Clothing the world

in hate and destruction

 

Shame is the loom

 that weaves damnation

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2020)

The bike broke down,

my money gone,

Beale Street calling

—Memphis in my dreams

 

The diner’s empty,

last quarter found,

the jukebox playing

—Memphis in my dreams

 

The waitress smiles,

she’s off at six,

her place a walk

—Memphis in my dreams

 

The kindness of strangers,

a baby cries,

the sun’s come up

—Memphis in my dreams

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2020)

 

 

The Sage cried out these final words
as he rose from where he sat…

“There’s nothing beyond everything
—and everything beyond that”

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2020)

“All you can be is all you can be,”

damning with faint praise

 

A lover, not a girl to wed

—left hand falsely raised

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2020)

“Blood is thicker than water,

what we had thicker than blood”

 

All wounds long healed by memory’s salve,

divined from up above

 

Our bonding copper wire,

wrapped round a thousand times

 

Till fortune gets down on both knees,

and bows—our soul’s conjoined

 

                   

     (Listening To Bob Weir: March, 2020)

Do you wilt in someone

else’s shadow

 

Do you fawn in someone

else’s praise

 

Do you rise in someone

else’s dawn

 

Do you fly with someone

else’s wings

 

Can you break the chains

that hold you

 

Can you smash the mirror

of regret

 

Can you kill the demon

of envy

 

Can you end the bondage

—free at last

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2020)

They come to me phrases,

crying out to be whole

 

One last bridge to cross,

no fare for the toll

 

Prodigal wanderers,

not spoken or heard

 

My breath used as payment

—conveying the words

 

(Villaova Pennsylvania: June, 2017)

If you’re not willing to fight the fire

—you’re entitled to the flames

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2017)

Reading poetry to enhance your own,

beguiling  

at the least

 

An intention maybe well inclined,

but it’s bread

without the yeast

 

Only fire and ice can make the Bard,

to burn and melt

within

 

Your Muse to christen each child true born,

adoption

—not akin

 

(Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania: March, 2020)

Is a poem ever really done,

can the last word not begin

 

The Angels voting lines impearled

each phrase into a hymn

 

Is a poem ever given back,

to whom the words behold

 

Each letter turned into a string,

—a harp of heaven’s gold

 

(Dreamsleep: March, 2020)