Letting Go of Lightning

I remember creating this reality.

I remember having some responsibility for grasping the lightning rod with all its power with all its fire

In what was my smugness then, and is my wisdom now—I threw it away.

A Late Night Fashion Statement
This is hardly the time for matching wits. It's 5 a.m. and I can barely match my socks.

Let's leave it for when we can approach it one sock at a time.

Soft Strength

You were a flower growing from a boulder

A frail thing of beauty

Breaking stone with soft petals

"It was hard where I came from," you said. "But there was a great deal of support."

Ahoy

A ship floats forever in darkness

Seeking a lighthouse—a way

And though the towers beam rips and tears at  restless oceans and turbulent skies

The ship sees only darkness

Vaguely aware of an end to the sky and a start to the sea

Ahoy then

We are sailors one and all

Ahoy

Keeping the Beat

I keep the beat in my mind

The hard pulsing beat

It starts deep beneath this sandy topsoil

It pounds

Causing ripples on the high desert landscape

And on this pale brow

I keep the beat in my mind

Craving its sureness

Its confidence

I keep the beat for those times when life is too deafening

And I am too numb

Birth Star

Suddenly from across the universe—an idea.

Giving birth to a super nova of passion.

A solar flare of fantasy.

But, as with all offspring, it finds its own path.

And you are left with nothing more than the incredible knowledge that one of those stars is yours.

What to Expect

The spaceship Galileo found Jupiter different than what we expected.

What did we expect?

What did we find?

What drives us to understand the farthest reaches of the galaxy and ignore the universe within?

Keep the faith NASA.

Keep the faith human kind.

Dance ‘til You Drop

We danced the circle dance until our muscles ached from the strain.

Until our souls could no longer stop the spin.

Until the blur before us became a colorful rainbow in motion.

We danced until the sky fell and blanketed us in darkness.
 

Remembering

It seems a lifetime ago.

You were a son

A brother

A young man

A soldier

A memory

The Sun

The sun slid through the vertical blinds, pushing them aside slightly to make its entrance.

It stretched through the living room and scattered across the opposite wall

—highlighting the dust that needed dusting,

—the dishes that needed moving to the kitchen,

—the books that needed reading.

Throughout the day it moved across the room pointing out my failings with a just barely perceptible attitude.

It was time for change.

I worked tirelessly until almost the next morning, rearranging and hanging heavy curtains thick enough to block any pushy beams.

A Small Part

I keep a small part of you in me.

Sometimes it bursts into my mind unexpectedly and derails my thoughts.

I answer your letters over and over again, never posting them.

They carry my passion.

They are the proof I have of you.

The Dinner Party

The Apostles are preparing the last supper.

Jesus makes them wash their hands before they eat, because it is the food that is sacred, not they.

Judas sneaks out for a smoke and thirty pieces of silver.

Jesus looks up and down the table with a half smile as he delivers the punch line of his slightly off color joke.

Everyone laughs, even though they know how it ends.

Unity

For the time being humans dominate some, nature the rest.

Anger rages in both.

The universe hungers to gobble up another galaxy; perhaps ours.

Black holes are in space, but encroach the minds of many.

Gold is power.

Some believe their God to be the antidote.

12 steps are difficult for one with no legs.

10 commandments for one with no soul.

Death is a date we refuse to write in our Daytimers.

Subway Saint

What was once so strange, so far from the truth, becomes ordinary.

For you, a godlike look, and the nearness of the sun.

For him, disaster and the remoteness of you.

Stellar performance on a noiseless subway.

A voice in the night, whispering, crackling through the walls.

"Belmont, change here for the Howard."

So you do.

Vanilla Ice Cream
A small, quiet voice inside wonders if this is how life is meant to be.

It's shouted down by a chorus  with indisputable reasons for celebration and joy.

Their words seep through the open sores in my sanity.

I try to join. “To life,” I shout.

Then I empty the groceries from my backpack and find that the vanilla ice cream has melted all over the bottom.

It's dangerous to celebrate too soon, and tragic to hear the quiet voice too late.

Out of the Mouths

There was nothing to say but I spoke anyway.

It’s a nervous habit that causes more problems than it solves.

I try not to, but then along comes this silence and I panic.

The words continue to fly out of my mouth and I put every effort into looking as if I know what I’m talking about.

Of course I don’t.

But in my fantasy, I walk away to the sound of voices whispering, “I wish I’d said that”.

So do I. So do I.

