Category Archives: Passion

Snooze

Oh morning sneaking in
With bright eyes, an open throat
If you knew the night wherein I’ve been
You would see no need to gloat.
Hush, hush, triumphant sun!
Lower your blinding voice.
Can you not afford we sleeping ones
An alternative in choice?


Terrorvangelism

You told me things I couldn’t hear,
Couldn’t condemn, couldn’t agree,
Preying on the secret fears
All mankind exhibits openly

And it took years to shake you off,
But it was worth each tick of time,
I deflect you with the mocking scoff-
A weak rebuttal to your crime.

If I am forced to listen unhardened,
To hear you speak into my ear,
Like poison in the sleeping garden
When jealous greed sneaked ever near

Forgive me if I make it plain
You aren’t the first Judas I have known,
Nor Judaiser, but your gain
Is toxic with the seeds you’ve sown,

And after seizing all you’re viewing,
The possession will be your undoing.


Your Sin Will Wash Ashore

The sleepless moon is rousing me
And pulling me to ebb and flow
Pale rays cut through to drag the deep
But silt yields nothing worth the know
Still every churning of the storm
And every passing of the tide
Combs through the bowels of the abyss
To clean and purge its black insides
And by the moon the angry waves
Keep threatening to wash ashore
The hollow, lost, eroded bones
Buried, banished to the sea floor.
All watery graves overflow,
And all their secrets, in time, spill.
Every wave hits its breaking point
Against the sand, against its will,
Pushed along by the wide-eyed moon
Who does the deed and takes his rest
So that the sun may shine upon
The tangled strandline confession.


Turtles All the Way Down

The turtle’s shell would crack
Under such a great weight,
And my shoulders have long drooped low,
But I am learning to stand straight,

Learning it’s better late than never,
And never is a very long time.


Liberated

My brother slashed his canvases

His scenes of earth in motion

Were layers thick in paint

Every coating represented commotion

So in the tumult of self-condemnation

He succumbed to but one emotion.

 

I dump my words upon my words

Hoping a new layer somehow conceals

The best in me, the worst in me,

The passion I’m ashamed I still feel;

Instead of smothering my inadequacies

Each word finds a new piece of me to reveal.

 

Letting your best go off to greet the day

Requires the skill to forgive

Perhaps there comes a decisive moment

When you have given all you have to give

And you must decide to slash your darlings

Or let them leave to let them live.

 


Heirlooms

My waffle iron is an old man

who groans as he bestows

dried parcels and dark stories

from breakfasts long ago.

 

My waffle iron is an old man,

whose joints creak and shake

and every lifting of his head

is another threat of break.

 

My waffle iron is an old man

though my children leap with vim

and run and dance along their way;

He can’t keep up with them.

 


Predicting the Inevitable

I should always

occasionally

write a poem on death

 

While mirth still dances in

my gut

and laughter kisses me

 

I should form a stanza or two

Of death riding in on

A pale horse to reap

 

So when the fellow offers me a ride

those waiting on foot

can read the crumbs left behind,

 

 

and say ‘she knew it all the time.’

 


Mortal Enemies

Sorrow used to come at me
With a sharp drawn in its hand
And stab and swing and sever
And I was naught to understand.

Then it knocked upon my door,
But I scarce would let it in
Until it crept off in the dark
It’s blade to whet again.

Now we meet as strangers,
Who recognize the other’s face
But can’t remember if in a dream,
Or in this wicked place

We once fought as enemies
Dealing mortal blows;
Sorrow’s, to teach me misery,
And mine, to cease to know.


Emotional Postcards

From the miles,
Across the sea
Of asphalt and tire
And melancholy memory
I remember you;
Nights we grieved,
And laughed, and hoped,
And, as one, believed.


Function is Beauty

Does the magnificent butterfly
Shedding her chrysalis
Shed also tears -to cry
Or reminisce
Of caterpillar feet,
Big lazy days,
Big leaves to eat,
Simpler, unsightlier ways?
Or does the pain
Of breaking free
Erase the stain
Of all that used to be?