Knock on wood

O' American Sycamore-
what dost thou stand for?

Emigrant from England three and three 

quarters score, long along years ago-

And you allegedly pledged your allegiance,
Christening yourself O' Nort 'occidentalis'

signaling westerly growth,

a reminder of the Fall.

Both bark and buds ooze 

with bloom booze, 
how apropos, you know.

The mottled and molted trunk-sheds,

splotches on white, a complexion

that shows you belong, hanging out
(in)toxic(ated) tracts,

peduncles on branchlets

achenes subjective gravitational

caducous coated in tomentum.

And some come foreboding and tall-

but are all hollow 

inside, naturally swept up

saw dust, bore nee by beetled 

witch's broom. 

Image By Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing) (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Winning the Lottery

Wealth is having more than you need.
I, too, am guilty of this.
I must confess,
I have laundered some change,
this week.
The same exact six cents
I keep finding in different denim jeans.
And when I think about it,
having an extra six
sense-may not be worth anything
solid, except an extra thought-
that buys a cents of monetary health.





Image By Elembis (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dead-lines make us dance

I am going to die.

Not today, I really hope.

Inevitably I will it so someday.
Not this one,

I know, I can control that. Will. Be.

Able to stop the Time: why we write. Though,

all know, the endings are not ours.

Cracks in the porcelain grow-stress-lines

like faults at forty. At thirty, we don’t think

of meeting our match-in dem eyes. 

Now Ecstasy we see

helps alleviate the stress.

Chemically, elasticizes the skin,
that tightens in fear, out-looking grim,

youth is fear-less-ignored-immortal.

I’m-mortal-immortality?
How could we want more…

sublime with the time we have

had-enough time-time enough.

“Relieved of the burden of passion, and freed from the pressure of desire”

Sounds serene, quiescence, in essence, is nothing left to say

any other way.

Sleep. Sueño.

Nobody stops to Thank Death
for bringing these:

Dreams, drive, to do, be for, we go.

Dead-lines makes us dance.

“The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

Image of painting by Thomas Pollock Anshutz [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

At the end of a rainbow

Maybe balance is found
when we don't carry
more than we need.

Maybe wealth is found
not wanting more
than we have earned.

Maybe forgiveness
can be found
from others who give.

Maybe love can be found
when we stop looking
for ourselves.

Maybe wisdom is found
when knowing
doesn't answer the questions.

Maybe happiness
is finding wonder where
intangible things
may be...




Image By Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Peace(s)

Crumbled
into randomized fragments
of pointed feeling
the blunted parts
have no meaning
anymore-aligned-
once was whole

Fumbled
for something solid
like nerve
and trembled when I touched
down and felt myself
holding air

-There-
I stumbled
on steep logic, up
alps of apprehension
cast-over-shadow scintillant

Humbled and haggard,
I mumble in awe...
Matter moves (us)
to make a sign.




Image stained glass window, All Saints By Poliphilo (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Financials

After receiving the report
twenty-five years after writ-
there is quite a bit to process.

I guess it is accurate. It says
sixteen years ago, in two-thousand
we will live up to eighty
making more than seven hundred-
thousand hours to work
Total

Amounting to
forty hours in five days
some spend one hundred
and fifty thousand of these pleasing others-
rather-even-just-seventy five thousand hours
making money, a must
making
Nothing but Money
-for else-making
temporality more tolerable,
comfortable in
Cash

Not all agree on the bottom line,
which is what you take home
necessitating a (safety) net worth
under your trap-ease
to catch you when the bottom
drops.

From the way I read
this P and L, I can tell
accrued assets don't carry over
as easy as debts-
By the numbers I'd bet
(all) on yourself,
working on
building value,
oddly that is how interest accrues
even broke(n).



Image By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons, "Brains and how to get them," 1913.

Marsupial Mavens

Ninety percent of All humanity
live North of the equator
I sit in California in the sun
at thirty-three degrees or so
it is sixty-six and blustery-
(May gray has not arrived)
I read the latest Poetry issue,
origami ideas sent on paper planes
just out from Australia-al-
though printed in Chicago-
we pro-prose a die-a-log
through belles lettres.

After reading up on down under
I wondered-This Issue-
why more pictures than poetry-
Not really-but all I see, in imagery are
Faces
posing for poetry
Is it the mirror effect; akin to the water,
that made the artists smiles up-side-down-
And those scowls, sneers, poor-trait(s),
of some smirks where the mysterious
pretends to con-de-ceive perceptions
about Aussie affability.

Mutually masterful,
silence at the end, asks
for reciprocation, promotion,
looking for-word-one way to say
likeness, not-like-us, writer-ly
soft and polished up, be-spectacled
and dis-taught by degrees-
A-B-original-not left out back
in voluminous r-evolution.



Feature image art by Peter Purves Smith, Kangaroo hunt c. 1938 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.