Life's not so bad
until just before morning
when I see a dark man
driving a black Cadillac
take a cigarette from his lips
and throw it out the window
watching it go all to pieces
all over the road.

do not let me
give you
anything less than
milk and honey.
do not let me feed your soul
with emptiness.
empty words.
empty beauty.
empty love.
let every space
that i fill
be occupied by a love
that was worth all we did
to find it.
let me fill in the blanks you keep
with words that come from truth
let the beauty that i give you
mean something to you.

The mist in the collard greens
is moving like an old woman
in dusty lingerie making sparks
with a *** where it lays tired
and the moon looks right odd
like an albino hawk in a dead
tree -  branches of solemnity
and worn out blue guitar strings -
while that old locomotive
of darkness  blows its steam
through my back porch screen.

Let us drink, the rays of sun in new day,
and play in fields of a poets mind,
getting drunk on our creative juices.

Let us breath deep, to feel empowered,
and resinate in the energies of love,
to feel oneness in the sacred moment.

Let us feel at home in every step,
and enter the carvers of heart
to write a grand symphony of lyrics.

Let us all celebrate, with glass full of special words
and use our creative minds with grace
to rise dancing on roads lined with blossoms.

Let us all say gratitude for the chain we've forged
and recall our passions to script in oneness
to move knowing we're  blessed and a blessings.

And, Let us swim far in our own waters of artistic waves
and touch one another sharing love
to make a new world where compassion rules,
and peace prevails.

StarBG © 2017

make this sorrow
this suffering
this pain
worth it.
tell me stars will be born
out of my darkness,
a spring from my winter,
wholeness from brokenness.
tell me
my bones have been broken
so that light finds a way through them.

(for ed hart)

well, you fell out of a tree
(beguiling, bewitching, the tips of the branches
long fingers gesturing to you, whispering
listen, kid, i got a secret to tell you.)
and, boom, that was the first time your collarbone got busted up.
maybe later you were just daydreaming, or, more likely,
drunk on some boone’s farm or some girl,
anyway at some point you decided ******* it,
i’m just not falling anymore,
but there was always some cracked pavement
or some tree root hidden by a patch of grass
you missed with the mower,
a million sundry distractions besides,
and one day don’t you just know
that you stuck your hand down  to catch yourself
(of course, you knew how **** stupid that was
the moment you reached earthward,
but the die already cast and all that nonsense)
and, bam, there’s a wrist, snapped like dry kindling.
well, maybe, if your’re lucky enough
and the right angels are looking out for you,
you live long enough to figure out that you’re gonna fall,
and the trick is to hit and roll on your good shoulder.

Now I am tranquil-
ized with the low light
of a fairly good star
planted serenely
in my Atlantic
and out there where
a lonely gull cries
dipping a wing
to the sea singing
a sleepy lullaby
in a language that Vargas
and I know so well
so, goodnight my angels
tomorrow will bring us
something akin to
a new day we can say
in one voice, Hallelujah
I am alive.