Dungeon Boulders

Surely this is a swolen gland of memory
Cursing through my body
Pinching where I’ve been hurt before.

Should I starve you out?
Let you waste away like autumn flowers
Suffocating upon the bed you’ve made?

A cry from depths of my unconscious being
Let out like lightning bolts
Surging through my veins in callous blood clotting.

I hold the reigns, but I do not have this beast tamed,
Wild and friggart he still is
An uncouth I have yet to name.

I shall sweat you out
Heat driving mad, boiling away impurities
With a flame I have stoked ever higher
Designed to inhibit boulders
That this dungeon was built upon.

Two Five Three Six

Letters from my ancestors
Have each spelled out ten names
Two to be used in case of emergency
Five for female spawn
Three for patriarchal ties
And six as shadows of mine own heart.

I love each one as any man can
I’ve researched each story true,
Chosen from my memory
I’ve drawn each one out, too.
I hold my head up high for them;
Each they’ve passed to me their secrets.
In my hands I see their scars
So, too, I see their years.

Through their streets I have sure walked
I’ve also gone for a ride
Sitting in the back seat
Of a stuffed full 1965 Studebaker
Heading out on summer vacation.
I’ve opened the door on Union Street
To taste homemade crabcakes and beans,
I’ve rode the long trail home
Passed Devick Lake out on the range.

So each of the names I keep at the helm
Awaiting imminent deployment,
Like roses saved in a jar
A timeless memorial stored as fondness,
An old lined sheet of blank paper
Found in the desk of y’or.

Deepening

You wore your hair on an unwritten novel
That was bound with your daily drawl
Mixed among the thunderstorms
Of a lonely prairie home.
Cows were milked twice a day
And dust blew into your eyes
Leaving streaks running diagonal
Across your rosy cheeks
With an agonizing look
You had long put on
Prepared for deepening silence.

A memory was your novel
That got caught up finding new verbs
For the same things you’d always done
And your hands that worked
In daily grind
With suds and lemonade
Looked increasingly like
They were forming to the job.

Why did you watch the horizon
Each day around two or three?
As dust had settled from morning’s fury
“In time for tea,” you’d say,
The milk cow, knowing nothing more
Chewed and watched you at your chore
No thought did cross it’s mind.

So sad did the lesson grow
A mind lost of ten thousand reasons
Thunderstorm in Sun’s sweet blessing
If it was not you, save pray for more
So today will sing of tomorrow
A song you knew intuitively
As cow’s milk begun to pour
And dust blew through your hair.

Sincere Moments

Sincere stars
Like each moment
Unnecessary little hearts.
Carry in a windswept
Memory,
Where’s my limit?
Gone and wrote home
Without it.
And numbers,
Many numbers,
That couldn’t count on
A passion
So I lay there
In a dreamspace
Like a memory;
Long glance.
In a moment,
In a moment
My life.

When the wind blows
I am a moment
Let me be forgotten
For I am fleeting,
Ever needing,
Ever beating
Long in the heart.
For in each moment
There is sweet passion,
No more symantics
Unending lessons
And sentences
Rapture
A long glancing star.

Into the Rain

This smoke and mirrors
Is my pain
As I walk in your memory
I fall alone
On unspent words
My hair,
Lifelessly pressed
Against the glass.
I’ve learned about my veins
That run across
My open palms;
For too long have I
Looked into thee
For an answer
I cannot find.
And so my last drip of blood
Drawn from me
For you
Shall stain the soul
From whence I came
And follow me
Into the rain.

Taken

What takes you away?
What brings the lines
From bowels to forehead,
And understands nothing
Of what’s seen before you?

What holds you
Like a scarf on a cold subway
Clicking away
In a nice rattle
Of destination approaching?

What holds time so still
That a lifetime is lived
Experienced
Played
And given
With a softly exhaled breath
Standing atop
Naked and pointed?

What holds you steady
So that even rainbows don’t move
As you traverse this landscape
Narrowly escaping
A landslide of memories
Nobody told you to write down?

Moon And By Sun

I am drained of life
Though calming gray Moon
Shines full into my vision.

My mornings wake
With such vast opportunity
Yet I slouch my way
Into an odyssey;
Blurring noises
From Nature’s highway
Busy outside my open window.

This tea alerts me
It brings my senses
Towards the front of my tongue
So that I can find my voice
Rescued from the deep depths
Of a tortuous night.

And here, upon my tongue
A caress felt within my memory
Time spent in my youth
Unabided,
For Spring spirit in Summer Sun
Reaches no Plymouth too soon,
And this warm milk and honey
Resting on my lips
Shall be enveloped by
Moon and by Sun.

Old Chedi

And so spoke the heart song
Softy renovating each edge
To include a space for memories
That helped caress harmony;
A state of living
That slowed down
And remembered to breathe
Like the infinite bliss
And awakening
Found while sitting
At the foot of old chedi.