Today is starfish crackers,
jumping off verbal cliffs,
and watching snowflakes
get stuck in their own glue.



Is it Friday, or Tuesday?
It’s hard to tell in the Texas hell
of waltzing with the devil’s politics
while wondering if sending your
television to a watery grave
will stop you from reaching
for another shot of tequila.



Yen or urge.
It’s funny the word
could mean money
or a strong desire
to eat a cookie.



I’m pretty sure I’m
an attempted cubist painting.
I live in a 3d reality,
but the artist ran
out of paint to cover
my geometry.

The space between
me and the mirror
holds assumptions,
questions, a palette
of colors that promise
they can paint away
my imperfections.

In the vanity of brushes
time sings of a much
younger me, but the
mirror is patient
as it waits for my
eyes to look into
its silver frame of reality.

In the rawness of morning
when I look into the mirror
I see my dad, my mother’s
bluntness, my daughter
who now travels across the moon.

I am growing more gracious
with the woman in the mirror.
I will never grow younger,
but I can grow bolder.

There’s no expiration date
on a dream or a day there
isn’t something to learn.

Mirror, I don’t seek you as
often as I once did…I now
spend my time trying to
be a person who reflects
the spirit of the best in me.

So Many Crossroads

I took a long walk out of my mind.
Insanity had so many crossroads
I could never find my way back to me.

Blind Paper

I beg ink for something to say.
The blind eye of white paper
frightens me.

Walking Dead

The sun on my arms feels lonely.
As much as I hunger for light
my spirit has grown too comfortable with shadows.
I’m the walking dead, a candle without a match.

It is the open arms that we long for;
the bright lighting up of the eyes when we enter the room.
An old man can deny it, but the 5-year-old within still knows.
We want to be welcomed like a sunflower field,
or the sweet voice of a grandmother at the door.
The need to truly belong is a force in itself.
You see everything in life has an impact;
the power of love and the compulsion of hurt.
The open doors and the slammed ones,
the last words spoken and the welcoming's,
our heart never forgets them.
You were too weary for open arms,
and too hurt to truly shine.
Truths an old man can discern,
but a child
can only feel lost in the darkness of it all.
For it is the open arms that we long for;
the bright lighting up of the eyes when we enter the room.
An old man can deny it, but the 5-year-old within me still knows.

Dead Grass

It is agony to feel irrelevant.
I wonder if the earth swallowed me
anyone would worry I was gone
or be more concerned about
why the grass won’t grow any more.