Booth and Lincoln

Intention is not everything.
Execution is of prime importance.

Listen with not just your ears,
listen to your heart but most especially with your intellect.

Don't be too impulsive, either.
Precision requires trigger timing.

Release doubt and unchain the action.

Incidental Meditation

very little of me is romantic.
all of me is investigative.
i do not write poems,
i ask questions

Double Dare

My spirit is in the hinterland in dismal forest,
home to moss, mushroom and tree frog.

My song walks the oceanfront, where it watches after me
like mother porpoises care for their babies.

On the mountaintops I'm set free
still, I hesitate to fly away.

More fearsome than death
is fear of success.

Relativity

In the spin of Mr. Magoo's bicycle wheel,
in the semblance of from where he rode,
to where he's headed, everything
is relativity art because
everything in the park
is related,

even the terrorist carrying the bomb.

Currents of Summer

This is a warning to all who are listening,
you are about to enter the world of bewitchment.

I am persuaded ---dragonflies hover,
the season a floats. Beauty is medicine.

Beware, love's enchantment threads.
The eye of the needle is everlasting hope.

Someset Village

Lornetta Podge's grandson, Will,
just delivered Avon's catalog, The Sale of Summer.

Prior to his arrival, I had been spying old man Zieglar,
mow over and over the same spot of lawn.

In senility, fly wheels slip,
gears and clogs lose their grip.

At 78, I might be the youngest person in the neighborhood,
which allows for the leisurely study of the unhinging of peers.

You, who might be younger than me,
if you want to age gracefully, learn to be patient.

You see, it's not the good who die young,
but the young and the impatient.

What Really Happened There?

A camera is recovered from bomb shelter debris,
30 years after the signing of unconditional surrender.

Five photographs of the roll were shot.
Their historical value is yet undetermined.

Snapshot number 1 is of a group of burly men
of uncouth appearance sitting around a conference table.

The second photo is of a bunker type space
filled with calabashes and ax handles.

Photo number 3 speaks to me in the dialect of Upper Silesia.
It is of an elderly lady heavily made up.

The fourth snapshot is of 3 Gypsies,
wild and crazy, dancing on the head of a pin.

Snapshot number 5 is blurred,and looks like
a sudden flash of light might have fogged the negative.

19 of 24 photos left blank for posterity.

Art of The Bite

Give me your tongue
and I'll give you my teeth
in the bitter sweet
a drop of blood

Reality and Illusion

A given reality is not an illusion
if you make allowances for the incursion of other forces.

The microscope shows the cell is cancerous
not invincible.

The morning is no more settled
than the Milky Way

Almost Bloodless

Everyone of their houses has the same white coffin
tucked away under the family altar.

I have sat in their parlors and heard their excuses.

I do not light candles. Were it in my spirit,
I would burn down mansions.

Night Pitches Her Tent

Your mind is of perfect symmetry
Your thoughts construct seamless inventions

Your words breach out-of-body dimensions
Your heart radiates across the pulsating vastness

Do not forbid me to touch you, Walker of the Desert
I'm here to wash your feet with tears of joy

How Very Small of You

I bring you pebbles by the ton
for your one-woman sandbox.

How do you reward
my team spirit?

You begrudge me moments
to cry my heart out.

Ding Dong, You Bastard

Every clock on every wall
is a definition of logic
and nothing more.

Every poem defies that logic
except this one, cool as a cucumber
and rather tasteless

A Happy Camper

I have a garden all my own
where no one trespasses at all

these the poems of garden that are mine
where spiders may spin and need not fear destruction
by frantic Little Ms Muffetts ---

child brides who snagged me
while I was not yet of sound mind.

Poet

Never do I feel freer than when I write,
for should I live a thousand years
no one have I known nor should hope to meet
who pays more reverence to what I verse than me
(or is it I?)

Australia

Of aborigine genesis
40,000 ages ago,
I scrutinize your face.
I am myself a walkabout

Your dreaming eyes, I search
for those my missing parts
the lay of Land
the heart of Man.

Black Diamond

The smell of your coffee
brings tears to my eyes.

It is the scent of your body.
I have seen you pick the berries.

I AM

We all can be murderers
we all can be paupers
we all can be saints
we all can be rich
To every infection
we all are open

I am
we are
humankind

Bottom Up Construction

The curiosity is not morose.
it is a bygone fact of life.
we color reality by the words we speak.

In that regard, death is like sex.

We ask again,
is that all there is?

Vacation Time

Why were we happy?
Because we knew no other world.

We looked forward to school getting out,
so we could prepare leisurely for the next semester.

We whited our shoes and put them in the sun to dry.

And What About Atlantis?

Yesterday, I was a man.
Today, I am a woman.
In every bit of fiction,
there is an element of truth.

