I'm told the sky is blue.
God is dead.
Lead is heavier than cotton.
I'm not convinced I know where the sky starts.
You need proof, like a birth certificate, to be declared dead.
Cotton and lead can both weigh a gram or a tonne.
So, my conundrum... how do I write about what I know.
My name is Francie. I have a birth certificate, and it's yellowing...fast.
Whatever comes after this is pure speculation.
However, our opinions are weighed
With equations and laws. Laws.
There's a thumb on the scales.
Reason is subjective. Water is wet... warm... hard... vaporous... dry...
I can write about death, while I'm alive, believing in it.
My forehead is bleeding from pounding my lack of truths into verse
For readers to think of the possible, for certain.

Bible literature
Foretells the rapture
With the breaking
Of the Seventh Seal;
But there's an Eighth
That seals our mouths;
Broken
When we're laid out.
We'll never know,
That all along,
There's nothing at all
To worry about.

My friend's Father,
Who's just that,
Has a Papa Francis.
And her entire congregated family
Won't acknowledge her
Very existence.
How can she communicate.
There's a crack in the crucifix,
And it's splitting, running up the wood,
Past the cruciform,
To the Head.

I listened to a man who was terminally sick,
And he wanted to talk politics.
But I was focused on the stars
And how they'd fall like grains of sand;
And then I heard the woeful wind,
Plaintiff as this breathless man.
And I was sad
That the stars did not fall
To mark the passing of our time,
For it has no real face and hands,
Or wings to fly on, or legs to run.
Yet rushes at us like politicians;
Perhaps that's what he said.

Dads,
Some kids we raise
Will abandon us,
Despise, deplore
And anger us.

     What can we do?

Some sons will denounce
To even some score;
Some daughters will leave
To dance and *****.

     Dads, we're trapped forever more.

Some daughters will stay
And tend the home;
Some sons will sit
In cold cells alone.
They're worlds apart
From what we'd expect.

     Dads, I'm not finished yet.

Some sons give sons their father's name,
Some daughters so proud they keep the same;
Some teach and preach and heal and toil,
They've learned their lessons well.
You're so puffed you're buttons pop,
You never want this life to stop.

     Dads, take it from me.

You've done your duty,
You've won the game,
Take it from me,
No two are the same.

Daddy held me in his arms
Once, when I was five;
He wasn't one to embrace,
To clap and say well-done.

To hear him speak two words
Was volumes from someone
Who tsked and rolled,
But never scolded
His daughters and his sons.

In his hold, so foreign,
He made his assumption,
That I was content to be held,
Though squirming for the ground.

For me it wasn't soothing,
He never was inviting,
His demeanor so discomforting,
He never did it again;
Not that I could tell;
And yet the security
Never diminished
From arms that once held me.

To me, this sounded so final and trite,
But his wife, she said, left him,
Cause she couldn't be a wife.

There's a fine epitaph to carve,
On the stone above his life:

My wife, they say, left me,
Cause she couldn't be a wife;
That's all she ever wanted,
To be this dead man's wife.

A couple passing by the script,
Might read an enigmatic drift.

What kind of wife, the woman asked,
I wonder what he meant by that.

One who'd drink and drink some more,
Smoke and eat and grow so fat
On Caesar's Salad and chocolate.

Could she nurse through any sickness;
See it for what it is;
For what it was;
Work with the outcome,
Not the cause.

And yet, it's true, all along,
He wasn't in control.
Not abuse, or waywardness,
But the drink that dries the soul.

What could that wife do
In the fight.

They each promised,
Each meant each life;
Does she get to choose the sickness?
What kind of wife gets to pick it?

I know he didn't give objection,
As many husbands do,
When she raised ablutions
To false gods she eschewed;
They promised on the temple pinnacle
That all is theirs, if she submits,
To the pyramids that promise riches.

Till death do us part.

Now that's a lark,
In a song of lament.
She could have been any wife
She'd deem to choose in her life;
She chose,
For a limited time,
On a definition
He declined.

I am expected
At the clan gathering today.
The naughty and nice will attend;
I'd like to say they're friends,
But it's family - a gnarly tree
With thick bark and thinning branches,
Twigs pointing and abandoned nests.
Yet, when it rains
I find shelter,
And when things get hot,
I find shade.
The roots reach into the cemetary
And across the blue.
I will wear my favourite Tee:
     Keep Calm
     And Let Lynch
     Handle It.
It's cute, and breaks the ice
Before I melt.

I wish she were on my mind,
But she's not. She's in it,
And has full possession.

I've lost my mind;
I'm beside myself;
I'm next to an idiot!

