The Banyan Tree
For years and years
it has stood there,
a vast banyan tree
in the middle of the field.
The slightly leaning banyan tree
and its branches,
the banyan tree and the sky,
the sky and the birds.
The banyan tree and its roots,
the roots and the earth,
the earth and nature.
Beneath the tree,
a man, slightly hunched.
A bidi between his lips,
the man and his spade,
the man and his sweat-soaked body,
the man and his sexuality.
On the road ahead,
a few bicycles,
their bells ringing
as boys and girls
ride off to school.
Every sin laid upon me, left its stone.
Each dream denied, buried deep, is a stone.
Unkept promises haunt, their weight cold stones.
I walk, hunched by forgotten oaths, their stones.
Suffered wounds unseen, each bruise casts a stone.
Given pain returned sharper, molds its stone.
The choirs refused my ears each hymn, a stone.
Heaven closed; its silence bequeaths me stones.
Mud clings to my steps, the ground spawns stones.
The self is prison, walled in jagged stones.
Under skies, burdened breath, life begged for stones.
I build ruin. To endure is to move these stones.
He wears a heavy coat of rusty fur,
hunched and brooding in the coastal scrub.
They painted him a villain in the nursery tales,
a big, bad shadow waiting for the dark.
He has a hundred hollow eyes that never blink,
carved open by the jaws of summer fire.
A crooked spine, a fist of woody knots,
grumbling low curses to the southerly wind.
But who could blame his wicked, jagged grin?
He learned his roughness from the searing drought,
patrolling the ashes of a blackened world
while delicate soft gums slept in the canopy.
He is the grumpy elder of the heath,
bristling, thick-skinned, and unapologetic—
holding his seeds like stolen golden treasure
behind those silent, gaping wooden mouths.
. for public domain
I believed I could fathom her unseen depths
with my hands and fingers clutching books,
and my body hunched over much worn pages,
until with time passing
and being in her company less,
I fathomed her less,
The mystery of her being in this world,
mattered less and less,
until she, all in all, mattered less and less;
until I could no longer bear her absence.
I need the eggs more than the knowing,
ongoing Mystery more than a belly full,
Want and Need, more than satisfaction.
I need more the touch of her hand
than the understanding why.
I need more the joyful mystery
I need the touch of her hand.
He had the book which God wrote
To read it, his life he did devote
Based on faith, not on proof.
Pursuing what he thought was ultimate truth.
Commands and divine rules for living,
Rules of fighting and forgiving,
What man should eat, what man should wear
When a believer should not cut his hair.
He had purpose, he found worth
Divining God's goals on earth
Much time hunched over a book
The forest for the trees, this man mistook.
he looked for hidden layers of meaning, acronyms
Below the straight text, messages within
Going beyond the author's intent
Years wasted, years spent.
I've known believers, but their feet were on the ground
They were free agents, not to a whirlpool bound.
The could drink from a well, but not drown inside
Their book was not a universe, just a guide.
Yes, its interesting what folks did 3000 years ago
But lets keep track since of history's flow
Let's take the best of science and thought
Believe but perceive, don't get caught.
That one time in the middle of nowhere,
When we walked in on a man taking a poo.
We looked at each other, then him,
and we didn’t know what to do.
It was a dingy gas station bathroom, surely the locks could work?
How could his mistake turn us into the Jerk?
When we rushed the door open, his pants were at his shoes,
He had a wad of toilet paper in hand like he was reading the news.
He was hunched over doing what needed to be done,
Probably not expecting to make eye contact with anyone.
I held onto the door in disbelief at what I had just seen,
Shocked when he yelled, “Maaaa’aaam” in lowercase, It came off kinda mean.
Spooked and shook I didn’t know what to do,
Never in my life had I seen a guy taking a poo!
With eyes as big as saucers, I sprinted for the van,
I needed to get far far away from that man!
My husband laughed for minutes straight as our tires squealed,
Now I always knock on bathroom doors and keep my eyes peeled!
Bare foot walking on a primeval beach
Before people, (it was just 3 o’clock,)
Balance hunched with longer stride
My feet made indentations in the sand.
With each rising step, my prints
Filled with toe-sized ponds and heel-sized lakes,
A tidal microcosm of a pulsing beach.
Life before people after all.
Far away, I saw a scrap of white
Propped against escarpment rock.
Assessed as some precious speck,
As so rare a thing so often is.
Already grains of sand had worked
Between my sandals and my soles.
Curious, I strode towards it,
To more closely see.
A sign of white posted my accidental crime:
Turtle Nest
Do Not Disturb
As easily saying, “Forgo knowing to let things be.”
They call me weed, as if my name itself
is a curse spat between teeth.
I do not grow in obedient rows,
nor do I beg for the gardener’s hand.
Like the poet’s misunderstood words,
my roots clutch the cracks of forgotten places~
a shrug, an insolent in a vacant lot.
The wind combs through me, rustling my leaves~
and, like a poet, I answer only to that.
Like the writer hunched over a page
no one will read, I am my own audience.
People walk past me, boots scuffing near my face,
too busy to notice how I bend but do not break.
