The nickname they gave their only child who made them proud.
She graduated college, found a job, got married, made her way.
They bought a nice 2 story with fenced in yard for her beloved
labradoodles.Her life seemed picture perfect, but divorce came,
they sold their house.She started over but something clicked
                                that night in January.  

Coming back intoxicated by alcohol and  yearning for a happier time.
She lost her way falling on the ice, her phone and keys left with the Uber.
No one heard her cries for help in the twilight hours.
Neighbors found her unconscious, frozen to death the next day
at her old address. At 32 she had so much life to live, but
Fate had other plans. I wish I heard her cries that dreadful night,
I would have welcomed my neighbor and sheltered her pain.
Her back porch light still shines through my kitchen window
haunting me with that tragic night.      

Ah, the life of the unnamed NPCs.
Like from videogames, the NPCs.

Spouting strange dialogue on repeat with
great whimsy and no shame, those NPCs.

Having job, house, and dog, yet remaining
free and unchained with other NPCs.

Keeping treasures in pockets while travelling
the seas and wilds left untamed, NPCs.

Walking in circles, hardships left to those
with greater impacts, the named NPCs.

Watching meteors crash, the world burn, and
knowing a villain’s to blame, NPCs.

Losing lives to respawn the next day with
no fear or memories retained, NPCs.

But I like my given name, and so I
can’t attain that prized life of NPCs.

I dream of June singing in a window,
and the radiant heat of her skin—
her strings, lyre, and clarion voice.
her heart’s heart uncooled by rain,
Milled brown wheat throughout my room,
tongues of earth bound with tender blood.

To burn fruited melodies in whale blood,
your sweet warmth sailing through the window
of my room, my seaside room.
Make the new wine, sealed in skin,
the unstrained mercy of summer rain,
desert plain and ocean melody—your voice.

Sing to me love, with guitar and voice.
Sing to me of your brood and blood.
No rainbows arrive without rain.
Come home again—be my window—
shed old songs and shed your skin—
grow love songs, faith light our room.

Come in and dance where there’s room
where we’ll speak gently with one voice
and smell the heat of sun on our skin,
join as friends, court in bond of blood,
then both break all manner of window—
paradise is our coffees mixed with rain.

The rain!  The rain!  The sleek mirrored rain!
Floods impossible pass between us in the room,
so we marry near the window
where you speak to me with your original voice
green as tall trees, rivers, and stones of blood.
Sweet woman, I am sore for the taste of your skin.

Play a rhythm, boom. Play throom upon the skin.
Surrender. The beat. The falling of the rain.
Take me with the kindness of your blood!
Fortunate, I—you arrived at my room—
no utterance unmistakable as your voice,
no bird, one bird, yes—!  I open your window.

Through a window comes a promised voice,
and I feel our room hot with blood.
Mercy wets skin with beads of rain.

A Stone-Heavy No

There is a lived-in beauty  
to the Southern cluttered aesthetic—
a jubilant junkyard
of concrete, rust, and memory.

The collector treasures sentiment over symmetry,
letting patina bloom on every surface.
They trade the neighbor’s polite nod
for the heart’s eccentric drum,
rejecting the sterile hush
of a manicured lawn.

A clean yard is a grave for memory.
Emptiness is not order—
It’s a quiet, clinical erasure,
theft of every story they’ve hoarded.

So they gather silent witnesses—
stone companions that never forget the years.
In this crowded silence,
the past is anchored in red clay,
refusing to be pulled loose.

To tidy is to snap the tethers.
The mossy birdbath, the rusted gate—
they are a stone-heavy
NO
to a world that forgot how to wait.

Woman gags on tang of soot and burnt steam laced with coal-dusted coffee.

Visionary travelers can’t resist 

seeing themselves living

in every new city that they trade steps

for memories they won’t want to recall.

Such a concentration of people it takes

to lose ourselves among 

everyone and everything else!

Depending on their length of stay,

the realization always hits them

around the time their imagination dissipates

like the retreating steam of rain in summer

on the beleaguered pavements there.

So many great things can only exist together

for as long as it takes to acknowledge the work it took

to bring them within each other’s orbit.

These transient entities 

wrapped in their delusions

ask only of how they could 

bring about their visions

instead of questioning

why they should even want

something best distilled

in doses they can control. 

Discussions of cities seem only to follow

concepts of congestion and collapse and calamity

after opportunities for gathering and engagement.

When these travelers come to the end 

of their thought-journeys of haven-harbors,

the fleeting prospect that 

cities don’t make sense

doesn’t matter when they know

that these constructions 

don’t need to coalesce 

in the minds of those within

as long as they remain

magnets for both good and bad.

So the miracles continue to stew 

around the centers of our human hearts each day

that our cities prove that we can build domes of kindness against the world.

I wish I could sink below the moss
spreading itself across the forest floor.
Soft and quiet and verdant
catching the sun in a tender embrace,
flirting with baby oak trees.
I wish I could be still and soft and quiet.
I wish I could feel the roots tickle
all the way to the stark white bone.
I wish I could nourish the lichens
and mushrooms with pieces of me
and find peace feeding mycelium. 

blue night sky above
poet plays the blues below
her blues join the sky

Pomp and circumstance.
Plenty of proud as a peacock
people from all over,
prepared to embrace this new journey; a
presentation to society and even some
passed down lineage.

Profound power in the collective.
Partners in education.
Parallel to the graduates.
Pumping them up with praise.

…Pretty awesome to witness.