I remember the gritty dark
Corridors and sticky floors
In the old stadium
On the steaming summer day
The smell of beer and sweat
Smoked beef and urine
Mustard and french fries

Holding my father’s hand
Up the stairs to the portal opening
To the sudden view of the field below
With its wide green carpet of grass
And the combed rust colored clay
With perfect powdered lines and bases
What I had only known through
Black and white on the small screen
In the cluttered living room

I couldn’t hold those ones I knew
there I had to fly northward true
a beach laid out as our stories tell
its course I ran to a place I knew well.

Making haste gathering thoughts
did I know of things gone by
where I should have listened
not made someone cry?

Then other things came to me
As on I flew just by the sea
of a love I had and was so true
then the tear I had, as it was you.

The atmosphere was ideal.
Her gentle caress made my heart to reel,
underneath a shimmering moon,
as her lips on mine turned me on.

Then entombed I was in a pleasure,
beyond the value of any treasure,
that made my heart with ardor to overflow,
and my without with radiance to glow.

Folks now no more wonder,
why to her I always run for shelter,
from the wreckages of loneliness in a haste,
for that rare warmth of hers to taste.

Have you ever seen a light
Streaking through the sky
Imagined it was someone’s life
That just came streaming by

And when the light had faded
Did it make you question why
We were put, on this earth
And then left here to die

Did you ever see a lightning strike
Felt the tremors from its thunder
Imagined it had pierced a heart
And ripped it all asunder

For such a force to manifest
Did it set your mind to wonder
Was our life here, meant to be
Or was it, just a blunder

And a time of madness came to be
when hatred dominated men
who set the dire war dogs free
whose howls echoes through forest and fen.

Those howls drove reason from men's minds
turned brothers against one another
severing any tie that binds
even that of child and mother.

The age of false prophets arose
in each religion, every belief system
they deemed themselves the one true rose
labeling all others "them"

Your poetry is like sugar
leaves
in autumn trees
okay leaves
no need to crush them
for the sweet fragrance
is passing extinction

you are a poet of class indeed
in the list of best many poems
when will we achieve or attain
such a moment
of holding hands
in the Garden of Roses
where I hope to be, one
sought after by everyone

a blue bird of narcissism
an egoist poet
off the cuff in the desert

Innocence has no color.

For a ghost, even, to be respectable

the time must be there to fill.

The bell, the sigil, the 3:00 gristle.

The time must be there to fill out
in a symbolist snowflake

or a panning angle,

or something, maybe, inside you.

We have no such luck. Why are you
hung in a frozen oasis in midday,

I asked? Mon frère?

Why are you pale and blue?

The bell, the sigil, the 3:00 gristle.

A watch straddles the sky, it dissolves

in a PI string. He squeaked in my

I had a thought
The other day
About the things
We do and say

From vicious words
To words of praise
Our acts of love
To our malaise

Why, we as humans
Have such extremes
From mass destruction
To building dreams
BOEMS BY JA 196

The day before
flowed past me surreptitiously
a tree turned brown and fell
while i was left to flounder
through the branches that had grown around me.

The day before
crept away quietly
as I failed to see the silver lining in the dark cloud
I forgot to be grateful

The day before has passed
and today is today
although its not my day
I will say happy birthday today.