Sing, Speak as the world spins and changes
Falsities shall be shrouded
While truths lay uncovered

Freeze time in your song
Black bird
Wake the dead
Lull the living to sleep
In sleep your mind is as free as the air

Eat the Rowan berries, brightest red
Black Druid
The symbol of health
Emblazoned on each

We forge ourselves
Into finest gold
With that fiery awakening

Mastery of this hardening clay
Requires a depth charge
crushed into cold,
black, watery hearts

The shock to our frailty dispelled
by stoking our spiritual passion
Unearthing our instinct
to weave and craft our nest

You have tasted of gold
And it has marked your mouth

There ain’t nothing in the life of a child
Quite like a mamaw
Nana, granny, meemaw, mimi, grandma;
All words that share one meaning: joy  

A mamaw is all the things that your
Mom won’t allow
Staying up late; midnight cookies and
Laughter that doesn’t end   

She is life lessons; learning the old ways
Canning and creating
Hands wrinkled and lined with years of
Diligent hardworking traditions  

Making a poultice when you’re sick
Wrapped in itchy blankets
A hot toddy, strong and steaming
Loving and tender words  

Butterscotch candies at the bottom of a purse
Passed out at church
A Thanksgiving dinner gathered at the old
Scarred up table in the kitchen  

There ain’t nothing like a mamaw
In the life of a child
What any of us wouldn’t give
For just one more minute

It did not burn, Alexandria–not in the way
the flame of history is said to have danced. Instead, slowly,
the hierophants stacked the lumber of words, propheysing
a path unto itself, the trodenness of the muddy earth
sloughing off of the toenails of the nobodies. The lemmings followed
one another until all the dilemmas had been written down, drunk
off of the names of people they no longer knew. Identities congealed
on the discarded bones until flesh grew underneath the maggots
of self obsession, crawling towards the cold sun. Some say
it was these muscles that unknowingly twitched their own demise,
while others claim some knowing monad grew tired of the weight
of its own being, disgusted with what it had become. Purposefully,
or not, fractals of destruction eroded slowly, then all at once,
until all that was left was a concept of a memory, red hot
and disintegrating. They could not find the ashes,
the children of the unlucky, and so, simply,
they sang.

you are a beam of light in a night
that would steal me

the color of what morning
now means

a breath in a chest I left
twisted with doubts

the release and relief inside
of my peace

with you,

the air softens as it explodes
all around me

there’s no alphabet for how you
fall into place

you’re my floodgate and levee
wide open

the rain and right words
without any waste

Hail broke against glass.
Whirlstorm of leaves in the rain,
then the shock of light.

one last gasp
before the
day ends

one last moment
before I 
start anew

one last chance
before I am
too late and too soon

Screens are blinding
this old man: visions
of things seen by no one

these measley offerings
add nothing to my off-
spring’s desire

*****
Going blind is never a blessing
my mother said in 1949, 
whatever took her sight

took her life
and the young boy of myself
intuited that she’d seen enough

*****
Those sights of backwater Brooklyn
above the produce wholesaler
an olfactory of rotting fruit

remain crystal clear
while the now of Temple
Terrace fades to blurry

*****
Off balanced I have fallen
clarity a lost friend
but still there’s Dr. Hue,

Penelope and my loving sister
who saw the peace of Europe
before the evil came

*****
American Dutch Russian Jew
my family fractures before birth
and all that badness just a distant

madness, what was it for
Arendt calls it merely banal
where the monsters imply

*****
nothing personal, just doing jobs.
Our lives in this condo courtyard
Dr. Hue says is an actual mirage

of us in the act of passing…
Penelope suggests the Dali Museum
for the collective spectacle

She sleeps, tiny frame tucked
in corners, on couches, in laps
not quite settled into positions
less accommodating.

Eye of the storm,
bringer of calm,
biter of ankles,
unquestioned queen
of the sitting room.

To the gentle tyrant
whose voice quiets
the violence of silence,
whose paws fill
the ache of empty days,
whose warmth provides
on nights eclipsed by loneliness,
we pay tribute.

Because of you
I train
for fights 
I’ll never have,
for fights 
I’ll never win.

Though I know
my strength
in theory.
I’ve never
put it to practice.

My wit, will, and wile
remain only
known
to me.

The Bitch in my head says I’m a Scar On the Universe.
She exaggerates