And what about Atlantis?

It's There

Under the summer sheen,
the autumn flare.

Under the skin of silk and touch of satin,
the first of wrinkles.

Behind the perky nose, a wart
from which springs a sprig.

We, Cinderellas, all
we morph.

River Swims

Keep distant for I am an anaconda
I do not constrict unless I am jerked
I do not swallow unless I am famished

A meal per month is all I require
to keep me fighting trim
so that I can swim like a river nymph
the undulating, murky currents.

The Lawn Mower

It is in the ripple effect,
we drift to the far bank.

You turn heavy on the bed and sputter:
"Sometimes, you are obscure, my dear."
I am a poetess - my reply,

to which you hurl this careless comment:
"I see you as a housewife, first."
Sure enough,

to me you are
a used lawn mower.

Atlanta

A ghostly Georgia underpinning
the city that I love, Atlanta
burned to the ground by Sherman
rebirths in fog and morning stretch.

No black and white there is,
save in pain and memory.

Tag

dance slow motion
turn the table
with knee, toe and ankle.

take my words
know, i dare undress you
solemn.

when indeed,
we dance
slow motion.

chain and Consequence

Stand straight, stand tall
you earthly growths.

Not of your root,
I am yet chained.

Pale and Feather Leaf

Privet, privet
in the sun
so much poison
so invasive
so very lady

Robin and Sparrow

Thank you, Robin
I'll spin the wheel

Tell the moon
Do likewise

For love of song
we beg the piper

Canto

What prompts the birds to break into song
at first light? Are they cognizant of what they're about,
or it only me who sees but does not comprehend what God is doing?

When Then You Leave Me

In the distances I have traverse
from birth to now, no one succeeds
to wipe away entirely my persistent smirk
It's a private affair I have with me
I hold on to anything that turns me on
I never have enough of me

The Sailor Speaks

Every dream is navigation,
every sailing is a dream.

Only when the dream is over,
we awake and vaguely understand,

the kernel remains
but not the shell.

K-9

My thought processes
remind me of a dog

whose four legs
move along

and barely touch
and do not trip

First Love

I seek the shadow in the wind.
Your face, I seek among the clouds.
In every cricket sound,
in every leaf that shakes
I am assured,

You hear me now.

Colour

The bird song tones are colored
The colored folk songs are mainly blue
In a chorus of Handel there is daybreak
In me, I color You.

Heaven

Determine what is permanent,
then go for it and hope to share
in its permanence.

Few Things

I make a fist of few things;
the rip of breaking wind under sheets,
the wailing of ambulances
that carry disquieted souls.

I'm on the slumber side of railroad tracks,
awaiting the nightly passage of tugging freight,
here to the Gulf in rumble mantra of steel wheels,
the distances crossed in whistle stops.

Oil Spill Recovery Plan

"Top kill," bottom kill,"
pipe down heavy mud and seal with cement.
Been there, done that!
What are they talking about?
So far it hasn't worked.

Here's an idea: Try hosing in McDonald's Milk Shakes
and Happy Meals(super sized.)
That ought to do the trick.
Worst case scenario, what globs should wash ashore
would look and taste like Crispy Donuts.

My Mother's Eyes

Green is not only a color,
it's also sounds and a place.
This I knew as child, when summer storms,
flooded the house with emerald light.
This I perceived in my mother's glance,
and heard in her voice transfused in hazel,

a woman of verdant eyes.

Human Engineering

To cope means to shape
Shaping reshapes
Reshaping transforms
Transformation replaces
Replacement displaces

Replacement is inevitable

Unforgiven

In your venomous opinion, what ought I do?
Commit suicide or do penance till one of us is no more?
Hopefully, me, since I deserve it.

Is there no joy left in you,
that you can not bring yourself
to forgive the sinner?

Missing in Action

Into a family of strange women he entered
through marriage contract ever lasting
Their husbands departed either mangled,
drunkards or senile.

One brother-in-law, last seen in a visit to the Island,
hardly spoke, hidden under a pile of pillows.
Months later, he was reported running naked
through the village towards the ocean,

from which he has yet to return,
and most likely won't,
hoping he found himself
another Calypso

Distractions Will Happen

A ring on the "Bell,"
the periodic annoyance,
the irritating interruption
to theories progressing nicely.

Henceforth,
I'll screen every call
to not give ear to degenerates
of deep breath, of moaning and panting.

They do not know
who they have bothered
on whose heads I pin with dainty fingers
curses of which I'm capable

"Hail Bright Cecilia"

Poetry flies in the face of reality,
or is it reality that flies away
in the face torture?

In a balanced state,
science and art compliment,
art being intuition,
science building on experience.

Hail Bright Cecilia,
Patron Saint of Musicians.
Who are curious,google her.