You’re Anything But Devine

With those khaki pants so benign.

Thus sayeth your pants:

While your hair is carefully styled—

Wavy, sleek—and face perfectly tone,

Shirt and sweater making you doctoral

Against rebellious facial hair and a troubled brow,

The sag in the back is dismaying,

Exposed zipper in the front is a knock,

The room all around leaves much wanting,

You will do everything tonight but cock block.

I Hear Past the Din to the Air

That whips at hair for attention.

Blaring cars

Barking dogs

Laughing kids

Are all in sense but not in sight

Lending vision to the trees

And a soul to see its way

Toward inspiration and industry
Down the hidden trail. I go.

Unexpected, I have found my place
Among the rocks that send water cascading
Down their face to build pools that cool my own,

That rise high with sunny and shaded surface

For either satisfaction.

The whirl I thought the wind

Turned out to be the stream,

Hidden beauty I never knew,

Blooming laurel I thought I’d missed,

Catawba flower alive past its season.

I walk to find that I am much more wrong.

Goodbyes that Precede Departure

Take off smoothly compared

To the unsettling emotions that fly at altitude;

Of what it means and what they meant,

The one who inspired a heart to such heights.

This plane will never land

In those flowing fields but it will find

A soft landing in a country that cares

Without visas and welcomes

With long runways, open gates.

Residue still obscures

The mind’s view in finding a way

To clean up feelings that were never to arrive alive.

As hazy as the windows are I yet look

Through hoping that this plane will land

Where its passenger will be received.

I Am Here

And have been.

Though I don’t yet fully see,

Looking through blinds as eyes—

Pieces and impressions—

The trees only stand tall

Not standing as themselves,

The birds fly

Not dancing and singing their own.

As I come in full light

My sunset is slowly coming,

White becoming color, successive

Distinctions that reveal uniqueness,

Similarity and kinship,

Until in darkness we share

The hope of another dawn.

A morning where new eyes see the being

Of all things and feet that lift

A knowing body to walk

In the path of metanoia, deeds done

By relationship to keep all aright,

A life long-lived to find another

And be in the presence of eyes that see all,

A unity of vision that set the universe,

The moving of our small sphere for its sanctity. 

Morning Eyes Cry

The heaviest tears.

I’ll never know what was me

Or what I handed over.

Though I continue to work

My mind is out to sea

With the last of my childhood smiles.

Do I shout or run

Or for forgiveness pray?

Age old promises broken in seconds

Leave the deepest wounds.

Once the purpose is unmade

Is it just a ring?

Having left the high road

Do things become easier?

Am I free? Once you die,

You realize just how easy it is
And how complicated the price can be.

I’m Happy Until I Remember.

The smile leaves my face

From the quiet breakfast table,

Bacon in the light of dawn.

With on my face a soft ray 

I still feel your lips

And phantom limbs,

The weight of a body long overdue.

Though I lost myself

You stick around;

Your breath is at my shoulder,

Body’s smell in my shirt.

After a sleepless night

You are more inescapable.

I raise the knife to cut

One last piece

So myself I may excuse.

I look into the dark

Below the light

Without seeing, knowing what’s there,

It’s moving so fast that

I don’t understand at all.

The life I leave behind

Can not guard my steps ahead.

Fingers on buttons

Turning up the volume

That will never be loud enough

To forget for one moment

The morning that I died.

On the Purple Ridge

Sits sight of eyes

Wondering how long

How much until

The glass in the left hand will turn dry

And the flood in the mind subside.

Feelings colder than the frost

Around the door’s framing,

The view contains all the insight this man can see.

He hopes emptying a bottle
Will get him over that mountain
So the sun has yet to set.

A heart seeking courage just needs

Some fuel to get there,

An award of triumph awaiting

The man who can keep his

Hands straight and his eye on the goal,

Even if through glass.