Posts for June 20, 2025 (page 5)

What’s the value?
of my time
of untouched woods
of those holy moments
right before sunrise and sunset
of sweet kisses
a baby’s soft breath
laughter on porches?

How do we calculate living?
nickel and dime
how we spend this life
like it’s something we can itemize

Just give me a number.
Put it all in a spreadsheet.

Line item 14: One good cry
alone in the car — $0.75

Line item 29: Rain on the roof while
you’re warm inside —
marked as Non-Essential

Line item 43: Time spent doing
nothing with someone you love —
flagged for inefficiency

Reproduce it.
Make it scalable.
Ensure each joy is branded and backlogged
until even silence has a surcharge.

We want to know what we’re getting.
We want to make sure they’re not getting more.

Make sure those poor folks never get anything for free.
Make sure our immigrant neighbors
are always working
too long
too hard
and still falling short of
whatever the price may be.

Make the system tight.
Tax the wonder.
Bill the beauty.
Subtract the sacred.
Outsource the sunrise.
Sell back the sunset.

And if someone dares to live like it’s all priceless —
mark them as a liability.

Shovel in hand, I dig and crumble the dirt,

Try to recapture 

summer
I’m so glad you made it
finally and officially
I welcome you
the fireflies have already commenced festivities
sunflowers will soon join
blooming gold, bright
illustrious
my hope is I can too
find a reason to illuminate
finally leaving all that dulls
where it belongs
not here or now
may today be the elsewhere I dreamed of in February

Knives on every other page of your despicable novel
ripping through the guts of your enemies, like you think
in a hundred thousand words you’ll strike down all conservatism.
Stupid, idiotic, fucking moronic you called us, vilely
twisting us into every kind of overblown caricature.
I shoulda given you up at page one hundred, but I had to see–
Nope! You never acknowledged us as feeling human beings.

Can’t stand a person with a different opinion, can you? But
as much as I’ll agree that we need to start getting better,
shitting on people you don’t like won’t a nation fix;
hatefulness only paves the road of our continued downward spiraling.
One day, I hope to tell you that, in person, how your book left me
reradicalized, stalwart in 2016 decisions and palpitating at how
eventually, all in spite of you, I might just vote the wrong way again.

Willing to learn how to write poems
Dedicated study nurtures
         fragile seed planted; Lexpomo
         community trusted support

Speaking from heart genuinely
Guided by skilled practitioners:
           Gary Snyder, Joy Harjo, Andrea Gibson
           Gillian Welch, Guy Clark, Alynda Sagarro

Write what resonates deep inside
My own source of inspiration:
          it dwells nowhere and everywhere
          overtakes my physically

Words reveal authenticity
Give voice to my expression
         inviting the real and the true
         feeling for just the bona fide

Begin with what I need to say
Open to the unexpected
         taken aback by what wells up;
         I was earlier unaware

Yes, honing my creative craft
Sharpening those poetic skills
         take works in progress as am I
         and workshop them at Lexpomo

In gratitude to each and every participant
         in Lexpomo community

Do not follow me

Don’t try to touch my thoughts
that rest upon this pillow,
I will not stay.
You are amusing, yes.
Well, all the others here are too.
Let’s sit and put our toes
into the cool blue sea
and watch as
parachutes drop into boats
that jump the waves 
and pass above our heads
like porpoises with wings.

Let’s drink to our good health
and dine on golden wings
from albatross
and other feathered things
the likes we’ve never seen.
Let’s fly up in a blue balloon
and search for bonfires
down below in forests green
and dark with shadows grey

Let’s run and run and leap
high as we can 
then ride the elevator down,

           down 

                      down

                                 down

No, wait!

Do not follow me
for I awake and flee!

I forgot your coffee this morning 
But I did write you a love poem.
Please forgive me.  

Same things are happening here

for what it’s worth, it’s pretty darn clear

there’s still a man with a gun over there

tellin’ us all we better beware

It’s time they stopped, everybody

hear that sound, 

can’t you see what’s goin’ down

too many lines been crossed

and there’s no peace, if everything’s wrong

Queer people standing up tall

Mind manipulators wanna see them fall

It’s time they stopped, Queer folx

hear that sound, 

everybody see what’s goin’ down

Time to march in the street

millions of people in the heat

wearing flags and dancing with pride

all them sayin’ this is our time

It’s time they stopped, all of us

hear that sound, 

everybody sees what’s goin’ down

Propaganda strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

You can’t fight if you’re always afraid

Step out of line, masked men come and take you away

It’s time they stopped, America

hear that sound, 

Everybody see what’s goin’ down

They better stop

hey, hear that sound, 

everybody see what’s goin’ down

You better stop

yo, what’s that sound

everybody sees what’s goin’ down

Inspired by / written to the tune of “For What it’s Worth: ( Stop, hey what’s that sound)” by Buffalo Springfield, released by Atco Records Dec. 1966

This poem begins where the ditch forgets its name—
becomes creek and then river. Begins
in the soft shush of a compressor’s next breath,
in the crawlspace crack beneath this very brick apartment.

It wears no gold. Carries no saint’s remains.
It’s the wild onion stench on a spill of bent clover,
this poem that blooms where the ditch forgets its name.

It won’t come out in clean light. Prefers the lies
told by glow on a nicotine-stained sheet
while, outside, the ditch forgets its own name.

It maps what wants buried:
there is oxygen’s next complaint,
here is the rosebush grown, over–flowering
still in a tangled bramble
outside this very brick apartment.

The poem holds the silence of a shuttered country store
at midnight,
faint as hymn from a shuttered church. Holds still
where the ditch’s throat
forgets its name. Holds the crack.
Creates the frame.
Forgets its name.