Charismatic Poet

She slipped to trip

her slipper fell--

it found its light
a wishing well
of painted days
that dreamed of night;

[Cinderella's midnight flight.]

Time sped so fast
her eyes lost sheen
her focus dazed

became unclean

in dreams forgotten
one by one
as childhood lines

became undone.

Each finger filtered
two by four
and every day
they added more

to find her path
and pin her to
the place where

Mother

tied her shoe.

Take a walk with me. Around this flat
uneven road. The bends of drooping pines and blushing chimneys
puffing smoke. And rain melts into daffodils. A woodpecker
on my windowsill. Two crows on the wire line.
And a street of cars winding around the cul-de-sac. The stop sign
overlooks the manhole. I-90 at a distance. There is sunset
falling on Mercer Island. It presses kisses on green.
Some bodies of blue and the Light Rail is rushing. A quiet breath
then clouds cast a shadow over Mt. Rainier...

I

you have no claim on wombs
just as rain cannot hold
onto clouds

things change
they drop
unlike
Autumn's failings

and i give birth
to a man's live ammunition
nurture the beast

II

the images i detest
i love again
this segregated DNA
i twisted from sperm to egg

unlike neruda

i share falsehood of love
to claim part of you
hold you at arms length
while
clasping tight your clutch

III

They haven't spotted me yet
out in the far ort cloud
but I am coming for a visit
unwelcome

Just another frozen chunk
of left overs
large and mixed with rocks
knocked out of my familiar path
by a reckless fellow traveler

Now sunward I accelerate
pulled by gravity and destiny
toward my own death
as the ethereal within warms
and leaves me

Any day now I'll be betrayed
by a smudge of growing tail
by amateur or astronomer
matters not
to me

or them

.
I shall not write of tragedy
in the Shakesperean sense
for I know not of such things

and so I read
and believe

nor shall I ply
the dramatic shenanigans
of the romantics
for reasons essentially the same

and so I read
and believe

I write
in pastoral settings
gentle stories
of love, family
home and hearth,

and I scribe these tales truely
for all those
who know not of such things

so they can read
and believe

The sky is October blue

that vibrant wild-ache kind of blue
that moves crumbled leaves beneath cold air

the kind where sun struggles to steam earth
and I feel my heart breathe like spring's birth
with the kind of breath that makes leaves shake;
makes the last glow of sun tremble before it sets

where the pavement's wet
and the streetlight flickers
with its fake orange light

and I wonder why I continue--

continue to fight

I journey indiscriminately.

Might I explode,

[implode]

find gravity
in a dash of

cognition;

wrap within my gradient wind
that pithy countenance against glass

that waits

pressed for recognition
behind clouded panes?

Dare I set an avenue
paved for my own feet

veiled or bare?

How quickly the time has passed
since the day you became my wife.
After all this time it feels as though
we’ve been together all of my life.
They have been mostly good years
the difficulties have been few.
And the best thing I have ever done
is to fall in love with you.

`

I love the wee and trippy hours of an
after-midnight when that glass slipper
lays glistering aloof, in soft moonlight
while weary dreamers poise inked quills
to carve their thoughts onto pale parchment
from a woozy head -- too early in the day
to be about one's inescapable routines
too late of a night to do all else but swoon.

This is the cherished witching-hour in a life
where most everything is held, transfixed
in the baffling clarity of glad cerebration--
intoxicated Muses dance in celebration.