Colors - with audio

audio link

I used to see the colors in my brain
They came to me naturally as the rain
Now they've all turned so very plain
When I look, all shades are blended same
I no longer see the red in pain, and
Wonder can Sunburst joy come again
Responsibilities drive me on
Love for others becomes a singing song
My oh my the day is long
The dark of night vanishes
Invisible when its gone

My hope endures till spring is come
The colors then again are born
In my soul where they belong
Autumn leaves fall to the ground
All the animals know the sound
Of windy breath that turns all brown
Mutes painted prism paradise shown
Fish and birds and butterfly
Each in gentle silence sigh
Till golden sun with starlit dew
Cast rainbow spectrum hues
And so renew.

Critique of the Critics - with audio

audio link

I hereby disclose
That I would close
The door of who knows

Set the locks
Hide prejudicial picks
Stow Electric shocks

Critique the critics
Because to tell
Would bring such hell

From those sounds
Of the death knell

An illustration
In psychotic palpitation

Hispaniola, Anatolia
Africa and Asia
Anhedonia and Amnesia

PTSD, and PDO
MDD, to hospital go

So the cats walk
The feline kind of talk

On fence and wall
Of each black way hall

Till out flies tall
The Starling's urgent call

To stay deep sea spouts
Motions of notions and
Stop the deluge pouring out

Flooding oceans of shouts
From mercury filled mandibles
Of would be rescuing mouths.

Sorting Sand? - with audio

audio link

Picking slim
Lighting dim

Barren plains
Calculating minds

See the path
Check the math

Ask questions
For gestation

Not the why
Here am I
Think so
Bon ami

The what if
Makes stiff

How so
Won't go

To complicate
But Extricate

Regulate
And validate

Round corner
Behind the chase
New beginner
Slowed pace

Or perhaps
Pops and snaps

Machina view
Is it new

What a doll
A confused soul

That's his plan...
Sorting sand?

Morning Meeting, Donut's Dunk - with audio

audio link

Connect the colored dots
Ye little dullards and sots

Worker bees are smallest
The trees are the forest

That must needs be seen
Plastic pawns now begin

Hoping furtively that they,
You see, might know well
Of your prowess, that to tell

Oh to show that scribbled junk
The chaos in your little trunk
Be sweeter than a donut's dunk

So you posture and pose
Then thumb your bumpy nose

From concrete and brick
To fluid stream quick?

Embarrassed not, it's supposed
In your abstract lederhose

Stir up the thick jello'd sully
Focus now ever more forcefully

Struggle through the sudden strain
Of that broken puddin headed brain

Blow out the porthole a cloud-like steam
Some pseudo-intellectual babbling scream

But the attention once gotten
Sordid Horded and brought in

Goes like geese flying south
In the cold of winter's mouth
And it really stunts one's growth

So do not hurry to curry the boss
For little is gained, and much is lost
At such a tawdry, onerous, provocative cost.

Chasing Rabbits, Self Deluded Competition in the Workplace - with audio

audio link

The Climbers ascended
Mountains of words

Struggling for control
Of the tiger wind

Like woodland creatures

Fleeing fire
Chasing rabbits
Through field and bush

Clamoring over one another
Seeking the surety
Of an imagined secure footing
Or transient idyllic conquest

The headless leader watched
And would have nodded in approval
Had he a mind to do so

His Faceless gaze and smile
Focused forward

Content to march
Behind the horses

A lemming of enlightened bliss.

Love Eclipses Ambition - with audio

audio link

I saw then,
What I thought
In meaning and ambition
Made ascriptions clear

Until another's
Reality sense
Broke in
To eclipse the sun
Of my clarion view

I waited for it to happen
But it never did
Something else
More wonderful instead
Grew in the place
Of that which was dead

Behind the landscape
That I had painted
Arose a sky in broad expanse
Three faces full of hope and life
Together with
The hand of another,
Who caressed our being

Their brightness
Informs my view, and
As I gaze at them
Heaven is made new
When gravity swift
Pulls me down
They my soul uplift
Til the day come

When we all
With a Dove
Shall fly
High Above
Through the heavens
To a place
In The Way
Of His Majesty
And still greater Love.

Bureaucrazy - with audio

audio link

She said
He said
Hello
I don't know
Well I do
Who do
They do
The Do Do
Bird Flew
Killed inner child
When head notes
Mental and pedo-filed
Out their mouths
Came conjecturing
Everything was soused
Flooded Moreover
With heretofore
And Next thereof
All is come
That must be done
Now lies prone
Hence useless
This morass
Don't talk,
Or be an ass
Just baste and bask
So ask, please
Control the dis-ease

OK, OK
She said
Then went on
That talking head
It put me
Right back
In my bed
Because the pain
Eyes saw red
Deathly gain
Is the freedom
Of abused authority
A new problem
Over and over
Bore the brain
Soul and liver
A hole to drain
Pour in a river
Of false beliefs
Politicized nonsensical
Non-science's release
Kick one's self
More forms legal
To fill a shelf
Redundant commas
Bureaucracy commissions
Addendums callous
Onto Infinite revisions.

