Mother on Notebook Paper

Who is this a picture of?

This hollow soul is me.

There's room for God

And room for love,

But grief has hallowed out the eyes

The ghosts to see,

And tea too strong, philosophy,

has sallowed me this way.

How can it be?  Who sees me thus?

On fallow field of notebook paper grew a mother,

Some secrets can't be kept.

He said, "I was just doodling,

And it ended up like you."

Happy Seahorse Day

I wrote letters to my father
He never wrote me back

I said my prayers to God
He gave me but a book

The voice I sought to guide me
Paternalistic hidden

I now wish for a seahorse
To carry me through the flood

A pony express through time
To the man who heard my voice

And under jealous eye of goddess
His naiad I would be

Dancing on the moonlit lake
From which the horse does drink

Waiting to carry off two lovers
In memoriam 

Bruneulogy

My dog is dead

By senility led

To wait for me in the road.

My lightened load

Not having to put him down

Does not relieve soul's frown 

Or cause hope to bloom

In this morning gloom

That in deafness he didn't see

That he soon would not be

Waiting longer for me there,

But in another place somewhere.

And if my best friend ain't there,

I don't need to go.

           

"They will kill me . . . "

The dissonance of a political dissident
Sounded cliche
To my United States of American
Ears accustomed to hearing,
"My dad will kill me if he finds out"
And other idioms of death
Thrown about meaninglessly.

In my defense I did not know he was
Dissident; he was just a groom.
He was not just another Mexican.
But all those countries south,
To the average United States of American,
Are the same.
Even Guatemala in the 1980s.

When Immigration went on raids,
Carlos was afraid.
He always said,
"They will kill me if I go back."
How cliche.
When Carlos was deported,
We never heard from him again.

     **     **     **     **

History is the current event
Of yesterday
Within your comfort zone.
It is easier to take sides with the dead.
They don't require your helping hand
To pull them from a grave.
Your hands remain clean, not bloodied.

Your mental assent to their cause
Does not demand your personal descent
Into terror.
You can bury your head in the
Sands of history
And leave it there,
Safe from the sandstorm around you.

Know your history;
Escape the condemnation of
Repeating it.
Know that no one sits on the sidelines
Of its making.
Active or passive,
We all have blood on our hands.

Mistletoe and Shakespeare Quotes

Mistletoe with Cemetery Hidden in the Trees Beyond

Where's my kiss under the mistletoe?

He who gave it lies in a cemetery.

Wish I could join him,

But mistletoe is not that poisonous.

My lover "But doth suffer a sea change,

Into something rich and strange"

"And left no friendly drop to help me after"

Apothecary's or other.

Margot Fonteyn danced with a blade

Claire Danes put a gun to her head

This Juliet acts out her life without a plan,

But to kiss a ghost and to him say good-bye.

Homeless: Has Car, Will Travel

In the backseat of a car
There is only room for one sleeper
Not comfortably numbed
Half awake.

With forehead placed
Upon the cold glass
To drink the warm stars
Breath fogs vision.

Roll down the window
Let out the backseat driver
Let in the One and cruise.
Take a drive and see it all.

Joy in Minor Keys

Prophets and Plato
Predicted His baby's death.
The three-day pain He felt
Our three-day gain,
Our joy sung in minor keys
Every winter solstice.

Hard to Get the Colors Just Right

Grandpa was a painter.

He said it was hard to get the colors

Just right.

His favorite color

And most difficult

Was Moab red.

I was a crayoner.

If my crayon said blue, it was blue.

Although, I did have a favorite;

It was cornflower.

Grandpa was a painter.

Grandma was a singer.

I was a band nerd.

I cannot sing of her.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Tears after all these years

Still blur the page.

I cannot revisit the music

Or the colors of that day.

Dead Knight on Notebook Paper

by Haliatuslupus

Son, you and I, we obsess.

Vacant eyes.

Last breath.

My cloak of time is torn.

Tattered.

Patched.

Stitched back together.

Game face on.

I take a pulse.

The second hand ticks backward in my hand.

Now what am I supposed to do with that?

