the FOUND Side of Lost

Bare feet dancing on
crystal clean dirt streets.
Hands locked together
floating above the hot desert sand.
Faces made of smiles
born of golden solar flares.
Concrete buildings strung across villages
like Christmas lights under a crescent moon
Warm homes made of skeleton boxes
by child-like eyes and adult-like dreams.
And then war happens.
And it happens
And it happens
And all of its benefits and insurances
that come and go with it.
…but still they carry big dreams
the exact way we’ve been carrying
the American dream,
that has yet to come true.

There’s a house on rotary road
that stands eloquently quaint
with its delicate gold grass
and flat black flamingos.
Nestled low among the concrete
and the dirtiest dirt roads
atop a city built of quartz,
one can always count on this
blue rotary home to be there
when this city finally burns.

Under a veil of perpetual sadness
are hidden layers of golden noted symphonies
waiting
somewhere

While researching poems for a friends ocean funeral/ceremony/send off, I found this Sanburg poem. It’s definitely not something fit for this soft and gentle beloved woman. But I fell in love with it and well, maybe it’s a little more me…

BONES

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
Sling me … under the sea.

Carl Sandburg

(the tile of this post is an inspiration for something I’m working on)

Poets enjoy swimming
in irrational waters
Trying to make sense of things
…that don’t make cents.
Loitering about googly-eyed,
gils clogged up with
this un-civiliations feces.
Ah…but the words…
like plankton to our ears;
these waters a choir that
we wrap our hearts in.

They’re at that stage where so much desire streams between them,
so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self
and the self-admiring entity and unity they make —
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back
so far in her laughter at his laughter
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual
in the headiness of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again,
touch again, cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away
soaring back in flame into the sexual —
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin,
that filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart,
snorting again, stamping in its stall.
— C K Williams

( Heard this today and it just hit all the right notes. So wonderful. One of the greater poets of our time.)

In death I can stand sixTEEN feet tall,
and in a smile I can hide
my scarlet past.
This is not a story about death
This IS that smile lifted
That scarlet hue turning
a soft…nude…..sunkissed colored…tan
dancing ever so graciously among the stars
in collapsable universes that were created for the living
to open their eyes in.
Immortality is singing its song on THIS land
on which I stand.
How sweet and splendidly
these moments pass; one into another
and through another kind of looking glass.
I sit and stare in wonder and delight
if THIS is THEE
Aurora Borealis symphony.
Temporarily knowing that THIS kind of wonderful
is NOT soon tiring…
I lift my head proudly
anticipating number eleven.
Is THAT when the magic begins?
Day number eleven.
Is THAT when THIS
The waiting…
The wondering…
The unfamiliar resting of lips upon unfamiliar skin…
starts to end? and when life begins?
cause here I go again…

Is it okay
that I can only wait
……one
……whole
……hour
for you
to become mine
again
and again
and
again
never mind the time
it’s all relative
when you’ve got a fast moving thriving growing appetite soul
like…….mine.
fast cars/fast walk/fast talk
faster
……slow
……sex
……warm
……drums
……sex
……bass
……beats
……heat
……sex
……strings
rope
one week
two weeks
turns into three
so long cold sheets
I’ll get mine
I’ve got a fast trigger
sex finger…
ready
set
go
continue
gentle
faster
steady
gentle
I’m done
stop

A soaring eagle with brown eyes
floats on a rock
nestled in the middle of a silver-ish lake
while her puppy plays in a park
built on dirty land,
by men high on…life.
Los abuelitas de la barrio ask if she’s feliz
with her new life; her new man;
her new proud walk…
The echo of her smile
speaks volumes.

(this was fun)

Red the lips from which I sup
Rubies from the fleshy bowl
Fingers reach inside to cup
My heart and knead my love to soul

(an excerpt from one of my all time favorite songs)

I can dine on the morning light
feasts as plentiful as red is to roses.
Soaking my feet in the warmest of skies
as butterflies cascade across the edge of pain
that comes and goes around the delicate mess
that has become my axis of rotation.
What could be dreadfully too plentiful for some,
a lovely meal it makes for others.
And so I can dine under the promising moon
until the skin of my feet become ashes
burned by the fire above me
as I walk slowly and steadily on this line
that only the Monarchs know too well.
I’m now headed towards my great North
spellbound by the splendor of the feast that awaits.
The edges soften…blur, making any discomfort
only a mirage in the distant South.
And now we dine on resplendent smiles
worries withering away.
A covenant between the Monarchs me and you.

(For TN)

In my world…cops wear mohawks
………………..and kids eat candies filled with love.

In my world…trees grow in Los Angeles
………………..and their leaves turn orange at the start of a season called Autumn.

And in all worlds…everybody wants to be us.

Me….
and you.