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…….

 Untitled

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……

1-3-13

Locusts

Don’t be afraid of the locusts

But know they’re coming

Don’t be afraid

We’ll steer you in the right direction

In time

We’ll protect you from them coming

The corn is bursting in fields

And we will wait for summer harvest

They’re coming

Don’t be alarmed until we let you know

And than we’ll make you go

Away from that safe place

The corn rising in the fields

We’ll tell you how to see

And how to feel

When it’s time

But know they’re coming

We will facilitate

Evacuate

Mandate everything you’ll need to know

We have channels where you’ll listen to our words

We’ll comfort you

We’ll keep you warned

We’ll keep you updated daily

On their progress

Though you’ll never see a wing

We’ll protect your children

From everything

We’ll show you who is the enemy

We’ll create the image

We’ll advertise

And fill your dreams with dread

We’ll make you question

Starvation and the impending death

They’re coming

Most of the corn is already ready for harvest

We’ll keep them safe

We’ll spread them around

We’ll keep you feed

We’ll clear the clouds above your head

Buildings in the city coming down

Empty storefronts crumble to the ground

But don’t move

And don’t make a sound

We’ll tell you when it’s time to be alarmed

You won’t be harmed

We promise

We’ll herd you to where it’s safe

We’ll keep you feed

We’ll save face

The dying cattle

We’ve hauled them away

Nothing to worry about today

Until we tell you it’s time

The corn burned in the evening

You never smelled a thing

They’ve come and devoured

Everything

We kept you safe

We’ll spread what’s left

To who deserves the most

We will keep you bound

To that post

So we’ll rebuild

And we will conquer all of this fear

All the hunger

Rest assured

We’ve reached the deepest hole

We will need from you

All that’s left

We will keep control

We will keep you calm

We will keep you never feeling the pain

Of convulsing

Starving

As all of you do

We will spread what’s left

It’s what we do

When all the harvest disappears and next years’

Seems to be half as much

We will warn you of the locusts

The beasts you feared so much

And we will feed upon your corpses

And lay you all in the ground

In a small box

In that tiny dusty town

Where storefronts fall to the ground

No food, no belongings

Only the starving, with hands held out

And we on evil wings

Will persevere

On to the next small town

Or small city

Where we’ll devour

All the summer harvest

Before it comes to be true

And when you try to warn them

They won’t believe you…..

We are locusts

It’s what we’ve done

It’s what we do……..

The Unspoken Page-Nature, art, life, death, politics, religion: Funeral for a Celebrity

The Unspoken Page-Nature, art, life, death, politics, religion: Funeral for a Celebrity: The body in the standard layout, the same state, the same ritual,  a line of cars, the press were pallbearers taking pieces of t...

Funeral for a Celebrity

The body in the standard layout,

the same state, the same ritual, 

a line of cars,

the press were pallbearers

taking pieces of the corpse like ants

bits of anything left

scraps of dirty remnants of their lives

nothing sacred

nothing safe

all of those human moments exposed

sadness was the standard costume

crying eyes of those who took posesssion of the corpse

but no one knew her

sterile bits of words

from voices of strangers

tomorrow the front page

all the wars their demons rage

all the things they shouldn't have said

no respect, no emotion

for the dead

the possession

a celebrity becomes

the possession

all decorum lost to the story at hand

speak the words like vultures at a feast

without choking on a single word

cast out across the news

every dirty, filthy thought they ever had

and how they once did drugs

and how they beat their kids

facts like seasoning

that add or detract

to fill the space and compensate

for all the dignity we lack......

The Unspoken Page-Nature, art, life, death, politics, religion: Blame....

The Unspoken Page-Nature, art, life, death, politics, religion: Blame....: A child’s suicide Because he was being bullied What do we do in this world That gets more violent ignore or Punish the violence ...

Blame....

A child’s suicide

Because he was being bullied

What do we do in this world

That gets more violent

ignore or Punish the violence

Raise the child in a warm wonderful place

That hides societies' cruel uncomfortable face

Ashamed of our darkness

Ignore the disgraceful

Tear down idles of sports

And movies

And wonder why

Our children are mean

Attack fast food for hurting our children

And wonder why our children

won’t take responsibility

cockroaches in expensive suits

sell lottery tickets

for damages rendered

everyone is a potential victim

everyone is a potential donor

and let’s sell the kindness of disasters

join together with tears

and ignore all the corruption

and the fingers reaching

imprison the Christian

dismantle the church

disgard God from every corner

of our lives

and question who’s responsible

for a child suicide.