MINE IS YOURS, OR IS IT?

Poets are thieves

Making off with the best words.

Hoarding them for careful distribution.

You cannot tell a poet much

Has not already crossed their mind.

Quarters in a piggybank

Turning into silver dollars

Coming out of the belly –

Runes & reads & roads

Everyone counting every one.

POEMS ARE SKINNED ALIVE

From living language

Arcane & mottled

Visible only to the see-r

The ti-leaf reader

Appearing from the cards

Like images of medieval life

Depicted in peelings

Left in runes in the sink

Gathered for composting minds

Forever nourishing.

POEMS ARE LIKE RAIN SHOWERS

Of words

Skies sweeping by of a patchworked day

Everything having a voice, telling its own story

Some listening: write it down,

Lest it just run off brazen rooftops

Into gutters

Alleys

Streams

Rivers

Oceans

Clouds

Showers.       

DOUBLE HAIKU

Crystalline rainbows

Dappling the stubborn vacuum

I roll across them.

Vain undertakings

This two-step dance of cleaning

Vacuuming rainbows.

PREDAWN

Is the new 7 a.m.

All those mornings I rose before dawn

That light would find me out upon the sunrise.

I now reclaim the nights,

All the stars I did not see

Shining still so patiently.

Now it is not just mornings

When I am

But whole motherships of night

On the other side of the clock.

WHAT IF

What if this life was the preview to the real event?

A prelude, the someone laying the red carpet was me

I liked the feel of it & climbed on up

Following worn & wary dreams to arrive

Where I need no defenses,

I made my own way

To where I shoved my suspicions under the bed

I made my way.

Now can I shine?

DAISY CHAIN DAYS

Suspicious of such good weather, I am.

The tender center of midday

Sealed by the hunkering night;

My heart counts down beats now.

Idly wondering will I be happy in the Hereafter?

CORNERS

Weedy & overgrown

The yards of my childhood

Good to cut across to shorten the way

Blue uniform, cloth coat, Buster Browns

Crushing crunchy growth.

Mind stratospheric: ablaze!

Body trudging home from the schoolbus stop

Lopsided with a leather schoolbag

A Lone Ranger lunchbox (featuring Silver.)

Of two minds about homework

But well-acquainted with inevitability

Consigned to childhood’s compartmentalization

Free as the sky / sand / sea

All my boundaries

Bled out to edges

Of omnipotence.

THAT FAMILIAR CADENCE

Of my heart

On its own riff

Tipped over the lever

Into countdown

As faithfully as it counted up

To here.

Where we are now,

Feeling the world

As a flashlight does the night land.

Now it starts a little flicker

Pushing out the limits

Of all achieved before.