So much like we, a life that caught the rain,
in storms that tested all our will to live,
and shook until our grasp could feel the pain
in angry squalls not ready to forgive.
Amongst a million souls now what are we
~ just leaves the autumn wind has blown to die,
'twas simply fate and always meant to be,
and wasted months and years that wonder why?
Yet something shuffles on the forest floor
where ashes and a lonely leaf was cast,
to be the end of life forevermore?
To lie among the long forgotten past?
But, mortal life becomes what nature knows.
A fertile soil where newborn leaves can grow...
Ribbon beach,
displayed in mellow ochre tones
a thing of lowering sky,
beneath the rain which blows in petty drops
that neither wets nor moves the flat and discontented sand,
an ocean milky calm withdraws itself
a lover growing cold
neglectful of its faithful margin land,
the restless rollling surf their child
which permanently shuffles in between
a yellow mother anchored to the earth
and errant father wrapped in waves of blue and green
Behind the glass, a ticking god of brass,
Who waves a withered palm of fiberglass.
The neon crystal bleeds a bruised magenta hue,
Dispensing plastic tokens, counterfeit and true.
“Your wish is granted,” the solenoid sighs,
While servo motors calibrate his glowing eyes.
He sits in a paisley vest and a gold-wrapped head,
Proclaiming: “Be happy living, for you’re a long time dead.”
Drop in a copper, hear his jawbones creak,
The algorithm’s gospel is the truth he’ll speak.
He shuffles fifteen fortunes from a secret slot,
Telling you of money, love, and what you haven’t got.
A silicon swami in a cedar cage,
Selling sudden adulthood on a printed page.
For twenty-five cents—or a swipe of your card—
He dictates the future of a weary backyard.
But if you feed the Deluxe Cabinet every spare dime,
He loops all his blessings in a paradox of time.
A timeless automaton, forever programmed to please,
Dispensing our destinies on tear-off degrees.
Love ages with us
Old hands still hold each other
Walks become silent shuffles
Hugs an acrobatic activity
Kisses as daring now
As in the fever of memory
Laughter a gasping gift
Those “we will always have…..” moments
Time, the slow tick of longings ache
Whispering: “I love you”
A heart drawn on a napkin
A hint of sadness in a smile
The joy of knowing
That love
Is still love
Is still present
In passions fire
Burning in softened blue eyes
The touch of gnarled hands
The joy of “those’ moments
Of love aging with us
The sun contours the cloud’s edges
Like a sky crack. If the sun be my eye,
Could eye be distracted from the surface heaven?
Some seven wispy islands’ masking bedding,
The frictive crashing plates, dying
And reborn downpours, slitted resting
Clouds, tense breasts and tension bringing.
A salmon fillet stretches gelatinously,
Horizon skin cooked by incidental switches,
Minor cloud bump shuffles that arrest
The sky. It lay there scorching
From the daggered strikes, the speaking
Pikes that shatter crackled clouds.
Their lost remains are seeping out of line,
An army shielded, steel of darker, stealing paints.
Valhalla battle cries boast legends, saints
And mages known only to the sky.
a
single,
beautiful,
clear, golden note
starts a symphony,
and a fresh, new Spring bud
becomes a pretty flower.
an acorn grows into an oak,
just as a young lad once made a life.
but that's only half of the story.
even an oak's limbs one day dry,
and a blossom's petals drop.
when the music's over,
the glory lingers
as an old lad
wistfully
shuffles
out.
Hammer down the scent of eau de cologne, mist or splash;
and her laugh.
It is infectious?
Is it poison or supple?
I can smell love as the velichor shuffles!
Glasses lean far down his nose;
eyes clink glass.
She airs a heart shape.
Like knocking knees, the shelves; lesser books need smelling salts.
Seems he’s stiff, but in admiration, he kneels.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She shuffles in, shaking snow from her coat,
a woman whose face has forgotten warmth.
Her fingers tremble around a torn lottery ticket~
hope folded into a square.
The man beside her watches,
then unzips his own jacket,
sliding it over her shoulders
without a word.
She stares, uncomprehending,
as if kindness were a language
she'd stopped translating years ago.
Outside, the streetlights flicker,
casting long shadows of strangers
who suddenly seem less strange.
The bus arrives, exhaling steam~
a sigh against the winter night.
He knows his laugher is reflexive,
often inauthentic,
a need to agree or
a way to paint clowns on speech bubbles.
