Summer's Momentum

Cicadas
singing tree to tree

Scent
of mulch rising with humidity

Children
on squeaky swings

back forth
  back forth
    slowing
       slowing

summer's momentum

Crossword Puzzle

I saw an elderly couple
working on a crossword puzzle
and for a second I envied and wondered

How nice it must be to
connect words with ease at the end of life
The ones we struggle with day in and day out

The complexities in the white noise

Turn the television and the radio off

Tear down the world wide web of deceit

Shut the fuck up, reconnect and just love.

It's said that we mellow
as we age but this little light of mine
is a steady conflagration engulfing every section

ArtsBusinessEntertainmentPolitics
ScienceSportsTechnologyTravelObituaries

My paper is burning
Corners hissing and turning

Blame it on The Times
and read T
               H
               End in the ferment

Cauldron

At night

I lie in my dark bowl

Comes the blue flame

My rare heart boils inside

Soul screams and climbs

to the rim but doesn't jump

Insatiable incantation 

Pain with prescription

Venus Fly Trap

People say I'm too quiet.

Not the case.  I'm on the prowl.

Patiently waiting for one to stick.

Yearning for mind body and soul to connect.

Touch me right.  Touch me twice.  Discover there's

warmth in my black hole - I'll suffocate you with love.

Trending till the End

A dam shame

to think that the eve

before mortality was also the slow death

of singularity. Father, Mother banished as one

from Eden, fitted in skin garments, heart and soul

enshrouded like the Tree of Life—mind bewildered, harried

by a kaleidoscope of indistinguishable monarch and viceroy butterflies.

Downhill

Days of reckless wonder

Eyes wild, wide, as your bike rushes

to the hill's bottom like waves to the shore.

You crash as a car nears the stop sign

and you panic, sending your hopes and fears

skidding towards the curb, sandcastles crushed,

engulfed, and receded into the sea, blood leaking

into the drain, so abruptly, so definitively, but don't stop

nor despair: mount the bike; reengage the waves with recognition.

It's summer: high noon, high tide. In the heat of our moment, try to catch the wind.

Twenty Four Hours

To Ian,

frail, pale, with vapid eyes,

baritone, brother, born child of God but backboned by the Devil:

I lie down when I listen to you, keeping the tears

swirling in saunas of effervescent emotion: Marco Polo,

drip-drop, hopscotch, child's play – recreations from yesterday.

My joy is not the next man's: from Maryland to Macclesfield, mundanity.

I'm forever obsessed with the sunrise because the new dawn fades

into a perpetual autumn sunset with free-falling foliage,

fumbling towards the ecstasy of ash and dust,

sun holding sway until the final moment.

So, this is permanence....

July 15 – May 18