Tag: American

It’s like

It’s like
that time, remember, you drifted through the crowd with purpose and ease. You saw every way forward, every crease. With only one aim in your heart: to feel the music. Toward the thumping speakers you drift, beating with the rhythm that held your whole body together, held the earth in place. Holy melodies shook thunder from the dome-sky. All you wanted was to feel it, coursing through your entire body, like aching desire. And there was no stopping you. Remember? the sweet release.

(it’s like that)

Passing Under a Skybridge



I’m passing under the sky-bridge
and she’s above, slowly walking
across. I can’t see her breath in the
early morning cold, but I know
it’s there. It could be that she’s
drunk, or hungry and tired, but,
there it is, she’s wiping down the
handrails. And the gull cries and echoes
in the alleys of our minds.
She takes great care, as she walks,
she could just as easily be watching YouTube
or something while she works, but she’s not. She’s
wiping the handrails. With the same
attention and care that she makes
dinner for her grand-kids, she’s wiping
the handrails. Then it hits me,
I’ve been faking it this whole time,
I’m just a dreamer with his head stuck
in the clouds, waiting, no, hoping, for worlds
beyond this to open up to me, and where
has that gotten me —an appreciation for
the woman wiping the handrails on the
sky-bridge, at least. You can see her
beauty in her age, You can feel the
warmth in her hugs, does she,
does she know me? I imagine her standing
there at the end of the walkway, on
game-day, watching, arms folded, rag in her
hand under her arm with a little smirk on
her face watching the hoards cross over
as the kids rush passed guiding
their hands along the rail, as the old folks use it
as a third leg.
But she doesn’t. I know this. I’m dreaming again.
These cities no longer have walls, but they’ve
been built by fear all the same. What effect
has that had on our psyche, I wonder.
Now I’m thinking I should give the kids a big
hug when I get home, tell them I’m quitting the
world, we’re moving, leaving it all behind.
We’re going to survive in the fields,
we may not have heat tonight, there probably
won’t be a show on in the morning, but maybe
we’ll feel our heart beating.
And the morning fog drops
like a curtain
and the turn blinker is an orchestra
the way a drop of water contains an ocean.
Somebody should tell her—
thank you.

You here it everywhere; people looking for work, people trafficking people who need work, people move for work; there wasn’t any work, so they moved. The economy’s doing great, unemployment rates are lowest they’ve ever been. What is this condition we’ve created? Now here’s the thing, I hear a lot of complaining about work, about the need to work, about just getting paid and letting the machines do it for us, but I believe that it is an essential human need, to work; fills our cups, and if we lose it then we lose an essential part of our spirit. But, the question remains, what is employment and is this the best we can do?

falling

Falling and flailing, it seems wildly, but, in fact its what we’re programmed to do when we’re falling. I can feel the jet streams taking me, not unlike a leaf. I was in the clouds, but now I’m falling and the mantra in my head: trust the ground. This happens every time I’m falling like this. And just when it feels like I’ll be falling forever the ground reaches out and takes me from the air. Like getting smacked in the back of the head. I am absorbed into her, I am her, and then filtered through her. This is when the ground becomes the clouds and I’m dangling with my head in my new set of clouds, waiting to fall again.

Always Love

there’s always love available. our job is to find it. when we are stuck looking for where its not we won’t find it. only when we commit ourselves to finding the love that’s available, even in impossible situations, will we be able to find it.

Some trees are already bare, and the leaves that remain, may well remain until next year. When a breeze ripples the giant sequoias, they whisper to each other the lost ancient name of loss and pain
—My love, are you awake?

and the dog down the street sounds the trumpet, and the oboe in the moon soaked starless sky whirs from far to near to far

Yeah But, Who’s Listening?

Words —
We have enough words, but have we got enough people willing to listen. To really listen. It’s easy enough to write them, easy enough to put them out there, but are we even listening. I’m trying. I’m really trying to read your words as if they were mine. When you read do you read just to consume more? I do that too. When you read are you rushing? Same. Maybe we should go back to writing on stone tablets so we can realize how precious these words really are. I’m trying, I’m really trying. How many of us read with care? Read someone else’s poem as if it was your own. Everybody’s writing, but who’s listening. If not you, who?