expectation
makes fools of us cats
like dots that suddenly disappear
beneath our paws

She knew something was up when she did
not just open up that message and respond.
Another thing happened before she answered
instead. She knew she was falling for him when
that first smile crept across her face when his
name appeared and lit up her world (or at least
her phone screen). One first smile turned into
thousands everyday and that’s how she knew
something magical was about to happen to her.

My very first grandaugther 
with your firey red hair
Bouncing like tiger through my fromt door 

Gigi where are you? 
Are you ready for our day?
Adventures galore

Laughter fills the air
I scoop you up with pure delight
So what will it be ?
Off to the library to read some books
Next up water fun at the pool
No time for rest 

Let’s go for a walk 
Reaching up with your tiny fingers
You whisper
Gigi take my hand 
Off we go

These precious moments touch our hearts
It is  quite magical,  the love of a grandchild

SLB

Hey little baby, hey little sugar,
little baby sugar, you been real
quiet lying in the tall grass
lounging like trouble in heat

at night, you seek
to quench your thirst
and quiet the pains of hunger
when my offering is too little

from a high perch, at me, you laugh
and when there is rain
you mark his home as your own

I see you sunbathing
ignoring the drool that gathers
at the corners of your mouth
and I laugh at your willful stubbornness

let me save you, here, here, little baby
come on, lil baby sugar
lemme take you to my place
lemme wipe you down
lemme make you a bed
and share my pillows with you.

Stubborn old man.

one day, sir

yes, I will
yes, I will
yes, I will
persuade you with tuna
and while your pride saunters off
I will laugh.

savanna of cloud
elephant’s trunk, giraffe’s neck,
the shell of a giant African snail
sidling up to the mucuous
membrane of mist shadowing
hydrangea blooms on ocean
scarred by blade and oar.

When
I go to sleep 
my dreams
become the poems 
I don’t know how 
to write 

For over five years I have been a self-made man,
and by that I mean I do not exist beyond
the ink blot, the white expanse of documents.

But I’ll pretend. Yes, I’ll buckle down my teeth
for a month. I’ll clean up my disgraces, be palatable
for the audience of unblinking digital strangers. 

I write to stay human, grounded and considerable.
Sieve through my skull’s interior, communicate 
something. Maybe nothing. Make art, automatic.

There is not much passion, just the habit of gutting
myself for the blank screen. Mostly this is ritual. 
The grand plans died, there is no intention to be discovered. 

There’s just that strange ulterior motive: my death
one day renders a vault of verse, untouched, a near holy
encapsulation of a life written out, dissected, preserved.

the act of visiting the places you know or once knew or are new; sometimes all at once.

You drive or fly to find these places in the physical realm,
all the while, flitting figments of past and present visit you from the daydreams of now and yesteryear, or the nightmarish manifest of storms sailed through and yet to be faced.

You traverse until, wearily, you arrive and take in the now and the new and the once known;
that they and it and everything in between have aged and cracked as scratched porcelain formed decades ago, yet still hold the shape of who and what they are at their core.

You stay and discuss the currents of life, the constant ebbs and flows of being.
And reminiscent instances drip into conversation like watercolor on the canvas of living.
Shades reflecting the entire spectrum of your image, how they’ve shaped you and continue to.

You go, the journey home longer than the journey there, as it all collides:
the body aching to rest, the mind racing and mixing with present and past and imaginary hopes and fears, the soul feeling spread thin by what it loves of home and what it misses as it leaves.

To sojourn: temporarily exist in the moment of past, present, future, and fictitious machinations of who we were and are and will and dream.

war don’t mean nothing
war don’t mean nothing to men like you
war is everything to boys like me
men like you don’t know how to shoot
boys like me are forced to
men like you can enjoy a steak dinner
boys like me are lucky to eat
men like you don’t know how to kill
boys like me are forced to
men like you sleep softly every night
boys like me stay awake from the nightmares 
men like you have never had to smell a corpse
boys like me will never forget the stench
men like you have never had a friend die
boys like me have ran out of fingers to count on
all I ask
and all I beg
of any government or president or prime minister or dictator or whoever
is to please reconsider 
before you go to war with another man like you
because I don’t wanna kill
another boy like me