Mind Travels Seven

A 9/ 11 Aftermath

Ages before there was H.D

I asked is the TV

More real than me?

And caused days to become

Another way to say

“Not this! Be afraid! Turn away!”

Has it made flesh a mattress?

Or a rug on which to pray?

Made prayer mandatory

To avoid Purgatory?

Even if we do not know

Of any sins we’ve done

Or to whom or what

We are required to confess?

Thus desperate for solutions

Lost among question marks

Terrified by spiritual realities

Adrift among wreck periods of joy

The question still persists…

Is TV more real than me?

The Neo D-Link

The genius once asked

His six year old son,

“So? Where do you

Think that god lives?”

“Daddy,” the child replied, “God lives alone

Beyond the stars,

Where all is blackness…

In a house

He cannot leave

Because we won’t let Him.”

And the Father paused

Wondering where and when

All his originality

Disappeared to?

As his six year old

Slurped his cheery ice cream cone. 

Only When God Sleeps

At times when God sleeps

I see you reclining among

A choir of blank tombstones,

With a small basket of fruit

Looking away to children

Who are no longer heirs

To this somber monuments

Playing between decorated evergreens

And along uneven crumbling stone walls

I see their parents poised and posed

Quietly applauding them and you.

But then of course

My love for you

Makes this reality only a poem.

The Stranger I Detest

ANGRY AND ARMED

I AM SEARCHING

FOR THE STRANGER

WITH THE OH SO GIFTED TONGUE!

The one who

Writes those poem

I come upon

Shoved down

Among your jewelry

And unused credit cards.

When I read them

I sob and cry

And wonder why

I can’t write verses

Which photograph you

So full of kindness

And lost among the joy

Of giving yourself

So fully?

One day

I’ll capture him and then

Do I kill him dead?

Or pay him for the lovely auras

Only I can touch?

By A River – Memory As Current

Overhead among the silvery maple leaves

Strains of someone’s attempt

At Hyden’s Horn Concerto swirls

Beefy armed women teeter on stools

Exchanging black window blinds for white.

And gray haired veterans

 Riding red wooden rocker

Far back on shaded porches

Jury the paper boy’s throws

Made from his green

Iron framed…one speed

Balloon tired bike

Declaring each attempt almost perfection.

As perfect as the monotonous rhythms

The neighborhood generates

In this late August heat.

All this peace

Only four swiftly perfect summer days

Before Destiny

Wearing a tiny black moustache

And knee high black leather boots

Ends all this … Forever.

Just as the trumpeter faltered

And the paper boy often missed.

Only The Poet Suspects That A Mirror Lies and Lies

I am a traveler

My feet hate being still

Every hill holds more

But once crossed

A lake is worth one glance.

I am a traveler

Each day reduced to memories

And a single frame

But I tell you

A mirror always lies.

 Afternoons mashed flat

Between waking and love making

My memories are as dead

as last Sunday’s editorials.

I do not journey to see

But go only to know

For sure that

Trees tell the truth

And plants always reappear.

And from the darkness

Other adventures, travelers

And other fools

Wait to hear

That a mirror always lies.

Harold quote Kant

Spinoza and Guide

Renounced the world

Cursing man’s greed

And died.

Herman spent forty years

Leaning over the sides

Of ships Wondering

What the porpoises’ said

Remembered St. Francis

Words at night

And wrote his reflections

On greasy gray bulkheads

And died.

Dick counted the days

From Sindays’ nights

To Friday afternoons

Cursed bastards who never worked

And died.

I am a traveler who met Chester

 Who never spoke.

Who never took a single step.

Who lay still as a dead stick

 Staring at the nursery ceiling

Seeking answers Inscribed

 In the peeling paper and paint

Till he was forty five

And died.