She has my mind in her hands,
And I have time on mine.

She takes all mine. My time.
But I don't mind spending time,
And gladly giving all of mine,
If she would only mind me.
Mine me.

(There is treasure to be had)

Isn't it easy to write during these times,
And difficult to write on these times,
Without ripping off figurative comparisons.

I want to use wasteland
But I'd be the one compared,
And that won't work. That's not my intent.
Besides, Townsend and T.S. worked it.

There are the platinum choices
Like Satan, Lucifer, or Legionnaire.
But Milton has his scent all over these,
And the Bible invented them.

Those times.
These times.

Apocalypse, or any version thereof,
Would surely bring Brando to mind,
And Kurtz's heart of darkness.

There are inspiring descriptors like,
Cataclysm, devastation and destruction.
Well-represented in cinema
Since Birth of a Nation.
Now there's irony.

As much as Holocaust would be perfect to plagiarize,
I, nor anyone else, should ever attempt,
(And it would be a vain glory attempt at best)
To use this singular word
In an analogy for anything, ever again.
Ever!
Unless absolutely necessary.
Unless someone we know gets stupid.
Then more stupid.
Then stupider.
Then most stupid.
And finally,
Not with a whimper, but a bang.
I falter.
Not exactly plagiarism is it?
Shouldn't be repeated either.

Inside,
I'm naked
And warm,
Where our hearts
Beat
Despite the storm
Of whirling air
And pulsing blood,
Digestive growls
And umbilic crud.
I snuggle in
Fetal bliss,
Where I await
My first kiss
And first cuddle;
Safe
From elemental muddle
Of outside harms.
I see a light,
I'm being torn,
No going back,
I'm reborn.

We sketched it out,
Construed an outline
With bullet points;
Worked on the draft,
Fashioned the conclusion
While forming an introduction,
And through infusion,
Developed an argument.

From thesis to synthesis
We entered the plot,
Quite sure of twists,
Not knowing the costs.
Our assay would go
Something  like that.

Plodding forward
Through antithesis,
The crises, decisions,
Then the denoument.

In conclusion,
To summarize:
The vacant character
Of my eyes,
Was the climactic dowfall;
Your hero dies.

The final draft
Was finely crafted,
Something just like that.

I'm hardly the one
You left behind,
Twenty odd years ago;
The suit fits much better,
Now I'm in the show.
I'm not using slight-of-hand,
No smoke or mirrors,
Just running sand;
The big tent long left town.

I know the four directions,
And how my wind will blow.
And even at a four way stop
I know who has the right-of-way.
And when it's my turn to turn,
I'll step on the pedal and spin my wheels
And drive myself insane.

I fact checked
Whether God's
Dead or Alive.
In fact...

Sit, fast.
Lie down if you find privacy.
It's a wave, cresting over you,
And you wonder,
Should I continue breathing?
Gulp, and let the wash begin.
Look to the feet first,
And calm your soles:
Work the legs,
Think outside the head,
But stay down -
You'll walk again,
And wait, and forget,
Then forgive yourself.

Well, are you?
Did the news startle you
That things are a mess.
Gaza's imploding,
Palestine's exploding,
The Middle East could use some help.
In the Communist countries,
There's an electronic curtain
Keeping people out.
Planes go strangely missing
Over unknown ground;
Others don't go missing,
They're eagerly missled down.
There's millions starving
All around;
Meaningful work is hard to find,
Self-worth is in decline.
Under the steeple
There's fewer people,
But that was another time.
My bills are stacking,
We're seriously lacking
A government we can trust.
By any account, our sorry world
Is rightly ****** right up.
If you're not ******,
Then you've missed
The news at six o'clock.

A newborn received
The greatest gift imaginable,
Then proceeds to loose it
Day by day.
And we say
We love her.

Will you falter and fade
In a Palliative room,
With beeps and tubes
Confirming your doom?
Or a fiery crash
And screech of rubber
As onlookers see
Your hair aflame;
Will you fall from the sky
In a laser marked plane;
Get shot while buying
A lottery ticket,
Die doing something
Horribly wicked?
Perhaps the sound
Near your ears at night
Will forewarn your demise
By a mosquito bite.

The dregs are in
The bottle;
The crumbs are on
The floor;
I've nothing to
Regurgitate;
I'm an empty plate.

So, I'll dip
My bucket
In Lake Muse,
Drink its waters
Til I ooze
With metaphors
And similies
To read on
Hello Poetry.

