Stop reading now.
This poem is not for you.
It’s for someone else -
someone close,
someone who goes
behind the meaning
of these words.
Still here?
I thought you’d stopped.
Well maybe you and me
could talk another time?
There’s nothing here
for you today -
for you that feels,
for you that walks
along the lines.
Please - leave now.
I need to be
alone.
He is grinning,
Like a coldwax peach
Curled and constant,
On guard like a twisted
Forever-slept dog
Or a sleepover sigh
Echoing daydream
Stilted night.
They’ll be
No melting of this
Strange wax though,
No turn that breaks
The seal of time
Stood high upon
His rough hewn
Armature.
He grins,
Because of will of us
Who traipse to watch,
Along the path
That never wavers,
That never arcs
Like aspic oxbow
Frozen flow.
A thousand, thousand
Footsteps seek and feel
With tread and weary romp
Of seeded needs.
All buried deep
He holds his poise
Then contemplates
Why it is that he alone,
Should be the one
Who smiles.
He sends her blue horses
On the reins of a smile
His love for her riding
On the backs of the miles
He sends her blue horses
They run from heart to soul
Across the great divide
Branding union of whole
Where stallions race
To sacred lover’s place
And heartbeats rise in mist
And horizon kisses sky.
He sends her blue horses -
But only she knows why.
Don’t tell me
what you want
me to say,
or show me
what you want
me to see.
Don’t mark
the path
that I’m
not on,
or ask
what you
already
know.
Have you
forgotton
to remember?
I’m not that
dumb.
Bless these guys.
It’s almost like
reality is not enough.
Like glass lensed auteurs,
whose life just has to be seen
through mechanical eyes -
selecting and zooming
then editing the view.
No margin for error or surprise
in captured moments held
in satisfied frame,
in control of all they feel.
Neatly filing happiness
with f-stop calibration,
they can’t tell you
how wonderful something is
but they can show you
the photograph.
For the man who pushed my daughter out of the way
with his pumped up lens…
Don’t stop,
and don’t look back.
Every day has possibilities
for something new, something majestic
amongst the drudgery - a shining hope
glistening with flare of optimism’s flame
burning like magnified sun.
I was thinking
about Neruda and Rumi
and all these other folks
who I’ve never read.
Feel like such a phony -
I must read more
before I’m dead.
This house is just too small
For all these knick-knack memories
Stuffed in crevices and laid out
Like lingering refugees on the floor.
This junk we keep for old time’s sake,
This baggage piled but never sorted
Everywhere a story, everywhere a tale
And all those secrets never told.
It’s time we got this place
Cleared out, done up, and sold.
Let’s do it now, before
we grow too old.