phoenix monsoon storm
haboob isn’t dirty word
it is dusty though
Inflame
the world we abuse
roasting us like marshmallows
in a fire we lit
Flux capacity
Nature and wildlife
are gradually vanishing
like in the photograph
from Back to the Future —
our future is vanishing too
but we have no hundred
and thirty horsepower
gas-fired time machine
to go back and fix it.
Liftoff
believing my wings were fragile and fractured
in my formidable forties, i abandoned
approaching fifty, i know my wings are strong
they just cannot lift so many heavy
Accelerant
our apocalypse
once in ultra slow motion
now on fast forward
CBT
but the science bears out
my catastrophic thinking
Fixate
lobotomy by sparrow beak
brain pecked full of dread
brimful society syrupy sweet
carelessness killing us dead
memoryvines creeping through
sockets of wasteland dreams
a humming vibration of stasis
stuck lid on boiling progress
jammed gears of regression—
a spinning orbiting rotation
would be movement at least
incessant click click click
of the going nowhere echoes
like fading robotic heartbeats
a constant why? why? why?
the most important question
that never even mattered
answerless, unanswerable
speedbumps of psychological
queries emerging like stones
in the body — stuck motion
mind eternally trying, failing
to write its story, click clack
bones, ligaments, thoughts
stutter sputter twitch to death
choking on ink overflowing
poems destined for somewhere
turned inward flooding nowhere
release my brain to infancy
for it is smothered with age
That social fellow
Where once I loved my flesh,
That social fellow,
Now I want security of bone
And cherish the silence of my skeleton…
—Thomas McGrath, from “The Progress of the Soul,” Figures of the Double World, 1955
June — boom!
In Phoenix, summer is a heat bomb that explodes in late June.
Fractal
shards of memory
jagged-edged
broken emotions —
wholeness
is the fossil
of childhood —
growing up
fractures
many things —
Keys to happiness
“The key to happiness is pretty much the same as the key to worry and anxiety — you must learn to make a big deal out of nothing.”
“The key to happiness? Simple really. You don’t let short-term concerns ruin your life, and you don’t let long-term concerns ruin your day.”
—Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Jettison
Middle age is a heap of abandoned ideals.
My heart
God completed my heart
then you finished it —
mortal combat style