She starts to lose her bonfire
blushing coat, scraping along
they look like lost paper red
boats, helped along by his
whooshing clutches.

Her fiery crisp leaves waltzing
effortlessly, feeling his wheezing
mint cold breadth, frigid body,
interlocked
by a numbing grip of death

Alternately titled: Last of the fluff
belonging to a Mohican
Norwegian bachelor farmer wannabe.

Any resemblance between said unnamed individual
and living persons purely coincidental.

Scads of decades back in the day,
not since this sexagenarian baby boomer
happened to be approximately
three and a half decades deep,
into his freshman year at college,
the word haircut
just re:entered his vocabulary
at the expense of unfairly
subjecting innocent bystanders
slipping and sliding along oil slicks

why to live with the old

i.
i listened to his stories he
spoke slowly i steeled
not to swim
in the lake

i listened to his stories
strained to nod at
the right time
there was a smile in his eyes

the lake waited

his were not the real stories
the women told me he
did not speak of tragedy
instead his boyhood was

still with him he
smiled with his eyes
my grandfather told me
stories

ii.

why to live with the old

i.
i listened to his stories he
spoke slowly i steeled
not to swim
in the lake

i listened to his stories
strained to nod at
the right time
there was a smile in his eyes

the lake waited

his were not the real stories
the women told me he
did not speak of tragedy
instead his boyhood was

still with him he
smiled with his eyes
my grandfather told me
stories

ii.

Make your way through the ether,
manipulating time
Racing through the universe
just to chase a rhyme.

Searching for a memory
to quell the pain divine.
Bitter opposition
has somehow changed your mind.

All of this is travesty
and all by sweet design.
Poetry expressed my friends
in just a few sweet or bitter lines!

Chase the wind to find the truth,
displayed in bright sunshine.
Remembering that as a child
everything seemed fine!

It has come to our house...
everything is different.
So many changes in a short time,
first, mommy and daddy yell!
The fighting is loud and heated.
Bad words and name-calling!
After, they don't speak to the other.
Going about in tight-lipped silence.
cold destroys the heat...
it is nice outside, but winter
in our war-zone apartment.
Daddy has moved out, now.
Mommy is dating someone
nervous, but friendly.
Daddy comes to take me away
every second Sunday of the month.

Chaotically clustered
cage of
cards covering
all
cynically silent
sides of life
plainly plastered
before my
persistently passing
presence of
the present day.
Thoughtlessly thrashing
out the leisurely
overlapping lanes
of possibilities
prancing through
the pressuring palms
of probability.
With a single stern stomp
taking back the cross
mask of control.
There steadily
stumbled down
the obliquely built
walls of ambiguity

Where lotus blossoms sleep
by marshes dank and deep.
My love went down to weep
so long ago.

She’d had to let me leave,
grow old and grey and grieve.
Go mad with make believe,
not let me know.

That she still cared for me,
though we could never be.
She needed to be free
so she could grow.

But wistful waves still rise,
‘spite savage sapphire skies,
And love, lost in her eyes,
is still aglow.

Sometimes, it seemed she burned
bridges for warmth. Sometimes
while I was still crossing them.

I learned to look forward
to the cool breezes of being gone.

I wasn't bitter though. She needed to be free
to understand the properties of fire.

Oh, how easy it is
To fold the cards
Life handed you

We were not made
For well-lit roads
No, we thrive
In the furnace
Of our fears

Not taking
On the odds
Is foreign to
Those that
Dance to
The sound
Of courage

Ignore the noise
Grow by taking in
The silence
That kills
Joy slowly