I can guess your names,
Cleverly chosen to reflect
This year's popularity.
Names beginning with XYZ.
Some silly ones, by all accounts,
But I'm silly to think my opinion counts.
Though that's of no matter for what you face;
For we've left this place in a sorry state.
Our lame excuse is,
We didn't fare well from our benefactors.
The ethnic mix was already a mess;
And rightly demands fair redress;
Broken promises to those who dreamed,
The indigenous and the migrant streams;
Those in chains, though innocent,
The fairer ***, and I'm not sexist,
Has been under the heel of the strong,
Yes, far more fair,
And they've been wronged.
Unique communities of men and women,
Have cracked the doors, blown their horns
And tumbled the walls of garrisons
Through film, print, paint and clay.
Their inclusiveness gives me hope,
That some near not far future day,
We'll all be gathered in one parade.

I've scratched the surface of our inheritence,
And in fifty years of managing the place,
We've left problems til too late;
Some we've worked on,
Some escaped.
We've pointed fingers far too long,
The work we started's never done,
You too will have to pass it on
To the unborn of the human race.

He drapes an arm around anyone's shoulder
In every shot I've seen;
It leads your eyes along his arm
To his eyes, a vanity trick,
Like a narcis-stick.

He often grows some ****** hair,
And wears a logo shirt,
Every thought is well-planned out,
To push his latest scheme.

I attended his wedding,
The first I've ever seen,
Where the groom draws more attention,
Than any bride could dream.

She wore an oyster-colored dress,
With a train six feet long;
While she was walking up the aisle,
The groom broke into song.

Then they had a child,
A boy, now thirteen,
He throws his arm around his dad
To be the centre of the scene.

One may observe one's quite absurd,
And question why one's not deterred,
When one hears what one's observed.
One's world abounds with wondrous places,
Peopled with mosaic races.
When one blurts out a black man's black,
One says one's not a Democrat.
If one detects one's hue of skin,
One says one's not Republican.
But one is blamed for mouthing words
Like Indian, Paddy, Jew or Kurd.
One's innocuous indiscretions
Has one's eyes rolling on occasions.
Should one be blind to the homeless,
Then one can't see one's not blameless.
When one supports a Pride Parade,
One proudly says one's not afraid.
If one's an anti-abortionist,
Then one must help the Innocents.
“The sick and dying are a great expense,”
One yells demanding the same treatment.
One preaches hard-line on foreign shores,
Would **** the ******* in one war.
One's a diplomatic boor
(And one's glad it's there and not here).
If one knows one conceals a gun,
One's compensating for the wee one.
If one encounters a common thief,
One should keep one's company brief.
Should one hear a politician,
One needs to separate fact from fiction.
One sees terrorists everywhere
From the confines of one's chair.
One speak of one's impending doom,
Looking out from one's room.
There's so much angst one lays on one,
Yet we are one,
We're not one.
Our time here has ebbed,
Will flow,
One must leave.
One must go.

We're in thrall.
Where's your wall?
You dump truck...
You fumb duck...
You other mother...
You worse than senseless thing.

The twins came today.
They took their first breaths
On this first day of May.
Today, and all days,
I swear and I pray,
To love them always,
Come what may.

Give your ******* a name,
And then Goggle it.

When she opened her  closet,
There was Jamie,
At the end of a rope.
All three twisted as the face,
With feet an inch from life.
A brown and yellow drip
Puddled the floor,
Touching the toe of a worn sock.
     If I can't live here, I'll die here.
Was pinned near the heart.
Stretching out her fingers,
Working fast for the unattainable,
Thinking speed and action
Could change the outcome
Of the hours old body,
Hanging,
Like a favorite suit
In need of dry-cleaning.

Where has all our innocence gone;
When love was just a puppy's song.
We shared furtive looks
Behind school books;
Exchanged shy smiles
Across the aisles;
When eye contact
Had sudden impact.
I followed you from school
In plain view,
To ridicule.
I'd write names in red chalk
On every sidewalk;
Wait down on the corner,
Avoid your father.
Hold calming hands,
Listen to live  bands.
Calls were made
From corner pay-phones,
Some privacy from prying homes.
The first kiss was wet,
And missed,
And still one of the best.
A daring move
At the time,
Sending the anonymous Valentine.
We were waifs,
And Oh so young,
And love
Was prematurely born.

What flies higher and faster than an eagle;
Moves in underwater distances greater than a whale,
And quicker than a shark;
On land, makes the chetah look immobile;
Can burrow deeper, and more effectively than a mole;
Is more powerful than elephant, rhino;
Has a higher perspective than a giraffe;
Presents with more audacity than a monkey;
Yet has the discerning powers of a gnat,
And the future longevity of a fruit fly?

She's a messianic complex,
She's way too self-absorbed;
She's not the centre of the universe,
Nor the orbit of my world.

