I remember childhood days
sitting in a country store
hearing tales told by the score
amid tobacco's acrid haze
around a wood stove's warming blaze

Old guys talking of their past
often laughing at the time
when a soft drink cost a dime
whether Kennedy would last
and how the years fled by so fast

And there sat this wide eyed child
grinning at being let within
this "club" of older wiser men
whose language was not always mild
but, really, didn't get too wild

Open minds are hungry woodpeckers
knocking for sustenance;
I try to dull mine in Grey Goose and lime
only teasing the insatiable thirst,
staid in no reference to time
except the knocking aging minutes.

Age has no concern with gender or creed,
I suppose it's lucky to reach the time of
less than able.

Luck painfully tearing at tendons and joints,
tingling limbs and head rush sensations;
fucking blood,
finds holes it wants to now.

The day was very special when
your arrival was announced.
The doctor came smiling to me
soon you would be around.
Oh my God! Was it really true?
Inside me somewhere- You.

You occupied my thoughts
I was often found daydreaming
I already had your face in mind
your tiny limbs and lovely eyes
And I started talking to you
trust me that’s no lie.

My love for you is like a night blooming Cereus -

Beautiful, rare and ephemeral.

It blooms once in a lifetime while bearing the meaning of farewell.

Though Cereus is a fleeting flower, once it blooms under the moonlight,

it glows towards heaven.

But if you cannot fathom the reason of its existence in my heart,

Love of God
became clenched fear
when a man
first humbled down
on knocking knees
to kiss the ground
The Almighty claimed to own.

Sacred Wisdom
turned to vileness
the first time someone
held hot irons
to another's feet
and called the
anguished agony
the Will Of God.

Sacrament
became new mortal sin
when a man first
called procreation wrong
and the pleasures of
a woman's body evil

I dry my tears in my eyes

and throw my wish lists away

the flowers dazzling with brilliance

brighten up the dull sky...

Gold chrysanthemum, red spider-lilies

and even stardust!

They bloom and dazzle, and then fade

and-oh! They bloom again

Just like the flowers of the earth!

I wonder why they have to be so beautiful

And yet, short-lived.

If they could only bloom much longer,

Maybe they will shame the meaning of life's happiness...

The sound of my name upon your lips
is a beguiling caress
there is a warm invitation
in the way you speak to me.

I feel an intimate familiarity
that spans the physical distance
to but an arms reach

When you speak to me
I am enveloped in an embrace
that steals my resolve

Through the darkness of a late night
you speak to me and send my heart
racing with excited stirrings

I hold my breath in anticipation
of the magic your words weave
You have but to speak to me

He remembers auburn hair,
like the color flickering before him
along Hwy 261.

Thoughts of yesterday
fill his mind —
on his journeys.

Roan Mountain fades
as he steadies the wheel
along a stream of white hyphens.

Flashes of her
blend into the mountains
and trees, when he travels.

Their daughter has ringlets
bright as the autumn patches
among the forest display.

He dwells on her
and their daughter —
when he’s driving.

If love was the wind
passing through the autumn trees,
the melody heard
would sound as a lovely hymn

Like the birth
of the morning sun,
warming us with its light,
or rain giving life too all the earth

Love is the fertile soil
that is in our hearts,
A place to plant a seed
cultivating it to grow true and loyal

You will have the rains of May
fall gently so you may drink
giving the strength
to make love live another day,

i.

implications are not words--
they rarely cut to the chase
merely insinuate the distance
between cold sheets of light
and the water we throw on our faces
to awaken
from the gloom and doom on the one-way
street that
reminds us silence is the path around those razor hedges

once words were green fields
blue skies filled with echoes and clouds of unknowing,
dandelions
roar with their big heads
poking through
and no one hears the wheat grow
bending into the softness

ii