Posts for June 5, 2024 (page 9)

Pack me away
In some cardboard box
Add something soft
And if it isn’t too much to ask
A little legroom.

Ship me across oceans.
Fly me over rainforests
and snow-covered mountains
Let me smell the air above the clouds.

It would be okay if I tumbled
Down
Among the raindrops
To nurture the earth.

Maybe there 
A loving eye would see me
Feeding the grass
Or raising the flowers.

Resting with worms
Gossiping with fireflies
Before flashing secrets 
To be lost in the night.

Don’t forget a return address
Just in case
I’m lost along the way
I can find a way home.

Through careless hands
Indifferent drivers
Tossed and Forgotten
Somewhere amongst the graveyard 
Of unopened packages.

Until
Perhaps
I’m delivered
To your door.

Fine art in flight
on delicate wings, I must
break for butterflies

There’s no trumpet, sayonara taps.
Sans salute, ciao all calls to attention.
Adiós ye amber waves, her colorful
mountains so distant they’re mostly

haze. The border to this land leaves
an open wound, oozing goodbyes and
good riddance in any language worth
keeping its teeth trimmed in gold.

Bare these now to ask who’s left to take
the last flag down—at the red brick
school at the edge of the desert, where
America fails to sail her promised excellence.

Here a lone man still stands to winch
fabric from staff, hand over hand
over chain until it arrives at his face—softly,
like a lover searching for a kiss. And so, softly,

he drapes her on his neck as he unclips
the fasts, battens the knot. Then,
together, they move slowly up the path—
the cape and her final, folded hero.

It’s not raining yet
but it’s going to.  

I’m not dead yet
but that’s coming, too.  

No more scenes
needing scripts.  

I lay down my pen,
surprised.  

I was simply
a human being.    

Snow lights on a branch,
piles on it. The branch temembers
birds who touched down upon it
before something deep inside them
warned them to fly away.
The branch snaps, falls into snow,
until its memories of birds
have been buried and its dreams
of growing have been forgotten, and sunlight
seems like just another dream.
After snow melts at last
into now, into no and ow,
some well-meaning asshole
picks up the bent, leafless branch,
and asks it for a few kind words
about snow, a fun memory or two,
maybe an amusing little anecdote.

They shared a raspy rapport 
with the landscape.
Hills and hollers
curved around
their waists and
arched over
their shoulders,
a mediterranean portico,
sheltered in song.

Breath and bloodstream
You’re the tension that holds my skin without a touch
In my heart and head,
Filtering like sunlight behind my eyes, blinding love that only we see
Your name on my tongue and rib,
I was made for you.

From the moment I spot you,
I am weary.
There are things I believe
That are truly out to get me.

In a moments time,
My mind can decide
You have sided against me.

I feel it in my bones
Long before it ever appears on the surface.

My aggression unfolds
Merely out of self preservation.

Do yourself a favor
To prevent further devastation –

Keep your distance.

I will not hesitate to tear you to shreds.

the most fun to be had was in close calls,
even funner if it meant running–

running after that train easing away toward California,
arms chugging with bags of beer and cigarettes and candy bars
grabbed from a dusty store near the way station
somewhere in the middle of nowhere–

in stretching time out
to squeeze adventure in,

and in laughing with old friends
at the retelling
over music
and a spirit on ice in hand