She's not lit beneath the spot light,
She's not the colours of a rainbow;
She's not the sun or inconstant moon,
Nor the North Star of my nights.

She's not the compass for direction,
Nor the warm winds of my winters,
Or the cool rains of my summers;
But she's my predilection,
It may sound misconstrued;
It may be a prediction,
It may as well be true:
*It's hard for me to live this life
If life's not lived with you.

At Newgrange Tomb
The sun slides its golden fingers
Through portals to the cruciform
For the 5000th time.
I should like to be a crack
In that ancient rock.

I have nothing against the person,
But the profession can be irksome.
You may get argumentative,
But that’s part of the dance:
To step on some toes.
So, I leave you to choose,
And add some of your own.
o Dentist
o Teacher (for the disenchanted/entitled)
o Oncologists
o Auto Mechanic
o Clerics
o Lawyers
o Funeral Persona

Three small words,
That we hear,
Make or break
So many fears.
Now let's read
These short phrases,
To realize how
They change us.

How are you?
I feel fine.
Where are you?
You look Divine.

I see you.
You're very welcome.
I miss you.
What a surprise!
I need you,
Open your eyes.

Believe in yourself.
Nobody is perfect.
Count your blessings.
Speak the truth.

Seize the Day.
Go for it.
I'll be there,
Working on it.

Be the exception,
Never give up
Against all odds,
I'll respect that.

Dreams come true.
Learn from mistakes.
Aspire to inspire
For heaven's sake.

Please forgive me.
Let it go.
Let's be friends,
I trust you.

I love you.
Come to bed.

Three small words
Mean so much;
Mouths and hands
Reach and touch.

I must hurry to the meeting
In the committee room,
We'll vote on closure
Of the heart,
Get back to work by noon.
All the players are present,
We're sitting side-by-side,
I'm next to an idiot,
Beside myself
With opinions that collide
Within myself,
About myself,
Infused with self,
I'm the chair of the meeting,
The only one in the room.
My many colored selfish life
Has left my heart forlorn.
We take a vote
To remove the chair,
His outlook
Is too biased;
He had a heart per diem,
Mismanaged in a poem.

You claimed it was a missile,
Me, a shooting star;
I saw a pickle,
Not a bearded face
In the jar.
Some see wee men,
Approaching their islands.
Cubes floating
In the Austral Ocean,
Warning our hopes are broken.
Janus faced usury
Tear-up for the bear;
Politicos in the chase
Have two mouths on their faces.
We surely landed on the moon;
When we're gone,
We're gone for good.
Bigfoot's not in the woods,
ESP's in the guts,
All paranormal is psychosis.
Too skeptical's obsessive neurosis.
What's one to believe.
I see Jekyll, you Hyde Island;
These stories are so overwhelming,
Growing in numbers with retelling.

This happened
Faster than the speed of light,
Immediate like deja vu;
While coming across your picture,
Just then, I am with you.

As enlightening as an epiphany,
Shorter than a sub nano Zen;
I was one with my reality,
I am in the picture then.

I snap back,
I put it back
Beneath the orchid cloth,
Where time and space lie dormant
For these moments that I have.

I stripped the branches,
Debarked the limbs
Like peeling sunburnt skin
On the chest high grassy plains.
There's a nest in the crotch of our tree
With umbilical vines detached and green;
I check to see if my bellybutton
Is missing, just like Eve's.
I see that mine's an Outie,
Still connected to the trees.

Mammy died years ago,
So I'm older than her now,
Though I never feel this way.
But I'm younger than my father was
Years after his delay.

I'm an aging Granda now,
But I seldom feel this way;
When in my memories,
Where they truly lie,
I'm still their son today.

I knew her when
She learned her letters;
She liked me too.

We shared a tent;
Followed the sparks fading in the full moon's face.
Draped water over our skins at midnight.

She bickered with her mother,
Whom she mothered today.

She once had a mole
Only we two knew.

I knew her then.
That's the fact of it.

She rebelled,
Then surpassed naysayers and detractors.
I knew her, then.
Got to know her at her best-
A sharer, and keeper,
One who wasn't one to rest.

I knew her without discretion;
Like when she partied at Mardi Gras,
Wearing string-beads, blowing saxes,
Something she never spoke of.

Then, this cannot be her.
I knew her, and,
I didn't know.

There were sharp, dark nights
When I was sent to the store;
The alleys and empty lots
Were void of comfort light.

There were night sweats
When figures approached;
I would pause on the sidewalk
To hear the retreating steps.

I'd turn to watch a dark outline
Cross under a canopy of branches;
His procession out of the light
And into the long sharp night.

