In Twilight

I eat your hate
And grow evil
In the garden
Of my arms

The rusty needles
Shot from your eyes
Pierce mine registering
A great weeping about kills

You didn’t have to make
Using your mind to dissolve
Every last remnant of resistance
To your never ending thirst for blood

Food & Despair

The price of gold was

Being driven up by

Fear and collapse



Farmers being dispossessed

By crops with no viable seeds

And too many days without rain



The most crucial aspect was food

To populations on small islands

Developing their night prayers



However the day came when it all changed

First the shadows and then reincarnation

As fractal progeny in marvelous soup



Dancing to the sound of light we just might make it

Thought the pair throwing caution to the winds

Looking defiantly at infinity holding hands

The Oil Age

Underlies

The fabric

Of our lives



Drives politics

Consumes media

Delivers fresh meat



Cod livers on platters

The spleens mixed beans

Maybe they’ll save my brain



Just who was leading the parade

As it swept up lies filling in blanks

Causing an erosion of powerful words



Like a mighty wave we were thrust along

Dumbed down to grade school level we vote

Not with our minds but with the sadness of blues

Buddy Bensey

Is death more mysterious than birth?

After birth we all thought less and less

About where we had come from and why.



You were a pillar of strength an existentialist

Enlisting in the Navy you returned

Ready for anything needed.



You cut and stacked some wood for the future

And sure enough you built a home out of it

Designed to your exacting specifications.



I will never forget your many merit badges still

Stapled to their official Boy Scout papers

‘Cause you had no need for them.



Every time I met you I felt the power contained

Like that of my own father you were capable

Honorable and served your country well.



How can I believe your death is the end of light

More than I believe your birth was the start

To all that you made out of a lifetime.

ONE

Consciousness was like an iceberg
Raised from the surface of long naps



To face the full light of an infinite day.

Chuck Berry

Since I exist
Nothing’s perfect

Said the wino to a big parrot
Sitting nonchalantly on his shoulder

Nibbling graham crackers while cursing,
“Come along now ladies, the shows about to begin!”



And the old sailor reached a filthy hand deep into his pocket
Pulling out a faded picture of the parrot’s mate he began to holler

I’ll give anybody a dollar who can tell me the name of this here parrot!
Suddenly a small boy in back of the crowd jumps up and says, it’s Maybelline.

Twilight

The lace of clouds
Gentle and shy
Dawn smiles

Greeting the light
Woman’s scent
On the breeze

Yellow meadow
Opening gate
Footsteps in
My flowers

With a warm tooth
She makes a red
Bed full of her
Lust for blood

A Star is Born

Before your beginning
Atoms are like stars
Awaiting the hand

Lifting them up from
The browns in the
Ground to live
--------------
Dying was waking up
On the other side of
The quilt we made

Death just the period
At the end of your
Life long quest
--------------
An instant of conception
Initiates an individual
Book of experience

Neither here nor there
But beyond all horizons
Where God illuminates you

Risky Business

Writing on the glass sky
In red ink drip by drip my
Blood slips out of my eyes

Running down channels to lips
Then finger tips and my pen
Capturing each instant in
Atomic quantum detail

Knowing full well it
Would go down in
The ‘Book of Life’

Write carefully
Live strong
Die well
Friend

Stop

Through the soft
Rain first morning
Train sounds its horn

Damp porch pillows
Slide the rumbling
Locomotive inside

Where I’m dreaming
I taught the Indians
To tear up its tracks