Despite the pain, the gruff
tough, the truth hard to bear…

Despite the mire, the funeral pyre,
the sick of this and that, the
sick and tired…

Love finishes days with its coat
of solace, its day remembered, its
peace of mind, the rainbow after rain,
swept skies alive with stars

Santa Barbara winds keeping maintenance
men and women busy, surfers happy,
the golden sun an anthem of peace
greeting the patient every day.

God is this, is in this, Good Orderly
Direction or Higher Power, guiding us
softly, abruptly always truthfully into
new things and change.

The key to life is not in words, ask
Borges or Lao Tsu; you could ask me
by now, I like to kick it with Longfellow
some calm nights and remember when
the day is done.

Build your dreams a day at a time, Frost
beating sharp drums against night,
tools of the trade, outdoors a game…

Best played by those in love with
nature, man and womankind alike,
the sun becoming shade, the crucifixion
in light, the end beginning

The upstream fight

It’s for the old reason I write this poem—
to save the day from lonely ruin;
I want to remember the good times spent—
dream of tomorrows and where they went;

I love the sunshine, the stars shine brighter
when the rain cleans the sky of doubt;
I used to think all green things, money
to diamond rings would piece the peace together.

I used to think I could cloud the sky with stormy weather.

I used to know a guy who left the dream to others,
cried at night for things unsaid, dreams unrealized,
when it was true: If I had been looking up instead of down
I’d see the rainbow; another swept sky, stars shining bright.

There’s always a chance before the light.

Mom Always Said

Truth is packaged neatly in wireless
LAN unaware of its speed.

We really can change the world,
Lao Tzu was wrong. Funny, he actually
wrote he was wrong in the first line
of the Tao Te Ching.

“Hear, hear! Don’t listen to this… the
true Tao cannot be written!”

The Name of the Creator cannot be used
in vain, call it YHWH, it cannot really be
said, there’s no vowels in it.

Moms are good for stuff like that, naming
the Earth and things what they are, this
is dust, this is dirt, this is…

Men take spiritual vacations but come back
to truth. Truth is a vacation, is horror, is
all things—

Women? Specks of difference had men holding
pens and apparent “power” so long, it’s
taken so much lungpower to blow
Vanity’s masculine house down to size.

Flames burst and find reasons to shine up
or down the stream of human grief. Nothing
is everything as we find Jorge Luis Borges lamenting
his use of words, calling everything fiction.

Dickens’s Gradgrind is yelling “fact” against Borges’
libraries, we are stacking up words like this
against loneliness trying to connect people
and ideas. To inspire by rhyming, the more
opposing the idea the more interesting the
rhyme!!

Have a good time!!

This life of ours at times turns on a dime,
and suddenly after hours of not being sure
we’re so glad we could be here, if only
for this one more day.

God says “hey! Pretty good, my people, I
would’ve been your king…”

But we kicked God out of number one, let
the Creator Herself feel the sting.
So far reaching is the planet of our
thoughts, that we must revolve them
around one sun,

I call it God, some call it God’s
son, so many do not speak my
Tongue, call Life death, turn on
said dimes, seeking a path not into
Mom’s heart but God’s running on
and on until satisfied with peace of mind
we further the chain of Life, death,

Honor our parents still.

“Long life depends upon it, Bill;” technology
cannot come up with a better pill.

Laboring, waiting like Longfellow implored,
the focus of Volleyball’s Karch Kiraly—

Commitment to One!!

I’ll take that over multi-tasking, Bottom
trying to play every part, for me forty years
of living ‘til I wrote with my heart.

Mom always said I’d find my part