MIND TRAVELS.EIGHT

DWARF GODDESS

There are …

(Times, glimpses, instants,

Yet none of adverbs of time

Ever fit intuition)

So upon occasions

Jammed between

Your hands, your words, and images

One perceives …

No captures … No

Intrudes on your

Rare unselfishness

And not be awed.

Merely step aside

And turn the camera’s eye

And beauty’s recording ears

To close ups of her

Pushing a thousand

Idiots into the blessed

Chamber labeled …

ACCOMPLISHED!

EQUINOX

I Think

It was about

Five years ago

That I first

Took interest

In the arrival

Of spring

Not knowing if

I would ever

See another one and

First realizing spring

Is not a new beginning

But a segment

From a cycle

That I once assumed

For me

Was endless

I do not seek

For first Robbins

Nor try to capture

The maples’ first green.

No …neither sad nor awed

I sit amidst this re-coloring mat

Unable to recall

How many I have beheld.

LAMENTING FALSE STARS

Liz Taylor died… But when?

Obits had been prepared years ahead

(An infant was run over by a lawn mower)

We are escorted on an endless review of her films

(Sixty million (60,000,000) have no health insurance)

Not only good also the bad ones

(The Arctic Ice Sheet is 40% smaller)

We are showered with photo mementoes galore

(Some say Jesus comes again May 21st)

Details of her eight marriages Richard’s highlighted

(Congress drags its feet and us)

Liz was late for her rites…deliberately.

All actors’ lives are repeatedly reinvented lies.

A year and the needy embrace another one.

However ………

Somewhere near some unprouncable village

A nineteen year old kid

Who joined the Marines

Because he couldn’t get a job at Mickey D’s

Died saving his three buddies’ lives

Who were blown up by an I.E.D.

Before they could file a report

Shouldn’t we ask … who the hell cares about …

Never mind.

WELL, SOMETHING SNAPPED

When the night stays

When there are no more paths

When memory is a dying field

When the final tick of the metronome

Stretches out like a dying cat

Does it really all stop?

CLICK …

Just like that?

Or at the end of the tape

Do we understand

That now there is only depth

That length and width disappeared

Into all our Sindays?

CYCLE

By making magic

An entertainer blots out

Changes the world tolerates

If their magic is great

A dome is erected

Which neither life nor death

Is able to penetrate

Each priest brings his own illusions

Reality changes with every act.

In between clowns make the audiences

Grin at mirrors less intricate … more clear.

Life becomes a game

If there are no artifacts

There is no magic

And through this communion

Clowns sanctify our amusement and solidify our faith.

The artist needs the audience

The magic needs applause.

A COUPLE OF POEMS FOR JO-ELL

It’s always early morning

Only you and I

Among slumbering larks

Witnessing the rebirth of color

We exchange no words

The past envelopes us

We dodge among the forty-eight years

Our friendship spans like a foot bridge

So my questions are shyly selected

“Will the larks sing when I am gone?”

“Where did my words of wisdom go … Jo-Ell?”

NUMBER TWO

I recall

I once pictured him

Standing in a one lane alley

Vehicle after vehicle

Knocked him down

HE RISES Until

The one he owned

Ran over his face

Radiantly he sits among the dandelions

Feeding them his excess joys.

His intelligence made him a solitary bear

His passions placed him first among Unicorns

JUST THE FACTS

EVERYBODY’S GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL

HEAVEN GOT FULL UP

CENTURIES AGO,

IT’S THE CHRISTAINS FAULT.

THE DEVIL GOT BORED

WITH ALL THE SCREAMING

BORN AGAIN FANATICS.

SO HE ARRANGED

FOR HOLLYWOOD

TO MAKE ALL THESE

VAMPIRE AND ZOMBIE MOVIES

SO PEOPLE ENTERING HELL

DON’T ALWAYS FREAK BUT

JUST SAY OH!

I’VE ALREADY SEEN

THIS ONE!!!

THE DEVIL DON’T CARE

THAT GOD’S PISSED

“GOD WANTS TO MAKE

YOU SING ALL THE TIME”

SATAN SMIRKS BETWEEN SMILES.

THE ANSWER

Has it really been

So many years

Since we sat on the floor

Sorting slides and

Listening for ‘just the right music’

And matching the images to words?

Has it really been

So many moons

Since frost

Licked the roof of the truck hotel

Outside Carcassonne?

Since we rafted rapids

To Hebrew commands

In Peru since we gazed

At sculpture fashioned by hands

Doomed to Portuguese slaughter?

Where had the flowers gone

Which we picked and pressed

That kissed the sun in Galilee?

So many to some many homes

Who really do not know

What those flowers are really about.

So where do we go from here?

Over the sun? Into the cave?

Or into the words

Born of long lines of people

Pressing and passing, laughing and crying

Coming together and falling apart 

As they touch their palms to the forehead

Or ours to theirs?

So here is to thirty-two good years

And then some …

A day saving bits of you

And us … into

The dawn of tomorrow.