A war wages between your head and your body.
You wake up next to your anxiety,
Coating you in a bubble between rationality and fear.
Evil holds your hand every day,
You never noticed him until you were ten years old and they told you about war.
He was the lieutenant.
You never wanted to know him but you found yourself at thirteen,
Looking him in the eye when the kids at school called you names.
Now he walks with you everyday and waves to all the kids he knows.
Evil is the pressure of depression,
The mania of schizophrenia,
The animal that is anorexia.
You hold all of the goodness inside of you.
And all of the evils too.

Garden to my left,
colors so bright
the snapdragons and sweet peas
nod their watercolored heads
in the morning's silken light
chutney-colored wall
leading to my door
shoes neatly stacked
with toys in baskets
upon the concrete-patterned floor
plants align the window sill,
marking the flipside to my kitchen
reminding me of wafting tastes
in the form of stir-fry
or juicy chicken
to the right
a pumpkin-spiced ball of fur
my Ginger nestled tight
body rising and falling
in deep slumber's purr
his springtime pillow
puffed just right
The laughter I hear
fills my ears and heart
as children, (mine, too)….play
and I sit with my legs upon the
Tupperware chair
and contemplate the day
Between my palms Turkish coffee
entices with its delicious steam
and here come the thought police
to interrupt my desert dream

Back off *******,
I'm not going to jail.

I practice Being Peace
out here by The Artist Colony on Hood Canal
collecting treasures and Bright Dead Things
the moon snail nesting in the Flatland  of my palm
a Gift from the Sea carried ashore
on The Torrents of Spring
it may take A Thousand Mornings
to attain a Mind of Clear Light
to transcend earthly Crime and Punishment
to consume knowledge hidden in the Weathered Pages
of this Book of Luminous Things
but I carry on - Skinny Legs and All
Burning Daylight street preaching
The Teachings of Don Juan
"looking, looking breathlessly"
for internal coherence in this
*Brave New World

i.

As she's in the land of Nod,
rustling azaleas in her
ancestral awe. She don's
the ensemble for the next
morrow.

ii.

Her body like a cradle
Rocks back and forth
As a swaddling babe;
She's musing of ourn
Meeting, and it's
Patient way's.

iii.

Tis I as well who see-
saw's in mine bed,
Pretending she is
Next to me, swaying
the thread's, peeping
out mine window,
Awaiting her wake;
Counting down the
Hour's, to seeith
Mine Angel's
Face.



©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley ( àgapi mou dedication)