when you live too hard
forty is a warning
fifty, penalty
poems
How to shine
it’s not that the people
with nice shiny attitudes
haven’t been banged up —
but they buff out their
dings and scratches with
gratitude and positivity
perspective and grace
resilience and courage
with purpose and faith
Fragile
Grief is looking up
to see Never
at your window —
rapping on the pane
of your heart —
Proof of youth
Be thou not ashamed of lust —
desire was born in primal dust
it mingled with the seas of life
to make the mud we know as love
Dear Yesterday
Dear Yesterday,
You begged to talk with me
but I am too busy with Today —
maybe we can catch up later —
if Tomorrow doesn’t treat me well
I will call to cry on your shoulder.
Memories shiver
Why does cold weather refresh old griefs?
More quiet for reflection?
Longer nights to lie awake?
Like citrus, grief is a winter fruit.
Depending
Sometimes life gives honey
and other times, stings;
Sometimes we need roots—
and other times, wings.
Saguaro arms
a shrug, a hug
touchdown, letdown
waving, curling, sprouting
disco, vogue; praise, prayer
bird-pecked, green-specked
skeletonized, or multiplied
flower and fruity fingered
flipped, frail, or fallen off
perfected, nested, crested
Plexus
we feel poetry and art
in the sensitive veins
that run through soul and
carry not blood but spirit
The Prisoner
If you have not a bird inside you,
You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
A beak and a bleeding wing,
Then you have reason to sing.
If merely you are clever
With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
The veins of our singing-birds,
With blades of glinting words.
Yet if a Song, without ending,
Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
Tear through your lungs for breath,
Sing—or you bleed to death.
—Louis Golding (1895–1958), “The Prisoner,” Sorrow of War, 1919
Greens & things
good health, yes, is partly genes
really though it’s more about greens
and other types of healthful things
Seasonal wisdom
learn from leaves
green is go —
yellow & red
slow down, stop
take time to rest
Dark thoughts
how the nighttime looks
during a power outage
is how night should look