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It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt compelled enough to post something political.

You and I are so entrenched in our beliefs that such posts bounce around in a glorifying, self vindicating echo chamber; or crash into a name calling cacophony, galvanizing our hatred for the other side. This is OUR state of democracy.

What if, you didn’t have to chose “a lessor of two evils?” Even just once? Would you?

#Kennedy24

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My father cuts the roses from the rosebush and bouquets the flower On the last Sunday of May Between spring and summer Waltzing thru the tombstones recalling words they used to say Remembering but no longer mourning the family and the friends Paying tribute with the flora to those who came before Casually teaching us children that all things come to ends. That death is always infinitely more Than all of life

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The Greatest Love I Can No Longer Miss

You are not the rock of my life or soul Instead the priceless gemstone set in gold The one setting that makes love's heirloom full Opal and alloy together to grow old Never shall I find a stone to replace To search the entire world would be in vain For no other pair can match our embrace Metal and stone fired and made with pain So why pretend it wasn't what it was The gem was cut precisely for the ring My band was forged to cover all your flaws Separate just parts, combined everything You are not mine or I yours but part of this The greatest love I can no longer miss

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Here’s Babi!

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Will you Walk on coals And Dance in fire

And wash away my burns and scars and fears

Will you fulfill my every devilish desire

And love me all your years?

Will you jump head first into the abyss

With I holding thy hand tight

And take my final breath inside your kiss

Will you come back to me, forever, tonight?

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How does one say goodbye Not the see you soon or until next time A farewell which must be a tearful cry Not what the poet often makes rhyme

To go separate ways To pass unto another plane What is it at death’s bed the son says Or a lover groveling in vain

Must it always hurt so deep Or can it be a final joyful leap Into a nothingness abyss to hurt no more Or a whole new experience to endure

Goodbye, in truth, is not something said It is a sickening split a final end It is not words or these to be read Or something one can mend

Goodbye and it’s expression are something we cannot comprehend But must act, pretend, and try to say

That it’s over, and that’s okay

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Mountain Idylls and Other Poems by Alfred Castner King. 1901 Fleming H. Revell Company

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Until you’ve know a mother other than your own

You’ll never understand why yours may have seemed rough or mean

You’ll never comprehend the unconditional love they’ve shown

Keeping behind your ears, inside your spirit, and your home clean

Until you’ve loved a mother not your wife

You’ll never know the sacrifices she made each night

You’ll never find a more saintly sinner in your life

Keeping both heaven and hell wound together tight

Until you’ve lost a mother, yours or mine

You’ll never find the time to say

I love you often enough in rain or shine

You’ll never forget silly games we play

Keeping sweet the fruit that makes the Holy Wine

Until you’ve seen it through you’ll never know what the shaken say

When they say to you sincerely, Happy Mother’s Day

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Quarantined in a closet full of shoes

Upon a cheap air mattress deflated

Unabated by catastrophic news

Between dirty sheets infatuated

By the freeway on the lower south hill

We grew bored of shows and video games

With little to do and some time to kill

Night sweat glistening under candle flames

We broke free and drove many miles and miles

Through the Devils Gap and across state lines

Flowers, turkey feathers, unabashed smiles

Breaking the state and Federal guidelines

I looked good dressed in blue in quarantine

And your perfume smelled like sweet Ovaltine

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To the “bad” who die young

Who’ve heard the opposite sung

Passing into the hot o’ Summer

Fearing autumns dreary drummer

Beckoning the the leaves to fall

Listlessly but most graceful of all

departing before the inevitable cold

still full of love and bold

Do not envy ye did not grow old

This winter your story we told

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I Have a Rendezvous with Death

BY ALAN SEEGER

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear ...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Source: A Treasury of War Poetry (1917)

Accessed 03/28/2020

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45077/i-have-a-rendezvous-with-death

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“In the beginning, man went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.

This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren—who cared not for conquest, and fretted in the field—this designer of quaint patterns, this devised of the beautiful—who perceived in Nature about him curious carvings, as faces seen in the fire—this dreamer apart, was the first artist.”

James McNeill Whistler. “The Ten O’Clock.” Essays in Philosophy edited by Houston Peterson. Pocket Library, 1959, pp. 203.

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A penguin and his gift

Gently does he lift

A pebble or a rock

waddling along a walk

Through odd & chatty flock

To ticks and tocks of spring’s clock

Carefully did he sift

Afraid to fall adrift

Amid Ocean currents swift

As seasons always shift

O’Er many crag and rift

Eagerly to meet

give the stone and greet

laying pebble at her feet

glancing down a little tweet

A penguin’s dance complete

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Always remember

The way that winter rain fell

When we said goodbye

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Love Knows not Logic

However I try I can’t solve this equation

To left or right, positive or in negation

Every variable input X or Y

Makes you and I irrational or undefined

Math follows logic the heart does not abide by

No real solution to this paradox assigned

For reason and logic are calculated cold

Love, the absurd purity of Alchemist’s Gold

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Down these city streets often did I walk ‘tween Catholic marble and Masonic Stone Where I hear Sphinx and departed Saints talk “Woe foolish son!” stumbling on by alone

As the light dims the conversations fade Like the bustle of cars and midnight train That drown out all the evening’s escapades  Only litter and sleepless souls remain

I find myself now laying down to rest Amidst the Gazebo and tennis courts In well cut grass downtown and to the west A temporary home for the homeless sorts

Freedom is the state of having nothing Bondage is the hate of being something