
a first
Spring
vital statistics
lost interests,
attentions drifted away
from their gliding paths.

The sky dictated
directions and we employed
Free will.
At all costs
we are trying
Time
sheltering in square spaces
and speculating about the sudden
impending darkness, the doom
and the emptiness filling corners
while hands draw curtains
and blinds squint like eye-lids
in thin masks
wanting only
Elsewhere.

For once,
the calls all came down
from above. Over-
ruled our old ways.

The birds sang out
consonants, whole
notes hailing hard
lyrics none had heard
before but had been said
meaning suddenly something
anything, anymore,
save a Poets smooth
translation of such dead languages
avian, barbarian utterances
fallen on deaf ears
so many years
we stood under oblivious
and missing
the calls.

There was no place else to go,
to look, to escape, to buy, to barter, to sell,
to tell, to exaggerate, to hide, to collect,
to get, to juggle, to balance, to plan, to invest,
to pad our feet
by adding more Pyrite in the veins
connecting our heart to our soles.

Blood is always on the move.

We look down
and out-side-gazes
away from each other
avoidant, accursed
shielded and sheltered
under the same temperamental
Spring sky
whereby
a feathered friend cocks
his head and chooses
a listener to teach
one good birdsong.



Image description: Birds in flight, St. George Island, Alaska, USFWS, dated 12/04 in Public Domain.