For the Funeral Order the black cars The host lies in state Order the flowers He’s awake The vantage point From the ceiling The smell of sadness like a flavor The empty shadowed room No voices could fill anything but the sound In the empty spaces in the walls Morning falls Like a weight on shoulders broken and spent Wondering where hours went The waiting-the glass suspended on the edge of the table Clumsy fingers of children Hushed parental cues The vantage point around the fireplace Watching the dressing room Finished getting ready The widow puts her makeup on Black is the color of daylight Shines through the window Like a sickness I don’t understand the words you speak The priest Smiles Ensures peace And silently Walks in the room The director slinks out like a serpent A sad reckless play-where no one will remark On the substance or how well the lines were delivered The host is sainted No one asks the question Where No one would dare Order the room The cash bleeding out of the home Read the will Get your fill of the darkness As it leaves With the mourners And left alone, we are fragile China In the kitchen We are broken dirty dishes In the sink A final drink before sleeping We are awake We are staring at the ceiling And the host lies in the ground No sounds Only an empty shell Even now winding down The slow earth, the careful shovel The indifferent ground Staring at the ceiling the widow cries And a hand from the ceiling a bleeding sky Touches the face With the spring breeze It’s only epitaph Remember me………

Awake: First of 2013

Awake

A vulture in circles in the sky

Across the hollow landscape

Cars pass by

The grey sky staring at us

From across the room

The time to decide

It’s coming soon

Awake

In the midst of another year

No sadness

No tears

Washed away like storms before

All pasts alive

No more

A blackbird in a dying field

The sun, a whisper in the sky

But why do I feel hope in a gray landscape

And why do I choose joy

At the end of a season

Maybe it’s the wisdom of age

Or the courage and excitement

To turn another page

Awake in this landscape

Blackbirds passing me by

All I have is worthless wealth

But a treasure of precious time…….

The Inspiration

Twisting in the frame

The resemblance of the face

The same

The portrait

No voice, no name

Only the paint that stains

Sad and beautiful gray

Out through the front door

Running

Hands reaching out across a hemisphere

Wide eyes, seeking

A point in the cueless sky

No perspective no path to memorize

Only the gray scape

And the ideas we rationalize

Often pointless

They stream through us

A voice

I feel like a puppet

I dance only with a voice

From some unseen source

Atoms pulling and pushing

Dying

Radiation in the garden

As the sunlight moves across a barren sky

I don’t even need to ask you why

I’ve given up all my secrets

Now all I have is time

For you to decipher the riddle

The common thread that speaks in words

Voices no one has ever heard

Keeps us dangling like puppets

Across the sky

I stopped asking why

All I have is precious time

For you to answer the riddle

That hangs dangling above our eyes…….

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Love that amazing element

That no chart could contain

It grows in me and moves me

Everyday

I am a river under the ice

I am a river seeking the oceans peaceful tide

I don’t know these words

You speak and I answer with black etchings on a screen

I won’t go back

I just trust you to keep me making some sort of sense

When I can’t comprehend or memorize

Anything I ‘ve said

The organic feeling of love

Like leaves in a dying garden

I’m clinging to the branch

Found my place high in the tree

And only now realize

The distance between me

And the garden

I will one day lie and be

Nothing but this rotting leaf

That gives up all

So beautifully

I have words like leaves

They stream wildly

Like colors in fall

I can’t imagine taming

Or deciphering them all

They just stream through my mind

And I can’t even imagine

I can’t open my mouth to say

Any words

Of any kind of leverage

They don’t come out that way

Stumble upon reason

Stumble upon a sentence, a rhyme

You speak

And I listen

I don’t need to make sense

It’s the distance between each word

And the reason that dangles

About

I try to question the flowing stream

It goes around me

Flowing fast and violently

Keeps me from catching up

It only runs through ruins of all

Our giant plans

We’ve made

You speak

And I listen

It doesn’t need to make sense

And when you leave my mouth

And my hands will freeze

I will stand in a field in the middle of a field

In the  rain, begging please

As all the blackbirds make their shadows on the ruin

Of me

And I will give up all that I was to you

So beautifully……

The Muse

 So explain to me, where do these images and words come from

And explain to me where they go

Like water out of the sky

The form

The solid, the gas

Out across this mindscape

Thoughts and ideas furious

Like the white blood cell attacks the disease

This foreign body ejected

Streaming across

Often without reason

But continuous the flow

Until there’s nowhere else for it to go

Locked in metal boxes

Have I been a bad steward of all these ideas

Has time been a stumbling block

Or age

With wisdoms absent

Seeking the child that would place the puzzles

Where they belong

Was I right or wrong

No one answers

 A dark room where music plays in the background

The answer to all of our thoughts

Dangles in the sky

Where the light breaks the edge of darkness

We stare blind

Into space

Seeking all those tiny stars

That put us in our place

How small we are

How infinitesimal our tiny spaces seem

Waking out of this coma

This grand play

That never knows its cue

Only that I listen to you and you speak

Through me

Quietly

A voice, that a child could only decipher

Empties the thoughts of oceans

In a grand rain barrel that would explain

How we all feel the same

How we all stare out to sea

How we all look up to the sky

Searching for you, for me……

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