Abandoned houses had draped windows
In the dark of morning deliveries;
Black, steel steps lead to balconies,
Beneath them darker yet.

My window displayed the silhouettes
Of cold thin twig fingers;
And the darkened stairs had a balanced creak,
Or a shoulder bumped into the landing.

I pulled the blanket over my head,
Darker still, I let the night roll on.
That was night.
Tomorrow has dawn.
What's night is night.
What's dark lives on.

If the past is only an idea,
And the future does not exist;
Then we have the present,
Though immearsureable,
It's what we have,
And it travels faster
Than the speed of light.
Grab it.
Now.

Delivered to inviting hands
With one breath;
Then sculpted in a parent's arms
To feed on sweet caresses,
Inhaling life with one kiss,
As prologue to her song;
She'll carry on.
Mature. Secure.
Bound and forged
In infant iron.

She hears, listens, then deduces,
To apply their teachings
When cut loose;
Lessons she will reproduce
To set her free,
Unfettered by mediocrity.

Like the Sphinx,
She crawls,
Then stands to think.
At times, we know,
She'll forget
Steadier hands
Held her *****.
She will fall again,
Then stand and walk,
Perhaps with Pride;
And should she fail,
She knows she tried.

First steps lead
To stage or field,
And honours
On her battlefields;
Protected by
Parental shields.

She'll receive
These life-long gifts,
Then start anew
At age six.
If she walks alone
She'll find,
Friends can make
The walk divine.
She'll filter them,
Some in, some out;
And trust a few
With her life;
Avoiding others
She's learned aren't right
By socializing,
Not over-protected
Or compromising.

Her early years
Sow the seeds
Of second breaths
And good deeds;
To balance friends
With second looks:
The cover can't
Disclose the book.

Most of all,
She'll understand
She grew and grows
With helping hands.
And when she stands
With womankind,
She'll extend
Her hands
To all mankind.

The St. Clair flowed
Towards Erie,
As we walked to
The headwaters,
Where Huron emptied
So seemingly endless.

On Sunday drives
I never noticed signposts
Flying by.

On the court, Love,
I crouched, amazed,
At your service game,
Never ready for
The backhand.

Idle times lead
The girls to womanhood.
I'm left with celebrations
On celluloid,
And digital grasps
And loosening fingers.

In Wexford
I saw Superstar;
An Irish Jesus
That well pleased us,
But you may think that dross.
In retrospect,
We might agree,
They hung long
On that cross.

We're hungering for a leader
Who's not a bottom feeder.

It growls again
Like a hungry pact,
A grumbling
Belly-empty grind.
Its hoary arms
Touch my back,
I feel its breath
On my neck;
I quicken my pace
Past the gated community
Where family and friends
Stay secure
From this snap of wind,
The reach of its sleek, lean paws.

Swirling, circling
'Round my head,
I pull down my balaclava
Like a soldier of fortune,
I constrict my scarf
Mouthing an Ave Maria,
And turn home.

They say the Bard's been dead four hundred years;
But each time I attend Stratford,
He struts upon the stage,
Fretting about our human condition,
Our foibles and grandness,
Like a parent,
In the wings.

Dead four hundred years?
Don't believe it for a second!

We heard, in general conversation,
It costs an arm and a leg, now,
Just to see a game.
To join in the comaraderie and cheer.
To eat a dog, to have a beer.
It's a rip off.
He closed.

I agreed.
Then something else occured to me
About money and time,
(and what grows on trees)
How they interact to corner us;
To keep us from shows,
And stage dramas
That help us forget
Our real life traumas
(the causes of our nightly insomnias).

There's plenty to spend our cash on
(when older. like me, not when you're young).
So I tell my friends to purchase tickets
For games and concerts,
Plays and trips,
Meals and tips,
And gifts for giving
While above ground with the living.
Cause when you’re gone
You'll wonder why
You didn't spend
Before you died.

I quiver til I shake,
I tremble,
But won't break,
When approaching you.

My heart, I won't foresake,
You'll not know my mistake,
Although my ground will quake,
When I'm nearing you.

You see, I will retake
The joys, not my heartache,
The day I drive the stake
Deep inside of you;
And finish building the fence
To separate we two.

You would say,
If It were so.
Remind me
To grab a coat,
For the chill and snow.
If cash was tight
We'd be home at night.
If she didn't make the cut,
Forgot her lines,
Or missed the shot,
There was no sugar-coat,
You said it straight
If it were so:
Girls, you're doing fine.
Today is was, not now.
Wait til next time.
If it were so,
You'd say.
So say you love me
One last time,
So I can let you go.