poem 52

old milk go biscuits
emaciated briquettes
dried apricots plums
cranberries revived
blessed water go biscuits
a dry run for coming famine
famine elsewhere 
coming home to lie 
with we who have enough
for now famine chases
farm factory workers
too sick to work
too sick to not
falling dead in furrows
falling dead at conveyors
falling dead at cutting
blocks stolen away greedy
combines’ viscous mowing
spit out in bales
buried during dark
moon’s moaning
bitter harvest

poem 51

old climbing rose played out
grey canes split drought
rains heavy and late
streamers not drops
plummet pound
fragile universe erupts
tiny soft green stars 
...
...

revision 5/29/20

poem 50

memory treacherous
memory all we have
clanging cellular accounts
letters tossed gone awry

how crammed purpose
destroys aspiration
risks block sales
chains forced steps

commingles what we know
with what we wish
with what they want us to remember
resilience relies upon surviving loss

no where else to lay our heads
only on slipping pillows
of stories told at dusk
luminous at dawn

poem 49

old grey climber dead
thick split canes bark
at late rains come heavy
streamers not droplets
plummeting pounding
mere days fragile green
unfurls lifts sunward

poem 48

There is no return to Then.
There is only Now.

what i make
what you make
what we make

Then—fantasy
when in actuality
what we lost
is freedom to hug
anyone everyone

we carry what we always carry
crazy quilt of love joy regret guilt
unfathomable ecstasy despair
burning agonies soothing peace
bottoming out comfort solitude
communal leaning family
broken or thickly stranded
war jealousy hate cruelty
driven achievements hollow
useless dying glows we burnish
cup hands around flames we
imagine not existent insistent
love carries us unless we succumb
in sinful seas of greed tempting us
beyond reason still there’s love
all this and far more we carry
what we have no real words for
what we long to set down
and do not dare not too afraid
of being suddenly freed trapped
Forever

Now—an enormous yawning universe
takes a breath we lean away from
want to stifle as we run terrified run
wildly towards when given courage
by bright new days rainy shiny dawns
we want to race across deserts as if distant
ranges of possibility hold only comfort
prosperity without risks challenges
new griefs new moral dilemmas
complexities we can not yet see
as if we can leave all that far behind
as far behind as our fantasized Then
we so long for tie our ankles to
selectively dragging a web of longing
there is no return yet time measures us
as it pours through ancestors fingers
let fall what may lean into their ghost
arms lay our heads on their broad misty
shoulders their whispers echo vibrate
our breasts warns us keep potatoes from
rot yourself from moral blight and greed
your life only a tossed grain rippling rings
no greater no less than any other grain
winds whisper winds whisper winds whisper
remember Love remember Love remember Love

poem 47

memory treacherous
memory all we have

                                               after


             hanging cellular accounts
             letters tossed awry
             crammed purpose destroys
             commercializes commingles
             aspiration violence innocence       


                                                                loss

 
nowhere to lay our heads except
on slipping pillows stories told at dusk

poem 46