>>>>>

Locusts in the Sycamores - with audio

audio link

It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon when I heard them.
Locusts, 7 yr locusts were sounding their life in the Sycamores, Maples and Aspens.
They had come early, for this was only August and not yet past the afternoon.
I remembered how they told of the coming of evening and eventually winter, Long ago, when I was a little boy at play.  I would feel the sadness come over me. I knew that it was the end of Summer, the beginning of Autumn, the coming of Winter.  I did not understand why this should affect me so. The passage of time meant nothing to me then. It did however, to the subconscious clock within me; that which communed with the eternal.

The locusts announced; "another time and era are passing, never to come again."

Once  I was old enough to go to school, the locusts warned that it was time to come in from play, get ready for bed; and in the morning go to school. That which flourished in play with friends, died in school. Now, every time those cicadas with their cousins the locusts called out, it was like Sunday night before school and the end of summer all over again. The feeling ran deep within my being like hot brown molasses in a slow sinking procession down each bone.

It was an omen. Winter was coming early and it would be a long, cold, dark presence this year.  My mind flashed back to brief moments of months before. Looking down each morning while picking up the newspaper, I would encounter an array of ants working furiously at their endeavor of survival. Marching every day or evening without fail across my sidewalk, from one Juniper to the next, they were there. Then, the prophet Solomon's words came to mind: " Observe the ant....." Prepare for the future without ceasing, and in the meantime be content in your sweaty toil; as well in your eating and sleeping. Why? Because Winter is coming.

Well, this year it was coming early. The signs were called out; the ants in tiny somber marching, and the locusts in eerie clicking song. Even the leaves had prematurely begun to fall.

Mother had been in the hospital on and off for the past 5 years. Dad as well. He was only a shadow of the man I knew growing up. The man who had once right crossed and knocked down a burly bearded fireman with tattoos who was refusing to help put out a burning building. A police dog had stopped him from continuing to pummel that sot. The maladies of age had shaken him, weakened his heart, taken away the pleasure of walking, and narrowed his sight. Mother on the other hand,
had undergone the hand of time with multiple and sundry plagues common to our generation.
She had also lost the thrill of allure and clever wit that had once brought Dr.s, Surgeons, Lawyers, Publishers and Poets to the cocktail parties and dinners that were hosted in our home. Life had now become a matter of complaint, she also had been robbed of the simpler pleasures of walking, eating and the enjoyment of company.

Autumn is here, Winter is coming whispered the locusts in the Sycamores. And suddenly, a finger loomed up within me, pointing me back to Solomon, " All is but vanity and a chasing of the wind."
All of this wonderment is passing...... , fleeting.........., flying away,  and I also along with it.  Mortality will one day come to call with its capital expression.  I like Scrooge joined the community of humbuggeries and naysayers to its proposition. ...In confusion, I stumbled about, not focussing, hiding in my mind, lest feelings and emotion should overtake me ......I felt dizzy at times.

My Parents lay in their beds most of the day, living and participating in life through CNN,
"Little House on the Prairie,"and pharmaceutical commercials on TV.  Slumber followed only to be interrupted by the habit of meals and ablutions. The wind was blowing the leaves right off the Maples. It carried along the chorus of wings in the trees; Winter is coming, Autumn is here. They weren't supposed to be here yet. They'd come early. It would be a long hard unpredictable Winter. The kind that makes a man's heart lonely and searching. The kind of cold that causes one to seek out the reassuring warmth of a few close friends. The kind of white blanketing in the night that propels all souls toward the Almighty Eternal. Let it blow then; like a dog, let the wind lick up these tears before they fall.

A clanging silence, a rigid river of dancing contradiction that flashes in a flurry before the eye of the soul; the pintele - (the spark of life) - threatened at once by the coming flood. Like lightning giving birth to thunder, shouts out the rainfall, so to the ants, with the buzzing of wings, and the crossing of tiny legs told the leaves to fall. And, as the leaves rushed along, they seemed to rustle out the message; the Autumn is here, the Winter is near....

And come it must! For this has been the way til now; ordained for each one to tarry an allotted time until the next season is ushered in, even as the one that is, passes over the falls into the Mind of timeless forgotten eternity.

Next - with audio

audio link

That which yearns to be
Is now becoming
A pill in hand
An herbal elixir
Raise the titanic
Now I wait
On speeding train
Against the tunnel facade
In thickening tension
Of foggy pre-game morning
Till black starting gun
In Screaming force
Sends Shot unyielding
A Falling outcome
Looks back aghast
With sudden shock
The former shell
Lies broken.

Over Jagged Peaks - with audio

audio link

The arrows shot well
So long ago remain
With those of today
Find their mark in
Black blue shades of pain
But this is life
To live in this skin
Not to fear of
Worry's cutting knife
But thankful for love
Family and wife
To God above
Focus on these
Instead of bigger toys
Nay, be at peace
Carried on by lighter joys
Thus like the sun speaks
I rise up again
Over jagged peaks
In flowing skies
With fluid tern
Till my Creator
Shall lay me down.