Anthology

If there was a lifetime 

I could not read it all 

Perhaps it’s my eyes 

They are older and harder to focus 

Perhaps my age  - I’ve lived past 

Some moments - first love: deeper 

Loss - children: almost grown 

Divorce and happiness 

The discovery there is no good: there is no evil 

An awakening that has taken me down 

As I continue to grasp the strings which connect 

Me to this existence - yes if I had a lifetime 

It would not be enough but I at least can start 

The remembrance - the intermingling of branches 

The leaves that fall and are picked up and placed 

In books such as these 

Where voices have an audience hundreds of years 

Into a future known only to the writer - the leaf 

Will fall out and the words will remain and it will 

Be another lifetime- perhaps then I can get it right

We can meet under a new moon 

Kiss 

Go back into our lives: see my kids grow every day 

          A better or a worse existence is unknown 

What I do know is - 

          I never would’ve had so many cats 

Never known such love 

          Such sunrises and sunsets 

In a Kansas sky 

Fear

I saw a movie

A simple film* 

Man died 

Life reviewed 

A nice man 

With an ok life 

A job, a divorce, no kids

A small BMW 

              Not the 750 

But no amount of car would’ve saved him 

A bus hit him 

The review was long

For such a simple life 

9 days to show his fear of living 

Because on earth 

This simple earth 

Is of overcoming fear 

*Defending Your Life (1991)

Dissident

In being honest with myself

I’m a bit lost - like a poem 

That has not found its shape 

A voice it has - a destination 

Set - but a shape - lost which 

Is strange because I’ve always 

Had the same shape - give or 

Take a few pounds - enough 

To entice but not enough to 

Fear - as I enter my fifty second 

Rotation around this cloudy earth 

Perhaps I’ll find my shape 

And the fear will dissipate as fear tends to do 

in answer

“Be like the blue sky” 

I heard this say - let 

Each emotion escape 

Into the ether - it permeates 

Each sense - it is all there 

Every tear I ever cried 

My laughter and so much anger 

The pain - the physical: emotional 

It all balances - an existence lost 

Amongst the blue sky 

The river races to reach it - ends as it does 

Evaporates as we do 

A shallow grave - I don’t have the strength 

For anything deeper - that way if the bell 

Rings - it will be easier to dust off and answer 

Tapestry

each line is work -

a slow work of ethics and morals -

Evolving - what was true yesterday 

is false today: a miscalculation of ethnicities

i always felt: germans always have a way 

of tolerating but not accepting: mexicans 

have a way of accepting but not tolerating 

and when the two meet as it is bound to happen 

                      - the novelty is fun - 

the love and hate of the accordion

Reigns true -

the tolerance often is not enough

- each line is work 

 

abscission

I have so many poems 

We’ll never finish - each a leaf 

In time - that hung on 

Till the wind came. 

Many fell from the northern wind 

Raised into a tornado by a western 

Wind - that raged against a growth 

That fell in the spring - a southern 

Death - sprung from a travesty of comedic errors 

So each poem has a start somewhere 

In there - yet most poems end with me 

As I travel the highways - sit in a cage 

Giving away numbers like a lottery so 

Many can leave - some stay - I’ll stay 

Until the dawn - sleep my days away 

Write poems - until there is no more 

To live 

erēru

two laughs for the price of one - isn’t that what we all want 

- a simple pick on a menu: a life created by a split: what one

lane has the other is left - I try often to pick the fastest only 

to end - resurfacing a thought pattern: how deep my breaths 

go - how hot the sun becomes: how each moment wasted is 

spun into a tale: how a sun 

implodes before it destroys - perhaps it has the same thought 

one more rotation: one less spin - how often it all escapes - 

an aberration in white and black - what a twist:  a turn like 

Shakespeare wrote: decades ago - it all comes down to two 

laughs: one mine the other the universe