Dim recognition
in a familiar setting
brightened my corner.
Mitts raised, in front of my face,
I took a defensive stance.
What do I stand for?
Words, like sharp and hollow straws,
form a hexagram.
“Innermost Sincerity”
restrains my cock-crow at “God.”
However, the lines fall;
weather the seasons’ change;
my grave will bear the mark.
Bright April morning
blows birdsong through my screen door.
What a way to wake!
Half-aware of its insides,
I gather my form’s edges.
Something exploded
in a place no one visits,
last night in Heaven.
You can keep the things that pass,
in pitch, in an empty jar.
Open it to the sun:
I do not have reason
to empty my ashes.
You wrote twenty words,
about a letter, or so,
in an open box.
You could write them in large type.
The words were big, if they fit.
Smart men made the box.
They knew little boxes fit
everything big.
Those men made lots of money,
putting us in small boxes.
The boxes got smaller,
and they made more money,
on our open boxes.
If my affections leave a bitter taste
after my rhyme for reason comes across
a wire, to trip, to slip a noose in haste,
to love unloved much longer is no loss.
Our reason’s raison d’être is not our own.
Impersonal, we think, “Whatever works,”
to give a fuck, `fore all that’s aft is bone.
Then, if it sticks, at least we share some quirks.
We rarely speak a single word of sense.
I’ve touched the wound, as sure as I am damned.
The feet are sparse; the crown atop is dense.
Re-read your eulogy, before you’re scammed.
The parts we will recall, and miss the most,
are less for God, and more like morning toast.
My cat is dying
knowing more of how to be
than to be missed not.
To be missed; not to be missed:
pick your warmest vent, to sleep.
I live to sleep warm,
to fill time not unaware
with being itself.
“Happy” is at least “happy.”
I “learn” the point of her claws.
She knows that I love her;
she knows she will fall down;
she knows I can’t catch her.
Passing time alone
for another beverage
and your communion,
it is time to admit my er’r
to the tabernacle box.
Getting out ruddy
with a blue piece of the wall,
I’ll cry in German.
You slip into this crevice.
I pulled you into my fall.
We are between the slats.
I straddle the razor line;
you are on both sides of me.
One sentence of two
is twice unwritten by Fate,
whether it’s served:
Fire on ice, shaken, wanting
just us, alone, quiet, dark.
I have made my mind.
“Up to you. Forget me, not.”
I take my chances.
There is more than one option;
there are, to many, choices.
One may die innocent,
square as the day is round,
or live with guilt thereof.
Pens over pencils,
red claw marks, indelible,
we leave, or do not.
We do not bud, or flower.
The leaves shook loose in thunder.
Just, what would you do?
Sing scales, to show the way up.
They stole the Stairway.
Nothing to believe in, now,
just bowling for coat hangers.
Of all vain words to say,
and all pregnant pauses:
“The ‘Cat God’ strikes again!”
The Mass has come upon me by surprise.
To God, again? We had one, just last week.
The Highest walks among us in disguise
on sale from an invisible boutique.
“No flowers sold on Sunday.” I have missed
appointments never made, so never kept.
Although the ringing’s stopped, my ears persist
to hear all of Creation’s call, except.
A flower in a pot commits no sin;
restraint absolves the captive of her cage.
We go without, and hide away within,
and concentrate remembrance as we age.
The willow weeps until its sorrows cease;
a rose arose; a lily grew for peace.
Not knowing how, or whence, or where, or why
my past became my present, you to me,
a paper wrapper, molded to my rye,
I’d offer you a taste, but not for free.
The reading of the charge exacts its price
without conviction. There in lies, the crime
was not that Henny Penny fooled us twice
but couldn’t pull the hat trick off in time.
I miss you, here, in verse between refrains.
Perhaps I’ll out the in to strung guitar,
for right or wrong, for rapture passing pain:
so long, as I cannot tell who you are.
I do not know if you’re the You in me,
but She exclaims the option to be free!