Angels and the Ocean

I met an angel just last year,
he told me that things just
can’t stay the same and I nodded
as we walked between red trees.

He always held a marble in his
right hand and told me not to forget
the little things, but I knew better
when the little things forgot him.

I have been drenched by life’s
rogue waves and pulled beneath the surf
more times than I can count, but the
times I’m on top are worth the fight.

We all run circles on a giant sun dial
chasing the evanescent hours of daylight.
Then when night time comes
we chase our dormant dreams.

Angels are just like us, because they
once walked here. Never sure of anything,
but the hands of father guide us all
into spectacular and terrifying lucidity.

Forgot

As I spoke to her, the hands,
the ones that used to pat my head,
moved around of their own accord
primping disheveled wedding white hair.

Zoe never complains, and fancies herself
a queen in that hollow nursing home.
She stills has nails of deep red and
wears night gowns with flowers galore.

But Zoe reads the first page over and over,
because her decaying mind can’t remember.
Flowers, books, stuffed animals, ornaments,
cards, and me surround her crisp full sized bed.

I wonder if she’ll remember my visit, but
she called me by name so I know that in those
old brown eyes recognition has yet to ghost.
She’ll surely tell the old hens about her beloved nephew.

I ache for Zoe, I guess because she feels no pain.
Nestled in her lap are her weathered hands,
and as she stares out the window I muse about
if her days of glory come gently streaming back.

One Road

One road ahead in an autumn wood,
And five hands behind with fingers “should”.

But these shoes are mine that walk this path,
and what I do is on my behalf.

If love is my light then what is my need
for power, or money, or lust , or greed?

I chose now to start my path anew,
and part these brambles that grow askew.

With a burning warmth within my soft eyes
I’ll make a way here of my own device.

Swiftly carve this, my trail, clean and true,
because living for them I can’t do.

Now I walk my own self-deliverance,
and THAT has made all the difference.

Take Me

Take me somewhere with
endless waves of green grasses.
I want the fingers of the
breeze to stroke my naive face.

Let the sky be an azure mirror
upon which birds lazily drift.
Now, put me to rest between two mountains
in a valley fit for one.


When I awake from my rest may
the sun cause shadows to dance
all around my bed of lavish moss in
shapes of beings wild and free.

Take me to solitude unlike any other.
Give me rest in the heart of the wild,
where water is free to lope and trees are
old enough to remember the first rising moon.

The glaze of humanity won’t taint this place
and the colors here will blush before me.
Flowers will make a carpet of riches and
even the mushrooms will drip with vibrancy.

I close my flickering eyes and
a silent hand lifts me gently aloft.

Agreement

She keeps a ring,
a soft glowing halo
that surrounds her always.
She says “You can’t hurt me.”

When the parking lot was a field;
when her feet fell like cold hammers
and she ran away.
He didn’t even chase her.

She lay sprawled out in the cold air.
She willed heaven to take her,
and heaven took her.
Hell on earth was gone forever.

She made an agreement.

She stands in flames and poison,
but she feels no pain; impregnable.
Choice was saturated with simplicity.
Imprison the judge, and burn his book.

Copper

This time of year
the trees turn into copper
as if they beckoned the lightning
to burst forth from their fingers.

A blanket of molten
that spreads across the
pocked and scarred mountain
valley beneath my dangling feet.

I can see the cloud ahead of me,
but I fail to realize it’s all around me.
Despite sitting within, I feel exposed.
This sensation is much like love.

Each little person is a flicker in time
but what significance that flicker can
affect; I wonder if my time is mine
or am I a tree in a forest?

I want the lightning no matter how briefly
it burns; the leaves quake and die in the breeze.
I am small.

Hypnos Release

I have been asleep inside,
and my furnaces are candles now.
The people who love me crease their brows.
Sideways crescents break the calm flesh.

Signals come at me from everywhere.
I awake to a thousand misty eyes and
unsatisfied frowns. My friends all
want to know where I’ve been.

I AM RIGHT HERE. I AM STILL HERE.
DON’T LOSE FAITH IN ME.
I am the sun today and the
ashes tomorrow; slack jaw.

I’m not dying I’m just sleeping,
and I’ve been weary for so long.
How inconvenient the last fight would come
when I stop to embrace slumber.


But…


Fear not for beneath the cypress
the roots still clutch the bowels
of everything that has supported
the wooden giant all along.

These digits still know the grip and
when it is time the kinesthesia will return
and my joints will unwind like spindles
to take up the task once again, again, again…

(The sigh that births the gale)