Or deal

Memories are

Pick a card, any card,

except you do not choose

Well

we all carry a card or two

up a sleeve, lain

on the table

hence playing with

A full deck 

is rare

52 weeks

shuffle like thrown-up

cards, now the 

Five of clubs

Demands your decision.

Go fish for 

another

Hand read them

like palm lines

to call or stay

this time around

Krazy 8's and wild

Jokers interrupt as 

I shuffle through

these days,

Solitaire and surprised

at the random nature 

making a game

Of dealing with it.

Painting by Juan_Gris, 'Damier et cartes à jouer'  (Checkerboard and playing cards) c. 1915, Google Art Project in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Morsels of moments

We can't go back, pick up, pieces

Anymore

Than we can jump ahead 

To when we

Were nowhere

Together.

It was just right

After I left

A landing, a ledge

Caught me 

You fell past me

In a dream

Blood-stained hands

Grasping.

There was a river.

The sound conjures the divide

How it carries those times

And places

Elsewhere.

You got carried away

I took another way

Anyone's guess

To the sea, 

ultimately

Never again

One 

and the same.

Painting by David Cox -' On the Conway River, North Wales' - Google Art Project, date unknown in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. .

(Bone pile)

My lips are sealed with 

The caulk of deaf ears.

Born for this.

Lessons to be learned as chapters

Turned 

Over, like how to read our bodies

Instructions, building muscle

Memories such as

Tools we must learn how to use

Who speaks and who listens

Goes on and off 

As breath and tides, rhythm and

Numbers like thoughts sequence

And past tense

Lie in a moment

Between notes.

Painting by Wassily :Kandinsky - 'Silent, 1926' in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Before four

Must be some-one

Wakes me pre-dawn 

At 3

Mind a maze

Organs ablaze

Quiet cacophony

Stirring the still waters

Must be some-thing

Which must be known or

Revealed to the euphotic zone

Poetry and ghosts arise

And mingle, my solidity heavy

Disruptive to the lucid dream

Must have

Second thoughts

Choruses drone, stuck

So it seems, 

telling, reminding

Of lighter times 

Than the chasm and coffin can

Offer an anxious creature

Of habit and habitation,

A disheveled dwelling 

And the slumber until

The next hour

Or

Finding what I must be

Looking for. 

Painting by Edvard Munch - Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil c. 1920- MM.M.00076 - Munch Museum in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Avow

Truth be told-

The clean secrets

are the ones

most easily over-looked, 

like tiny happy pills,

like big gulps of fermentation

like bottled pride, 

once swallowed

often gets caught

tickling the throat

edible if not credible

sharp.

The bleached lies

are the ones treated

as though sterilization 

made us all safer

instead of regretful

for draining the color from

all storied possibilities.

Cheeks and skies

Sunsets and dawns

pinks and yellows

the way you see

plain as day

something always there

in between...

Kisses like clouds

Words like wind

fighting infection and odds

debating the will without power

Nothing to trace

Distance cured us all

to be saved for later

Revelations.

Painting by Gabriel von Max 'Praying' c. 1915 in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Rosa rubiginosa

I used to advise him to pick a rose 

by its smell

First,

which was like asking him to choose a girl for her personality

First,

the roses I chose

bloomed often, I cut them and left them

to fragrance the big kitchen.

The rose I have now,

Was lilac,

When I found it at the hardware store.

Now,

it starts magenta, fades to purple,

then pales to near white with dark pink edges.

I get a bud every

So often...

Like life,

I think,

I am always happily surprised to receive

He never tended to the roses

Anyway,

I remember vividly

the wild ones we saw on a walk-first

he denied they were roses at all

Despite the thorns, the tiny neon magenta buds, 

the telling

Leaves

And so I never insisted

A rose is a rose

always keeping

my scents

about me.

Painting by Maxime Maufra (1861-1918) - A Bouquet of Roses - YORAG , 19 - York Art Gallery in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Half-dozen Mud cakes

Back to wood

decks, quarter-size spiders, webs, moss 

and creatures stirring in the hollow

nights

Back to no

side-walks and skirting into the duff

or mud when cars and trucks pass

close-by

Back to walking

in the woods, again, sheltered 

from the horizon and its deep-wide

glistening

Ends of days

In so many ways

I thought I would 

Never

Be back

It all seems

to stay the same

Except I

Must leave again...

And then again

If I never left

I would never be

Back. 

Painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 'Combing' c. 1891 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.