Yet another day (#11)

Blend the flowers into the sky
Shelter the sun from the fray
Jump the gun but never try
This is yet another day

Burn the hours into my skin
Blunder the times to come
Jilt your god but never sin
This is yet another day

Porous, we filter out the marrow
Glorious, we shift in the narrow
Space between good and great
And hope, pray
For yet another day

Turn the towers into sand
Burden the soul and the dam
Leave my love but never land
This is yet another day

Dim the lyrics into words
Pander my song for gold
Make soldiers into herds
This is yet another day

Porous, we filter out the marrow
Glorious, we shift in the narrow
Space between good and great
And hope, pray
For yet another day

Delighted you could make it tonight
Demanding more or less the same
Are these the crazy times that spin us around
Or are we more or less the same?
As we fight the good fight
On yet another day

Porous, we filter out the marrow
Glorious, we shift in the narrow
Space between good and great
And hope, pray
For yet another day

Blend the flowers into the sky
Shelter the sun from the fray
Jump the gun but never try
This is yet another day

Yet another fateful day
Yet another day
Yeah

Thanks, BL.

A special birthday wish

The 1980s.  Uncle Ronnie was the President of the United States.  Perestroika was all the rage.  Trickum Middle School in Lilburn, Georgia, was my middle school.  Teachers – wonderful teachers – were my extended family.  My parents could not have entrusted me to a better group of men and women.  They were empathic.  They were firm.  They were generous.  They were Socratic.   They each had a unique style.  They each cared deeply for our sovereignty and for our future prospects.

One particular teacher, Mrs. June McPherson, provided consistent and commendable language arts and drama education to my peers and to me.  She epitomized the structured, traditional English teacher.  As I look back on this approach to teaching, I am thankful that she served up her work in this manner.  At that time, it was tough – tough to recall grammar rules, tough to endure the red ink, and tough to generate countless creative ideas and approaches.  But endure we did.  We learned the five-paragraph essay.  We stretched our imaginations.  We did so, unwittingly, because we had an insatiable thirst to do good things. Great teachers like Mrs. McPherson, humbly and generously, inspired many of these good things.  It is these good things that good people carry within themselves today.

On this, her 80^th birthday, I wish her a very happy birthday.  It is lives like hers that shaped and colored lives like mine.  I am a poet.  I am a leader.  I am a servant.  I am a songwriter.  I am a businessman.  That’s quite an accomplishment for such a modest artist such as June McPherson.  We should all be so fortunate to be in the company of the same.

Light the way

Any instinct that we had for the big forever
and the stupor of eternal salvation is damned.

We can't wake up from the dream of lust
that we write again and again in the sand.

Any light that we see in the distance
pales against the shadow of selves left behind.

We dare not portray any more tension
in the balance of this life that awaits.

The politic of cut and paste revolutions
will drown us out.

The passion of trump and trample emotions
will kill the noise of tomorrow.

The piety of formless masters and traitors
will erase the words you write here.

Will you wait here or move along to another?
Will you linger on or dare to cross the border?

I'll love you either way.
I'll make the move to light the way.
I'll not cry when you do not sway.
I'll not fear when you do not follow.

Bone to flesh

I brought tears through the front door
for the last time in the moment that counted.

She stained the floor with our proxy of
mixed paintings and morbid callouses.

All erased without mention or intonation
or a sense of longing for some other form.

These are the gracious stereotypes we employ
from fractured homes of steel inbreeding.

I came to know you when this was all over
and I bore the thought to distant, everlasting rivers.

Will we float on the miracle of pixie dust
or just make it to the door from whence we came?

And I'm just starting the dance floor roll call
and watching for the elastic crystal ball to fall
again.

I brought love hate relations through the eyes
of needles drawing blood in the room next door.

Here is the last thought, the one I'll always remember
here in the saddle of the nasty rumor that we invent.

Don't let the dreams of your fathers beget motionless
anthems your children will lose, bone to flesh.

Paternal instincts

Every day is a father's day,
Today, tomorrow, and yesterday. 
Not only is my child's love agape,
But so is mine for the world far and away. 

It is not the meter or the rhyme that matter,
But rather the purity of your selfless river. 
So let not this day be the culmination,
But just a precursor to this daily salutation:

"I love you, Dad."

Light on my doorstep

Light pours through the careless seams
That bound up the valley below my weakest dreams.
Light oozes out of the rocks
In the higher plains of life's political screams.

Is this the moment we've sought in the dark?
Is this the place I was next to you?
Did we make it together, through the
Social alms mixed with pop-star guitar solos
And bright stage lights?

A concert rages for those that lost
To those that gained an unceremonious
Upper hand, begging the question,
As light plays on my doorstep,
"Where do you stand?"

