Der Schmetterling

Angular,
yet grace so unexpected
I wince at the raw,
randy beauty of such symmetry:

Her dance, an invasion of sorts
like an assault on Guadalacanal,
the total commitment
but there is no loss here.
Quark to quark,
she slices to the quick.

There is not so much surrender
to such an assault
as a dawning -
a primordial sun
bursting upon a new day
filled with colors
as subtle as a gauguin landscape.
The sky filling
with a rainbow of moons
waxing
strutting -
a pungent
earthy air,
the mixed metaphors
of horny bare feet
and the lusty lemony nectars of venus.

The skinny world,
now fat with promise,
is in a golden whirl,
a bit of hope, shared touching,
explosions of forgotten shyness
in the face of such rapture.

Deciding the Scope of a Life

We mostly know how to paint a wall or some complex door;
and we can damn-well draw a round or squared circle;
and ofttimes we cross bridges if we know where they are.
Some of those bridges fade just before we see where to cross.
I do not surrender nor give up, when I am mostly lost.
I love to hold hands and touch even without the damn bridges.
I know how to float, imagining a larger innertube,
not always on water nor air but often the merest smile.
Like any worldly homo sapien, or honestly practiced goat,
we've learned to stand on the edge of cliffs and doubts,
looking across or up, smiling at a world we don't yet know:
our grins are without sound; I am so happy I almost float.
Your face relaxed against mine, happy, full of silent shouts.

Old Auto Woes

Park me in some forgotten parking lot
somewhere between morning and dark
but check the damn air in the limpy tires
sometime after breakfast in a few years.

Run me to the ground, off a seaside cliff,
but sing me a song of love, some gentle riff
and I'll purr and cuddle, take you anywhere
so long as you use the clutch and check the oil.

To a Treasured Friend

I suspect that you are seeing a real world.
But who can count or account for such worlds?
Much of what we say needs some editing
to meet the rigors you and I imagine for ourselves.
We are not as cohesive as we once imagined,
exploding across the universe in bits of this and that,
peppers, salt, nutmeg and sugared spices
baffling bits of life approaching such horizons.
We are full of songs and dances of bewilderment,
tripping through news, lessons and steps to learn,
the world of bunches of us: you, me, she and him,
traipsing across the sky, ignoring love, learning to fly
some of us whistling, but me, with strummy voice,
along for the ride, singing hallelujah to the moon.
I sometimes sit in the dark and share my thoughts
echoing back and forth from here to the moon to you.

Trying to Say Good-bye

We are already yesterday's asterisk
and mostly tomorrow's obituary.
If you own a tighter, faster disc
we may already be in mortuary.

Back-step if you can and I am able,
we can glide to shore together
somehow mounted on the same fable,
lythe and sweet as any bird's feather.

We may slow if I ever truly learn to dance,
waiting until we chance to kiss and smile.
Then let the twirls and scissor steps prance!
We'll kiss and step outside the world awhile.

I will truly miss you when you are gone
but I have already written you into a song.

The Minutiae of Dreams

I chase my cousin about the kitchen table,
running and dodging as best we are able,
jumping chords and pushing back chairs,
the coffee floats beyond the table into air
suddenly, totally dark and scalding hot,
a bitter bit of this or that, but never cream,
just moments of tasting beyond our dreams.

The scraps of my life are not your scraps;
we depend on reading different maps.
I sleep at night and mostly dream.
My days are coffee, black, no cream;
I do not wake at day and dream.
Awake, in sun, I know a total world.
In sleep, I am often lost in endless whirls
of yes and no and Grandma's coffeepot.
I sleep and dream; I wake to stand apart.

May I sit with you tonight

May we sit touching hands tonight
to talk to the moon and starlight?
Please wrap yourself against the cold
sometimes our stories are long to tell;
we may become lost in the sounds of words.
We are not so old, but blessed and bold
and know to ignore the rusty tinkle of time.
Our hearts know the movements of the moon.
I am warmed if you are home before noon;
Please bring the blanket of pink flowers.

Even lost we knew our knot

If you search for a full-life lived
avoid making it mostly about you.
(Live outside yourself; live inside a house.)
My father logged the woods and planted seeds;
my mother toiled the world and grew flowers,
not once or twice, but three times:
Billy Karl, Gloria Lee and Harold Art.
We were a knot that became untied
but we mostly always knew our knot.
I don't always know what I am tinkering toward
But I am a tinkerer of words, nails and bailing wire.
I fashion the world that I have known,
mostly in my brain, but always in my heart.
I will always be centered in the knot.

Odessa, Texas 1966

We drove a crooked road
flat, empty, no landscape,
hot with smells beyond our world.
We are dozing, riding and off to work.
One side some few cows with heads
to the ground behind taut wire.
My lonely soldiers suspended in time.

The other side cotton fields
in memory only and barely alive,
blown now by wild hot winds,
disappearing as we drive
into turbulent dust in the air.
The atmosphere swirls into the air
and aims at noses, our mouths.
The air is crunchy and bitter.
Odessa, 50 years ago.

I worked derricks, high in the air
able to see the moon without dust
the moon was round and fairy fair;
I was barely able to sight the earth below.
Sometimes the world is mostly rust
The wind whistling songs no one knows.

Within the wind, dry bitter whirls,
something in my head clatters
and breaks away into huge black birds
drinking their black gold,
endlessly in slow repetition -
a continuous hungry motion
heads dipping into the stinky ground.

There are no more cows, no cotton.
There is no smell beyond black gold.
I cannot touch my hand to your hair
after such a night:
I cannot endure caressing
someone I care so much about
within the bounds of such illusions.
Odessa, Texas 50 years ago

Circles in Twilight

We all age and that ain't so bad (if we're not in a damn cage) in most of our worlds. It is expected. It is respected. Another of life's countless swirls from dew on every leaf to ripened fruit. Pluck me from the tree and grin. Or maybe just smile. This is mere prelude: we are off for another mile.