If You Dig Deep Enough

Throughout life,

all our incidents of predicaments and merriments, bodies written in the imperfect language of love and trouble’s many verbs.

Life can be a rough music, a brutal scuffle of drums and bass vying to be the first inside someone’s hip pocket.

Or, life can be a roadblock of sunblock on the skin, keeping the concerning burn at a healthy distance.

If you dig deep enough, you can find love buried beneath the trouble.

Trouble helps us determine the lengths of the dangerous borders beyond our skin.

Love helps us measure the distance from our souls to sweetness.

the reason for meaning

a-bomb into angel, bullet into bird, catatonia into crazyhorse, drudgery into drum solo, edema into embrace, fear into flying, gag rule into galileo, hacksaw into haiku, inept into indigo, junk mail into jukebox, kaput into keepsake, languish into lambent, mutter into mother, nadir into nighthawk, odious into oath, puddle into parable, quandary into quatrain, reckless into remedy, seethe into symphony, tumor into tuning fork, ulcer into utopia, villain into vesper, weasel into wonderland, xenophobe into xylophone, yoked yuck into yin and yang, zombie logic into zydeco delight.

While in the Graveyard Hours

Certain hearts are candles that can never be extinguished.

Certain candles make a vow to lead us through the darkest hours.

The wisest hours know that as days pass, we grow young, we grow old, we grow young again.

Should you ever wander through an evening graveyard and, in the light of your candle, witness a tombstone bearing my name,

know I wish you well on your path.

May love and gravity go easy on you.

May trouble never be your middle name.

Up and down the boulevard

traffic lights trade shades of red, yellow, and green to understand what life is like living in the skin of another color.

widescreen TVs get schooled by second-hand turntables on the finer points of developing better listening skills.

tuneless fortune cookies with no good words to offer anyone, anytime or anyplace, are recycled into longitudes with beautiful attitudes of latitude.

up and down the boulevard, we ponder, we prowl; we hope, we howl.

and while our grammar may be a bit rusty and restless from being stuck in the slammer of solitude for so long,

I hear our summer parades will only be rained upon by non-fretting confetti.

In the New-Moon Motel

In the new-moon motel, I’m reminded there are places where earth’s blue rhythms flow with our every movement.

Places where no bells speak with forked tongues, where we heal our inner storms with swarms of song.

In the new-moon motel, I’m reminded there are places where sleep settles soft on the hard city, where cruelty’s fatal machinery is dismantled and reassembled into simple graces.

Places where bullets are turned inside out and transformed into kisses, where dreams empty their pockets of anything resembling death.

In the new-moon motel, I’m reminded that while we may come into this world crying,

we will not leave that way.

This one goes out to all the dads

Drumming dads, humming dads, painting, creating, guitar-playing dads.

Dads of all colors, shapes, races and religions.

Compassionate dads, rational dads, galactic and captain fantastic dads.

Dads that are here or gone, dads whose love goes on and on.

Dads whose heart is the whole sky, dads that tear down the dark to offer light.

Business dads, side-hustle dads, hipster and handyman dads.

Dads that are the sons of other dads.

Glad dads, rad dads.

Dads that can swing a hammer or ones that can swing on the dance floor or bandstand.

Braggy dads, old-fashioned dads, raspberry beret-wearing or strawberry fields forever dads.

To all the dads: Happy Father’s Day.

Hardly a Party Line

Here comes that voice of an out-of-tune piano going through puberty.

That voice of disillusioned lion tamers and agoraphobic elevators.

Here comes that voice of corpse flowers, halitosis, and half-witted party clowns down to their last balloon animal trick.

Here’s that voice of an expired driver’s license and siren lights in the rearview mirror.

That voice of an unemployed fortune-teller turned street preacher.

Here comes that voice of a grenade cross-dressing as a blade of grass.

Constipated jackhammers, clogged sinks, computers on the blink.

Here’s that voice of every moronic thing I’ve said and all the witty and insightful things I wish I’d said—

all those voices, and more, coming at me while I continue waiting on hold for someone from my bank to pick up the phone.

Some memories

get a little drunk, others a little weepy, still others unruly or serene as they sit around, one-upping one another, trading tales of peaceful times, warring times, loving and lonely times.

Some memories have holes in their jeans, runs in their stockings, messy hair, haggard, or dressed and ready for the runway.

Some remain quiet and sullen while others gladly sing for their supper.

Some are maddened, others meditative.

Still others float around unrooted, haven’t paid history’s light bill,

remain a bit too dim to remember where they came from or where they’re going.

Once Upon a Time Today

Days that stretched to eons or shrank to seconds depending upon the month or one’s particular feelings—

remember those?

Now we’re slowly emerging from our time in quarantine.

All our liberated sensations are getting their second wind, shaking off their sea legs, and we’re feeling our way through the streets with newly minted emotions.

We’re doing our best not to take things for granted, be open to unique opportunities and chances.

Make the trusted true, the old new.

And so goes another strange summer, amidst another strange year, amidst another strange lifetime,

in a beautiful but odd-hearted world.

You

You, running amidst soon-summer green.

You, dancing to drumbeats of your own creation.

You, learning to skywrite your name across the vast, beautiful blue above us.

All this as wars come and go, diseases ebb and flow, as bullets refuse to dye the blood-red color from their hair.

All this as I worry about the clock, watching time touch its wrinkled face wondering how did we all get here.

All this, and then you.

You, whose eyes sing a cappella light.

You, whose pockets are filled with wishes that never grow extinct.

You who’s always just a thought behind or exactly what I’m thinking right now.