The void that is vengeance 

Unroll yourself in the June heat,
torpid, blacked out on a bench
in the sun. You liquify, you radiate.
Sweat snakes down your ribs.
There is no reprieve, there is just
sun-blindness. The white burn
of nothing, emptying your skull.

Dreams
full of dreams
When life begins
Not always the grandeur

Maybe

Just
mundane and
soft

Today the trails were covered by Kudzu’s cranky cousin

Poison ivy

Every where you turned

She snaked up tree trunks

And curled up by roots

Like a fat cat at her master’s feet

Those pretty three leaves,

Vibrantly announcing themselves

Unapologetically climbing toward the sky

And once she felt especially established

She threw out beautiful, crisp white blooms

That begged to be touched

For no meager price

I love her, though she’s literally scarred me,

She rules a quiet queendom

Asking for no permission than her own

She holds firm to her boundaries

Striking earnestly if one oversteps

We all could learn from poison ivy

Poetry born in the
dance of whispered words
silk dreams and memories
morning fog veil
soft forest whispers
ripples of romance
soaring love song
nocturnal stillness
sky lace of stars.

Magic that
waters the soul.

Eating blueberries in bed
and licking the juice 
from each other’s lips.
Your hands roaming
the rolling hills of
my body and
worshipping where
the peak of my hip
flows into the
valley of my waist. 
I have never been
closer to meeting 
God than I was in a 
Ford Ranger’s
passenger seat.
I have never been
closer to meeting
myself than I was
in a converted garage’s
futon bed.
Do you
remember?

On an evening swimming in swelter,
field lies wrapped in the greens of ryegrass
& moss & bindweed, stippled by musk thistle’s
magenta spikes, while white pine stretches its limbs
under a sky softening to haze, & rock wall girdling acre
cools since sun’s slow shambling departure for the underworld.  

And then twilight deepens, alighting from the distance, steps
onto fields, hooves the color of oak trees, grey-purple
robes rustling, shifting into shadows, whirling
a dervish tune like crickets’ throbbing trill,
looses bats’ serrated flight overhead,
stirs hares into skittering over  

clover & across meadow
like moonlit shards
brief & bright.  

abuelito you were once a priest
            so in every church, in every country, in every continent
my mother & i stumble into             we light a candle for you & our
hearts ache & weep for your comfortable silence, your soft smell
& nimble hands to cradle us             my mother yearns for it more
than me                 but like my grandpops your body is trapped
beneath the bedrock         i need you to reach your hand from it
to hold mine                 god is an afterthought to me now, a sad man
            sad image we’ve been tricked into loving but you served
him til’ your last slow breath     & all my memories of you are tucked
into him & all my memories of the beauty of him tucked into you
but you’ve been gone for years now & i never truly loved him when you
were slow stepping your way on this earth                     but i accepted him
& accepted him more with you alive & mumbling about the beauty of his gospel
his psalms & his word                     i want to ask you about Gaza         about the holy
land         see the state of the world through your eyes because like god
i felt like you were wise & all knowing even when you pretended to look
the other way or not comment on the troubled souls of your son & daughter
but seeing the full picture plotted out like a movie in front of your quiet
blue eyes anyway                you’re presence     glue,             binding us all in
warm love             without you we are battling with how to love one another
again

A rickety bridge pasted together with pieces of nature’s derma ~
only way to cross the rushing waters,
A flimsy sway over a too long drop,
Native’s bare feet have worn a soft cheatin’ death groove
as the weary weighted wood speaks ~ softens ~ smooths
In the many to’s and fro’s ~ beseeching creaks and groans warn ~ and the fraying hand woven siding sounds of a flimsy rope burn hold,
a weak chain between
here and there . . .

Villagers have named this path ‘Namu Ocku’ piercing passage
They believe if one will give up their heaviest heart thoughts before crossing
Offer them to the Earth and Water Valley Goddess ~ Hanama
the passage over piercing point will be safe ~ no harm will befall
If a green ti lei is left before crossing ~ assured safety is held in the 
strength and never ending love of the crossers’ ancestors

Those who have chanted for years ~ O MAI O’ OHANA

Polarity lives in a hut in my mind. 
It goes out to its garden of tomatoes
and plucks the ripening ones 
for my mother when she comes home. 
And then it goes back inside
to rest in bed, lonely. When she leaves, 
it rejoices then checks her location, 
waiting for her to return. It smiles
when my parents exchange affection
while resenting the harsh cold
of my adolescence. It drinks 
when we’re alone, and stays sober
at parties. It shakes at the idea
of going out alone, but listens 
to true crime shows on the way. 
It spends its days waiting to sleep
and its nights extending consciousness. 
It wonders if my awareness
will cease its existence, and concludes
that only fools hope for its end. 
Polarity lives in a hut in my mind, 
but is in the process of building 
a home.