Game face on.

I use the clock on the wall.

Did I ever tell you 

The Namesake

was a knight?

I walked a perennial parapet

Waiting for his return.

Your knight was slain

In Home Economics

on notebook paper

with a colored pencil,

cooking, and sewing.

Maybe your knight and my knight

Are the same

And he has sent me a message.

He has laid down his weapons

And waits for my hand.

But he will have to wait.

Son, you and I,

Must obsess
With
Life.

Adrift in a Sea of Stars

With storied stealth Orion steals across my sky
Accompanied by Canis Major and Minor.
I can hear the dogs barking at the speed of sound
Even from this great distance
As the hunt goes on and on and on.
A lone coyote's call set off the bellicose barking;
No other coyote answered
And in my world that silence is deafening.
I sink back to sleep adrift in my sea of stars
Then dream of when I played with coyote pups
And when ravens dropped snowballs on my head
And of my little black hen, T. regina, no one messed with
And of Gelert the Greyhound taken out by a mountain lion
For drawing off the hunter crouched upon the roof.
Awakened from troubled sleep again
I want to know if my greyhound has joined the hunt
Or runs silent at the coyote's side
Or remains gray unreconstituted dust.
I sink back to sleep adrift in my sea of stars.

Dalton 1998-2011

"Little girl, playing with a ball throwing it up in the air and laughing, you appear to have an imaginary friend with whom you're joking."

"No," replied McKinney, "I'm playing with Dalton."

*   *   *   *   *

Dalton "so full of life"

You're not just a face in the yearbook

With a page in memoriam.

You are the guilt behind the driver's eyes, the survivors' eyes.

You are the song on the radio, "chillin' on a dirt road."

You are the sudden propelled maturity of your older sister.

You are the living breath in your mother's chest.

You are the silent son on your dad's 4-wheeler.

You are.

*   *   *   *   *

"Young man, playing with a ball throwing it up in the air and laughing, you appear to have an imaginary friend with whom you're joking."

"No," replied Dalton, "I'm playing with McKinney."

Mining Treasures in a Cardboard Storage Box

Granpa, I stand knee-deep in flood waters

That tried to wash away

My memories of you,

But these treasures in a 

Cardboard storage box

I have recovered.

Granpa, silly man,

Wearing a wig

While infant hands held onto you.

Granpa, your handwriting

Looks exactly like mine,

Was it you who trained the pen in my hand? 

               

                                                  

Granpa, an old yellowed newspaper

Proclaims you're a survivor

Of a mine explosion that killed 18 others.

             

Granpa, here's the story

I wrote about that for a

creative writing class I never finished.

              

Granpa, I hate mines, but I love you, a miner.

I hate the mine that put the cancer in you.

In your lungs, the second suffocation.

Granpa, a stepfather I thought never loved me, hugged me

When he had to be the one to bear the news,

But you are the man who first took my heart.

Though parts of you remain an enigma

Like why you loved to watch the bullfights that made me cry

And why you wore that silly wig.
                                      

The Drownings

Yours is the face missing from the side of this page,
Drowned legend of a man.
When into the icy waters you sank,
Before they dragged the lake
And pulled your bloated body from her bed,
Did you say good night to me?
Hero!  Damn you!
You did not save his life that day,
They dragged his dead body out, too;
And I a year away was not there to save you,
And I remain, the drowned dreamer of a man.

Three Fences in November

Two horses
Ages 7 and 27
Shivering in that cold November
Before the winter came
That froze the milk in my daughter's cup
In the time it took from the house, across the porch, to the truck.

In a different truck
That November day
Came a veterinarian.
He led the old one away from us
And told us all to go inside
That it would be better for us.

From inside the house
We heard the young one neighing,
"Come back, come back and play with me."
Or
"Wait, wait, I'm coming with you, it's not fair these fences separate us."
We really don't know what she said
Because in the way another fence stood.

Then from inside the house
We heard the silence fall
And knew the deed was done.
We heard no more nickering that day
And the young one, she was never the same
As if a part of her had left with him that cold November day.