New Poems

Remembering is not so easy.
It comes like pounding water
To cleanse the forced and the barren.
Grief arrives with new light.
It waters the seeds of our troubles
So the earth can sprout again.
Now what was terrible
Speaks with a velvet tongue
Inside a cloak of flame.
Listen, you might feel the
Crisp ice of new dreams
Forming inside,
Or the patient blood of warmth
Spreading into your limbs.
But whatever it does
Grief changes us.
In the alchemy of loss,
A new flavor is gained--
A mystery made more beautiful
By tears watering roots
Upon the caked flesh of your body.
Crack open,
Smile at what you see,
The day is not done
Until it is rebirthed by night.

...

Fire, flame, evanescence.
Dry earth undoing.
Ever present dignity of sky
Weave words of light
A web of trust between fingertips
Remember the lives of ancestors
Re-nourish their pain so you can
Feel yours.
Touch everything.
Feel the places where
Trees dance
At the twist of first light.
Paint a picture
Resembling your indescribable vision.
What you paint
Does not have to be beautiful,
Just honest.
Include everything.
Don't leave out your butt flab.
Inscribe a circle with you in the center.
Your internal organs, flesh, blood, bones,
Then watch the circle change.
It keeps its original weeping song
While exploring other tunes.
We stand in the middle of our pain,
Unafraid to touch and hold it,
We become people again.
We see each other's skin go pale,
Then flush with color
As the blankets draw near.
This winter night is magic:
How fortunate that stars fall through smoke
As snow onto our porches.
How plain the meal upon this table:
Present, fair, undying.
Is it a stone at the center of your heart,
Or a burning coal
Exhaling?
Keep your silence and your space,
The world is not broken
Only misunderstood.