In the garden out the back
Is where I've been cleaning
Out all my daemons
Even though they might relapse
It finds the anecdote
To illustrate the reason

In the garden out the back
Where I grow my wise decisions
Abundance growing to the brim
With all that medicine therein
You'll find the crystal mind

Nel giardino dietro a cà
Dove non c'è niente
Che può preoccuparmi
Io trovai felicità
Facendo cose che sono
Poco educate

Nel giardino dietro a cà
Come sana decisione
Lasciai perdere eredità
Quel che ci lascia sparirà
Qui cresce libertà

In the garden out the back
Is where I've been breathing
All my good intention
If there's something that you lack
You'll find it growing
In the fascets of redemption

In the garden out the back
You will feel no inhibitions
They are not needed anymore
Our remedy grows out the floor
Reveal this truth to find
Abundance growing to the brim
With all the medicine therein
You'll find the crystal mind

Don’t seek love
You will learn
To be cold one day
Expect nothing from life
You will be disappointed
Wait for 'verse to deal her hand
That is plenty to get on with

Bold is hope
Its alchemy will mount an army
To lay siege
On stupid cognitive mind
Until you are sick
To the breaking bone
With life itself
Because it will never come

Stay real
Save Heartache
Art will make opaque
Fragile mind
To be given only in glances
From this moment onwards

When I give love freely
It is beautiful treason
To what is actually going on
This blissful unknowing
Corroding my reason to be

Free to exist without savouring
Acrid taste so sweet
Turned displeasing
Through violent epiphany
On the state of affairs

I, the fool
Do confuse progress
With feeling things
Au contraire
To the loneliness
I seem to process

I cannot be trusted
With handing out affection
So I will make it happen
With those I can love
Until the tension
Of this karmic lesson
Is lessened
Releasing these organs
To breathe what man does best

I may then build a mountain
Upon this omen
Move it on
With silent motion
To a fruiting body
For all to see
This is where my love will seep

Out of this copse
The sun shall creak
To drench those
I could have loved twice-fold
By chance, not plan
This way the universe can
Decide in its uncertain cold

To not seek love
One learns
This warmth
When one knows
How love is made
Then love will flow

Pull in the sheets,
trim the tiller,
shifting to the other rail,
light airs prevail, the
sails they luff.

Seeking the wind,
Cat's paws to Starboard
Hard-a-lee tacking to Port,
the breeze she comes,
boom shifts, helm heels
over, sails crack and fill.
Reef in the Jib, slack off the main.
She digs in, laying her rail
into the water, riding on the
seas thin knifes edge again,
the keel rises, steadies her passage.
We fly!

Ah, fair winds, sailors delight,
pleasant sailing, safe harbor ahead.
No greater joy than to sail and muck
about in boats on blue water.

Freedom achieved, intensely felt.

The floodgates
                      have opened
                  and the tide is high
            the dam has burst
    in explosion
of tear-bombed third eye
      saltwater rushes
           culling dark demons
              from the deep
the most buried
of creatures
awoken from sleep
viperfish and tube worms
                     vampire squid
twirling their tentacles
to summon the id
squelching up
                    impulse  
from sinkholes of mud
primal instincts excavated
                     from tombs
                          of slick crud
Deep-seated fears
have been beckoned to play
to disregard tears
take resistance away
and while blown over
by this twisted abyss
she remembers a flicker
            of the shadow of bliss
      and like a mermaid rising        
up towards surface
                      blue heights
she grasps at the cirrus
leaking tendrils of light
pulling up hand by hand,
in sea-tangled vine
a vague sense of sweetness
flushes out brine
and when she breaks through
                           the surface,
her heart like a sieve
she finally owns it-
the power
       to
            breathe

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

12 years have passed since I’ve last seen her in this life.
Distance and sickness in our being had robbed us both
of streams of time which passed like a long cold winter
into her death. These lost memories often create over-
exposed and superimposed photo negatives of imaginary
frames of time I desperately imprint to hold tightly in my
heart and mind.

But I still hold tightly in memory to her soft voice on the
phone and pictures of split second frames of physical
time my sister would send me. Many people don’t even
have that.

In this life she loved to mother her three grown children
and flower garden as near as
she could to the end. It was
in her nature to nurture us--
her perennial children--
and to help make the move easier for her literal annual foster children plants taken
from a confined potted existence to a deep soft warm bed of comfort.

Stamped on my mind is not the faded and worn, bruised
and torn image of her outward shell in the Trauma
Center at age 88, but the indelible inner and outward
image at age 38: a lovely young mama who tucked her
little boy in bed every night with a song and a prayer.
The little boy that is still alive in this man.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.