No Truth / No Justice No Justice / No Peace No Peace / No Balance Balance Truth in Clarity Clarity / Reflection Reflection / Detachment Detachment / Humility Humility / Humanity Humanity / Practice Practice / Persistence Persistence / Balance Balance Justice in Truth– Peace does not happen It is studied, crafted Handmade with care, […]
Poems ~ Publications
A Slice of COVID 19 Quarantine,
for D. A. Rural folk seldom have neighbors pop by. I’m lucky one lives next to me. A great Dane lives with her A cat with me— We stay a crow’s call apart, safe inside. She tends the chickens daily at five. I feed the calico at that time. I greet her tossing feed “Hey, […]
Frontline “The U.S. of Conspiracy” Watch it Before you Vote. It’s Dope.
The United States of Conspiracy… This is some messed shit goin’ on in America. “Anna Merlan, a journalist who has covered conspiracy theories and misinformation for years, is blunt. “The conspiracy caught fire because people were uncomfortable with the idea of a Black president, and they were eager to believe any number of racist smears […]
The Plague, by Camus, says a lot about COVID-19 & Other Pandemics
I Woke One Day and Was a Man I’d wondered what it would be like to be a stranger in a body rented from God, cargo damaged more each day. I thought being a man would mean freedom to go wherever I wanted, do whatever I liked to do, not bound by the long leash […]
Has It Really Come to This?
The story has been told and retold: Ben Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when a lady asked him…. “Well, Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy? Franklin, “A republic, if you can keep it.“ But that’s not the end of the story which most […]
Break This Bottle
If I taxed my heart long enough to reach ninety-one I’d run short of beats, I know, dumb idea, no matter. I don’t need to map life that far to be happy– Still it’s good to know what’s out there before setting a course for the Isle of Calamity—waves rise and fall no gull flies […]
A Few Bad Apples?
The War on Americans. Attacks on the Free Press. A war is over when hostilities end and people become civil again. The Civil War never ended. Racism in America is due, in part, to the inability of Americans to end the violence of war. So it goes on with talk of a second Civil War […]
Senior Complaint
I have an underlying health condition cause unknown, like addiction to Aunt Nora or Widow Jane, a thing always out of reach, yeah seeking either as I’m a dealer, is insane. but when deprived I feel something, something’s seriously wrong with this ragtag raging world we made. Oh sympathy, I have that too, for all […]
A Reckoning
There must be meaning behind a will, there must be healing. Night deepens but I cannot sleep, a lily pond glows drowsy koi floating by a moonlit walk in the park. Is there a reason to feel the loss of so many I never knew, did I help herd them to slaughter my twisted heart pounding […]
Clear Water
In Jacksonville, North Carolina, my brother was eight years old, In a department store, on tip toes, he was trying to get a drink. “Boy! Don’t drink from that! That’s the colored folk’s fountain! Can’t you read? It’s plain to see. Use the white people’s fountain.” Bewildered, he looked around for Mom who fearlessly stepped up: […]
Anamnesis
A recollection of rain in green fingertips tulip bulbs testing the air nudging tiny conical hills in flowerbeds, the swollen creek surges into the last steelhead run the rising Umpqua remembering spring. I cannot attest the season as anamnesis, that begs an old question does the earth have a soul? Let’s say, for our sake, it […]
Gun Violence & Other Madness
The cat chases its tail, the dog whimpers in sleep the heart skips a beat… It’s not a nightmare, not a movie, a TV show. Wake when you will but where will you be, in bed alone, In the den, your unknowing hand holding a gun, at your desk starting at nothing? It doesn’t matter—Looking […]
The Tree
Buddha before enlightenment starved bony looking into the moment for a way out the joy and pain the universal law at the center of the chaos in and around him knowing we all wait under a spreading tree the return of turtles setting eggs in sand salmon roiling upriver to spawn sea lions […]
Lament for the Body Politic
You’re better to believe what we tell the children, God loves us
Satan’s to blame for all the evil in the world, the horrors of war.
Love Poem for a Loveless Age
Oh Lotto Ticket! You make phone sex obsolete, your tongue moves over the gutters of my body like a street cleaning truck. Your love is like a red, red Tube of toothpaste You are better for my mouth than Scope You are better than bubble gum blown during an action packed movie You’re more exiting […]
Invocation
In silence older than the sun the desert holds me like a lover needing little, offering nothing but peace– A voice in the wilderness, “There is no lasting happiness Samsara, Samsara.” Darkness older than silence, older than the coyote howl hunting song of the owl bat wing flick, mule deer kick To move and breathe […]
The Search
I wanted to be a serious poet, but heard they are prone to heart attacks so I lightened up and became a playwright, rented a little studio where I could audition the truth, ran an ad in the paper, “Desperately seeking reality.” And some very interesting characters came to read. There was a sage addicted […]
Advice for Younger Writers
I have always written for my own pleasure without regard for what the critics say. what I write is always about me; what I know, feel, see in you, nature, the news every and any thing that touches me– learn, read, hone your skills, fuck critics just write, that’s it, writing, exploration Discovery If you […]
Éirí Amach na Cásca
(Irish for the Easter Rising) April wilderness stone cold rushing waterfall. Wearing my nakedness as a bear his fur I’m not skinny but I am […]
Barmaid Snippet
“Mind your p’s & q’s”, she said you’ll fall down walkin’ home or crash your car, end up dead not a good way to go, geek– and if you’re writin’ me a poem dot your i’s and cross your t’s. fourth stanza, line six, last word I’ve had an eye on you a while– […]
La Feria de Abril, Sevilla, España
What the old know the young don’t believe the wiles of youth are not lost on the wise: as a busy farmer sees a fox does not call his dog or get a gun the old allow freedom, turn a blind eye The young wonder is life always like this, the elders say, not […]
The Scheme of Things
In a breakneck chase the moose calf goes down, a grizzly devours. wolves stalk for hours the bison get away. the pack sustain on voles and mice mostly go hungry a crow eats the nestlings in a robin’s nest still robins abound. green turtles on a beach lay eggs swim off in the deep. all […]
Lesteka
Just Listen & Relax.
Elegy for Phil
Phil Hayes was murdered in a public park His killer unknown, the imperfect stranger. The police said it was gang related, All his family knows is –He’s gone He sacrificed his life for a friend, That was like him, facing danger Stopping a fight, making peace He didn’t play a hero, he was one, A […]