Oh! What freedom I have in being overlooked~
Censorious shears do not scare me
nor do worldly stakes measure my beauty.
Let the prime and proper roses preen in their curated beds.
I am the sentence left untrimmed~
the wild ink bleeding through the margins,
alive, stubborn, and creative where I was never meant to be.
We passed French fields littered with steaming rolled hay
somewhere near the city of Verdun.
Here rain-weary sunflowers stood in ranks
and wouldn't even raise their faces to the sun.
Wilted green leaf shoulders on hunched old men,
all staring down at the mud on their toes;
or perhaps they were in mourning for their comrades
who’d fallen between the shabby rows.
Look up! Look up! The clouds are fleeing
and summer declares its victory.
Sunflowers should not be so sad.
Oh look up, little men, and smile for me.
These fields have known too much grief of old.
Lift up your faces and turn them gold.
A winter’s king with heart of cold,
A crooked form, a tale untold,
He clambered high on broken vows,
To place the crown on anxious brows.
But shadows whispered, “Never rest,”
With guilt a viper in his breast.
The children lost, the white rose slain,
A fleeting crown, a world of pain,
At Bosworth Field, the final breath,
A lonely fall to silent death.
With shoulder hunched and mind too keen,
He reigned in the brief, darkest scene.
No friends at last to hold the shield,
All alone on a blood-red field.
No noble song, no gentle cry,
Beneath a cold and changing sky.
The crown is gone, the dust remains,
A king of sorrow and of stains.
A shape darts on half-melted snow,
low and hunched in the twilight dim,
I just barely catch glimpse of him,
fleet movements in ninja-like flow.
He somehow seems to know I watch
through French windows of aging glass;
jolts once and then he scampers fast
to the pile of landscape rocks.
Then off again, sprints for the shed,
a black blur in the gray of morn,
his movements furtive and forlorn,
as if seeing dark times ahead.
I wonder if he’ll sit and wait,
like Python’s critter, cruel and mean,
to ambush me amidst the sheen
of distant purple from day’s break.
But I don’t think he’s such a fool,
just looks the part from shadows’ play,
strange how the misty times of day
can even make rabbits look cool.
Geese arrive or go,
nowhere becomes a somewhere.
Straight lines crisscross the sky.
A history of headless contrails
are trekking over
a borderless yonder.
Under
a brightly birthed daylight
eyesight cannot settle,
but skims around
the unseen tips of fleeting wings.
Peddle bikes
with their hunched riders
whoosh past.
A streetlamp speedwalks
from one glazed eye to another
blurring a roadmap
in a plodding mind.
Whichever way I go
the sky gets there before me
ever ready to redraw
that which has
just now
occurred.
Garbage poetry,
that’s why they make you pay—
a toll booth on the road to nowhere,
ink-stained palms held out
by men who couldn’t read a pulse
if it bit them.
Poets strutting like roosters
on borrowed dawns,
calling vanity “vision,”
calling noise “truth,”
calling themselves necessary.
Christ, the hubris
could pave a parking lot.
They workshop the life out of it,
sand down the blood,
polish the scream
until it sounds like a brochure.
Then they wonder why
no one listens.
I’ve seen better lines
scratched on barroom mirrors
by men who knew
they were already lost.
Those men didn’t pay to publish—
they paid with their teeth,
their livers,
their nights.
It’s hard to work
when everyone’s busy applauding themselves,
hard to write
when the room smells like resumes.
The real poem
is hunched in the corner,
drinking cheap beer,
waiting for everyone to shut up.
Most never do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Your black carriage moves through perpetual gloom~
Ravenloft’s castle sits, perched atop Barovia’s bone-white crags,
its spine hunched over fog-choked valleys.
You sit alone in Ravenloft, tracing chess moves on dusty marble,
fingertips lingering where Tatyana’s pawn once stood~
writing names in your ledger, the ink brown as blood.
You are a silhouette of despair, swirling brandy in your amber-hued snifter~
the moonlight bruising your study’s velvet drapery,
the centuries calcifying the ache behind your ribs.
Your shadow clings to the castle walls long after candles sputter~
haunting notes of an unseen organ drift through the night,
calling lost souls to your eternal embrace.
You stalk the hunt that cannot feed~immortal thirst, forever starved.
Yet you smile and pour yourself another century.
The Beautiful Heart Of Joshua Judah pt2
As Joshua Judah carried that frail and fragile tree to his house, his mind changed about using a tree for Christmas. Instead, he planted his newly purchased tree in his front yard for all to see. He made sure in the trees placement that it would receive the right amount of light needed for its healing process. Joshua Judah then put a hedge of protection around the tree. Last of all, he put a banner of unconditional love over top of it. Joshua Judah invested all his time and resources to bring healing life into that frail and fragile tree.
He nourished the soil around it with nutrients. He daily gave that tree living water. In just a short period of time, his tree became strong, and its covering flourished. Its branches once sagging were now outstretched and completely covered with pine needles. It’s posture once hunched over was now straight and standing upright.
That trees sweet fragrance filled every inch of Joshua Judah’s front yard. Joshua Judah’s ministry of redemptive love and compassionate mercy completely restored that pine tree back to health.
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