Wait for it

I held the last minutes in my hand, opened wide, and

showered the ground below with my timeless zeal.

Here in the motionless lake

we steal one last grain of sand

in the sand storm.

Is this all there is, replete with big screens

and temptations of rock stardom?

Plate after plate passes, and we tithe our

guilt to the summoner, bury our hands in

our common power to pray.

I held the last days in my heart, shuttled

here by the wind off the mainsail.

This is it, mentored by some force catapulted

from red clay and generous headwaters.

I held on. I held out for more.

I held out for more and nothing came

through the door.

Where did we put us?

Beat the drum with a hammer made of goldenrod

and settle the score, the ridges that run along my skin,

bright and blue, dark and cool.

Simple days were these, dear, when we had no one

but the two of us, callous but bittersweet struggles

right and true, smooth and full.

Dated pasts, in and out of me and you, know us not

here in the cordoned-off reality, dimpled satin faces

fight and bruise, soft like wool.

One and two and three and four, pit and pat on my brain

a solitary, painless drumbeat.

One and two and three and four, tear my fears away

this very last time.

My own angry birds

Fingers like laquer spindles tap

on the murky, wooden bench

of my life consumed of penalty.

Patterns of moldy bread and butter

spread before me in flatlines on

the poorest, ochre-colored floorboards.

Melody turned dirge and driftwood

pierce the cottage of my slumber,

waking me with a gentle nod and dagger.

Judge me not, for there is no crime

and no reason for commutation

here in the pastime of envy and ego.

Frame me like a strangled Montague

so that language and reason meander

but never collide on time.

Leave me here, not knowing or caring

where I am or what where means or

why solemn moments stream and

why angry birds scream.

The yard singer

There is not a single stepping stone

left in the yard that you swept and cleaned.

There remains no coat of fallen leaves

blaming the wind that deceived them so.

Permit the last breath to anchor you

as the frail whirlwind stacks the weeds.

Submit to the weak strain of temptation

bottled in the corner of the abbey walls.

Hesitate no more for the crude air rebounds,

chases you up from the yard to me.

Run, run fast and fierce through my hollow,

to my cradle of sinewy arms, pallid skin.

Here, in the measured pace of building yarns,

We dream of a chaster, soulful tremolo in life.

This song, wind-strewn and prostrate to you,

Gathers note after note, fife after fife.

River pilots and odd accounting

My bills are paid and the garage emptied

of all my lounging wear and raincoats.

The downpour outside strums indeed

a somber but steady set of colored notes.

The torn fragments of respect and greed

meander down the river, barely afloat.

Guileless moviemakers watch the feed

of Earth, channel deception and gloat.

My receipts, buried in a box in the reeds,

remind me that there is more in life to tote.

There is more in life than I perceived

and it is this more that pilots my boat.

The meaty soul

The center cut of the soul is the meatiest,

with plenty of spicy morsels for each guest.

A simple recipe, annotated and indexed,

the sublime soul wanes, rude and perplexed.

Eat not the candied outer fragments and brine

for they sour the canals below and sully the mind.

Lavish upon your diners more than just leftovers,

keeping them bound to your cafe of mettle flavor.

And with the last mastication comes an epiphany,

a dessert laced with treasure and hegemony.

The center cut of the soul is the meatiest

and its unrelenting aroma the sweetest.

A little dirt goes a long way

The white tips of nails, aged and sharpened,

grip the mealy earth, turned and beaten.

The skin turns opaque, cold and brittle,

trembles as the body moves, noncommittal.

Her eyes dance wildly, a search undaunted,

as fountains of youth loom, leaving her taunted.

Dig into the bitter ground, a hapless pillow,

and save thyself from an endless 'morrow.

There, ahead, grace from effort beckons

as does life's final, splendid lesson.

Terra firma is just a dream

Separate the tinsel from the branches

and grow your limbs to carry water.

Borrow silence for a stolen moment

and plow the field to manage the chatter.

Endure missed footsteps and songs

while others lie prostrate in mortar.

Ask yourself, slowly, if emblems en masse

can restore a nation's imperfect flavor.

Action, furtive and stone-faced, endows

a great passel a future brighter and grander.

Post-modern modesty

The life in me parries and plays, gives ground only when teased.

It blends soul with mind with body, never minds yours, sitting next door.

Buried in the backyard, truth fumbles and breaks free.

It's time we struck it rich, take back the way we were.

Here, in the middle of harmony, between the treaties and fears

of mellow bygone years, is the real manner of which I speak.

Hear me again, shallow is my tone, there's no reason to believe.

That after the last bit of treason, I will not break down the weak.