At the End

All moisture transformed, and now only fluid thoughts and a sense of what wetness was.

I've often thought of this and remembered tears.

Dissolving Integrity

A nuclear reaction.

The sense of critical mass; impending melt down.

Things move faster than the original plan, fusing into one molten bad idea.

We missed the warning lights and sirens, or chose to ignore them, and now the contamination readings are off the meters.

The core that struggled to maintain it's integrity, begins to dissolve.

Even the most loyal choose to evacuate, shaking their heads beneath silent white hoods.

The universe shudders at the waste.

Happy Birthday

1 2 3 4

Count them

The years of your life

5 6 7 8

Remember them

Each one your legacy

9 10 11 12

Share them

They serve no other purpose

13 14 15 16

Each one a candle

Each one a star

50 60 70 80

The wisdom the joy

The sorrow the pain

Mark them not by the number that pass

But the smiles their memory brings

Speaking in Tongues

The wind is howling outside my window.

It restates the obvious and I lay here feigning interest, trying to recognize the accompanying melody.

Safe Harbor

I recognize the opaque wall.

I crawl into its open arms; into the seductive look of safe harbor.

I need its embrace so badly I am hardly aware of the stench of a thousand belly up thoughts floating around me.

Choice

A mother, filled with fear, sucks her children back into her womb.

"You will be safe here," she whispers, and pats her swollen stomach.

She nods to her God.

She nods to her children.

She nods to herself at the rightness of her choice.

Finishing a Thought

A shell to her ear.

A finger to her lips.

A million cells in her brain begin to move like migrant workers through a cotton field.

The yield is great.

The work is hard.

The thought is complete

Grocery Shopping

In the checkout line at the grocery store I try to pay attention so I won’t lose my place.

I bring the wrong groceries to the counter and the checker gives me a smug look—a sigh.

It follows me out to the parking lot.

To my car.

To my apartment.

It stays until all of my groceries are gone.

If they think I’m going back to the store, they’re crazier than I am.

Who’s In Charge Here?

The savior walks among us in an unrecognizable form.

Speaking in an unrecognizable voice.

Those who do recognize—follow.

Some follow who are lost.

Some follow who believe themselves worthy.

Some follow simply for the prophet to be made.

A Very Old Tree

Roots pushing up through the ground like a parched and bony hand.

A woman is screaming, “You bitch, you whore.”

I don’t think it's meant for me, but I'm glad to be here for her to vent.

I offer her no other help.

I can’t.

I have less spirit than she.

I survive quietly.

No loud cursing at strangers for me.

And I will live this safe existence until my hands look like the roots of a very old tree.

The Moment

There's a path for each of us.

A way to.

A way from.

It's the moment after this one that defines what this moment has been.

It's the child after you.

Upstream

The crisp full moon is bright enough to border on offensive.

It's affecting the tides.

There's some ancient sense of a sexual celebration.

An appointment to be kept somewhere upstream.

Like our predecessors, we swim frantically to make this liaison.

Like them, we find the satisfaction fleeting.

Silent Promise

You stepped bravely into the dark night.

Knowing the effect it had on you, I asked the blackened sky to do you no harm.

You left that night with a smile and a half-hearted promise of a future.

I have grown older waiting.

Storing up wisdom and anger for your return.

Just barely keeping a silent promise to survive.

Tasting the Darkness

Pushing at the walls of darkness.

Struggling to keep them at bay.

Blackness oozes through her fingers

and she licks it, expecting to find it bitter.

Instead sweetness instantly sets her free.

Everyone Knows
To think beyond all that you have learned.

To see beyond all that is before you.

To hear the music that brushes your consciousness, but never lands.

These things are done not in the darkest night.

Nor in the brightest day.

But in that moment at which the two meet for only a breath. When neither is night gone nor day yet born.

It is then, that everything is known and everyone knows.

Falling
First slowly, as if the reality has not fully sunk in.

You drop your leaves like sparse  tears.

Soon your sobs echo through the canyon and your tears fall unchecked to the now golden ground beneath your limbs.

In your nakedness you look fragile and hardly able to withstand the coming winter winds.

But that's an illusion—like life itself.
 

Still no Answer

I’ve left a dozen messages for the supreme being.

I’ve written hundreds of times—and nada.

How can you expect people to keep worshipping you if you ignore them.

I'm a little uncertain about the whole God thing.

Which is probably not a big deal since you gave up on the whole man thing years ago.