Forest in moonlight
Indigo spills into night
Teal the moss aglow

I found her in the vapor of a summer dream
She was standing in the door to Paradise
When I asked if I could see her in the sunlight
Her laughter matched the sparkle in her eyes.

Her smile was like a sunlit pond at twilight.
Her eyes resembled sapphires at high noon.
Her hair was like a swirling touch of midnight.
Her voice as sweet as birdsong heard in June.

Her appearance gave me cause to stop and wonder
If who I saw was really standing there
Or was it just my wild imagination
Creating loveliness from smokey Summer air.

I crept a careful step or two towards her
My pulse was pounding madly in my throat
She frowned at me then edged a little backwards-
And suddenly between us was a moat.

There was no bridge or any walkway over.
She was securely on the other side.
It seemed as though she couldn't let me join her
She made that clear no matter what I tried.

I wrote a note of love on parchment paper
And sailed it to her in a little boat
She reached down to fetch it from the water
And read while lumps were forming in my throat

She tucked the folded note into her *****
And wiped a forming teardrop from her eye
She smiled and then she sadly whispered to me
The only word I feared - it was Goodbye.

The moat became a little stream of water
The doorway, two tall Jacaranda trees
The paradise that somehow she had come from
Transformed to smoke, soon taken by the breeze.

And I was left alone to stand and wonder
If everything I’d seen was truly there
Or was this just a middle-aged delusion
Providing me a thrilling tale to share.
ljm

The dampness
of the rainy season
        is soaking into
My bones
And
Into my being

Our mutual friend
had told you
how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.
"Like it really happened?" he asked.

"It did happen. But now
things are so different that it seems
ridiculous."

I sat there,
shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--
like him, not dying
but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.
This man loaned me two records--
Joni Mitchell
and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--
Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after
to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers
off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,
and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston
where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry
on a Sunday morning.

Emmeline by dawn light
borrows roses from your bed
Emmeline by moonlight
brings back petit fours instead.

Italy had its masters
who loved Emmeline with their oils
touched by God in Trinity
and Emmeline in trefoils.

Emmeline in summer
reads your letters until the fall
then she wades into the water
to the boatmen's barcarolle.

I could see myself as I truly am.
what would I see???

~
Two minutes of perseverance
two minutes of curiosity

Seeking out life
returning with ingenuity

It's all about surfaces and thresholds
and winter hemisphere

Each of us wants so badly
to be that next satellite

Or at least be allowed
to dream we're a small dark spot
moving across the Sun's face
~

There’s Always Angles

      Life is life, it’s always gonna be
This way, there’s nothing we can do
So there’s only two options and there’s
No in between, the choice is up to you

**** will always be **** and **** stinks
I mean you can’t have high expectations
It came from an *** and therefore
It definitely has its limitations

Flush that **** and wipe that ***
And get on with your day
You can’t afford to let it get to you
You can’t allow it to get in your way

I know, I know, sometimes it’s not easy
But are we weak or are we strong
Do we fight or do we surrender when
Everything goes so very wrong

There’s always Demons and they attack
From all of the various angles
Dismiss those Demons and Acknowledge
This also There’s Always Angels

Written By:Charles Kean
08/03/2025