Love is dirty underwear
as it turns out
tossed on the bedroom floor
and trailing out to the bathroom and beyond.
Love is first thing in the morning.
It is potent
when the need is there
and sublime on the soft days.
Love, as it turns out
is not only standing up for what you believe in
but standing up with your failures as well
and being brave enough to be imperfect,
flawed, even
as the case may be.
Love is unwavering,
as it turns out
even with bad breath and bed head
first thing in the morning.

The line between
Genious and Insanity,
is where you
 put it.

 
BIRD SONG
I wake to a bird’s song
look out my open doorway
see a yellow warbler.
I take crumbs from my kitchen table
and drop them, starting at my doorstep
ending at my table and wait.
Feathers ruffle as it gobbles up each crumb.
when close, I bend, grab it by its throat,
wing bones hollow, fragile,
feathers soft as dandelion puffs
I look into black bulging eyes,
feel the rapid heartbeat
know my power, open my hand.
I say, "Never trust mankind."

death struggles to understand
the complex anomalies of the birth of a
new life given freely in conception
of a time undeserved of happy endings
brought upon by beginnings wrought of frowns and sweaty palms
of violent sex
chosen by the need to know that death
himself will awaken with the birth of a
child conceived with the knowledge that you
come into this world with a plot already picked out

                                                             The devil’s behind you
one – hundred percent
though you purse your lips "God"
and stand in the scripture.
 
I’ve heard this confusion
for nearly four years.
I’ve heard of this poison

dark minds harbor simple knowledge,
forthcoming - the well-springs burst
demanding an increase in the capacity to shelter
the wealth of angry information
left behind by the long-gone genius
swimming amongst and within the mind
of these strangled spirits,
peruse my mind
and a passionate flux of flowing words
whispers between bone dry lips, lacking perspiration
the dusty waters fulfill my never-ending thirst
for insatiable drops of knowledge while I lie
stripped of my malfunctioning sentences

they
sent
me
out
 
my bloomin’ chickpeas
bagged a bonny breeze;
 
they sent me out sans sauerkraut---
without a doubt 
to snag a sneeze---
crisply spouting, “Please!”
 
uncongenially …
 
and when they wanted me
to dock with them by sea, 
I begged off momentarily
(and by the way, too noisily!)
 
that I could not justly pay,
for one more goddamn day,
 
those horrid harbor fees
 

 
 
there once was a girl
who sported a magnif’cent curl
 
innermost outrageous hair
made of ebon pearl …
 
although that round red mouth
was small for her blue tongue,
 
her chest was much too large
for her conspicuous lung;
 
and her hefty head quite low
beneath pinched shoulders
 
 was much too underhung

Called Sondra Mobley
to tell her I was dying.
"Weren’t you already?"
Was her coy response.