Overused words, trite meaningless words
are tossed back and forth.
It's a conversation, a convention or
a blank-firing discussion.
"I must be going."
Words hang like luminous finger bones.
Later reviewing in his mind
what had been said,
witty ripostes are invented,
inserted.
Finer points of fine points honed.
He shuffles magnetic phrases
on a whiteboard between his eyes.
He begins to cough - a yak spasm.
His only remedy
is to keep talking to himself
as if the other person were still listening.
A stream, searching its limits, laps the bank.
Water falls gently over a small dam.
Fish nip at flotsam in usual prank,
And find protein at weight less than a gram.
All's well and calm in this country setting
A whiff of wind shuffles a nearby tree,
Yet the shallow banks soon will be letting
Gallons of overflow to be set free.
Soft water's whispers now shriek in a scream.
A precipice grips the liquid off-guard.
It spills its mass in a powerful stream
Down to twirling whirlpool's cold disregard.
In the quiet of my lonely room,
Your laughter echoes, a distant tune,
Time zones stretch, and miles divide,
A love once close now feels like a sigh.
Letters linger, words on the screen,
Each message a hope, a flicker unseen,
Days turn to shadows, weeks follow fast,
Memories whisper of glories past.
I trace the outlines of your face,
A map of longing in every space,
Night falls heavy, the stars feel far,
Each one a promise, a lingering scar.
Phone calls bring comfort, hearts intertwined,
Yet silence breeds doubt, am I still aligned?
Time shuffles onward, its cruel design,
As we chase the clocks, your heart—half of mine.
Yet in the silence, a truth I find,
Love knows no longitude, nor ties that bind.
Though distances stretch like an unending sea,
In dreams, my darling, you’re still right here with me.
Without a word I slip out of bed
and a thousand conversations
run through my mind
as I walk barefoot across worn carpeting.
Two nights ago, I barely made it home
while driving through a deluge
and water on the roads.
I defied the warnings
and survived
as bolts of lightning laced the sky.
I was the storm.
I was the silence.
Now as the sun pokes through
a thin veil of clouds
the sense of nothingness I embrace.
I must admit a year ago I loved someone.
She said that she loved my humor
my new stories and poems
and there was so much to share.
Now she’s a memory lingering in my heart.
This is my life, I say when alone.
This is what I’ve made it
as I watch a shadow dance on the wall—
it can be anything.
My chest ached the other day
when I bore the weight of humanity
while working at a grocery store.
Customers and I talked and traded jokes
but as the day wore upon me
I longed to be in my time and place.
A housemate downstairs
shuffles through the kitchen
while I sit in my loft and play with words
longing to say what’s never been said.
They are under the hedge, the elderly,
the silver whiskered. Threadbare possums,
frail chipmunks. The feeble,
squeezed into narrow parts of the day.
Her apartment is hedged in.
Her telephone is a blank land line.
The television is deaf.
A groundhog comes out to gaze at the sunset,
some myopic sniffing, then shuffles back
with that stout old man rolling gait of his.
She forages in her living space,
from a window she blinks at the moon,
only yesterday it slipped from her purse.
Her hands hang soft and blue.
Pills pend under a bedroom lamp.
The hedged in
listen to the small, contained movements
of their elder days.
They will abide here
knitting the hours together
until the long forgetting.
Observe the modern generations walk
on by; they suckle from the plastic teat
of coffee cups, and stumped by stamping feet
they shamble unaware from flock to flock.—
infant adults—if earnest I may speak;
Look there: one loops in circles (a grand feat!)
and, as if an ornithological suite,
the gaggle shuffles behind,—“squawk squawk squawk!”
Yikes… I suppose that if I ran at ‘em
they’d scatter faster than frightened pigeons.—
Wouldn’t even need to make the barest noise,
merely the sight of a threatening poise
is enough to disperse their religions
(yes—religions—phony, false—“fun”:—numb!).
My father's heart beats beneath the baseboards
of my chest
What scares me isn't the furnace inside it
It isn't all the hate and ignorance
It shuffles on its cane
Buh bump
Buuuuuuh bump
Buhbump
Dragging slowly, out of time
Learned it from his dad,
He told me.
Maybe his uncle
Maybe his brother
Maybe his grandfather
Maybe his sister
Maybe his nephew
"We got weak hearts son" he said
"I found my father holding hands with his and that's how you'll find me, too."
I ran.
I couldn't find him like that.
I put my ear to my son's chest every day.
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