It Is True and Truth Sometimes Gets Me Published

My sisters and I are lost each according to her merits.
I will be killed if I say more.

Consider me, the youngest.
A natural-born floater downy with plumage

I’ve followed three quacks o’er the fishy seas.
In our heads are captains’ charts of

crackling parchment and family secrets.
Nothing is invincible. Not everything’s a clue.

It isn’t the culture or wide-armed greeting
of the new shebang we skip.

Instructions are a hard swallow.
Anyway, someone booked me passage

on this ship of four fools sailing
into a storm meteorologists have named

Colossal Congenital Disappointment.
Or did I sign on for this?

That’s a very good question, yes, thank you.
Expectations should be lowered, like

a visor when steering into the sun.
Is it time to be chipper?

What does time mean to a vessel on an egg
used by Christopher Columbus as object lesson?

The unexamined life is worth living.
Before any conference or new endeavor

read all documentation.
It doesn’t take brains, this thing called happiness,

often confused with success and a great sex life.
Easy enough to be confused.

Popular Mechanics

By way of electron molecule
scattering, rotational excitation,
ball bearings greased up and
scooting down pinball chutes,
the body confirms its presence
in our lives.  It’s psychedelic.
Personal history, the day-to-day,
is a quick-shuffle card trick.
Perspective is another illusion,
riches being indistinguishable
from chambers of pathos.
But let’s return to the moment
we walk out the door to get
the mail which may arrive or not,
keeping us giddy in trepidation
of the surprise of corners.
Friend, I know it’s not easy.
That’s the point.  Look at me,
a poet of many sorrows.
Yet I summon my house keys
and inner child and somehow,
lowliest I, rank of moral fiber
but game, act as if I were charmed.
And behold I am ignited and 
awake to hear the preacher’s
rhapsodic subway lament:
we are low and need charging,
and someone is hungry, hungry,
half a sandwich could help.

White Tunnel and the Night Return

I was vessel, dumb animal receptor.
DNA snaked me into life,
three insurrectionist rivers carried me.
Antiquity was my patron saint.

I heard a call before I heard a call,
an off-rhythm more fluid than any
legacy code patriarchal in my cells.
A woman floating, I splashed
oceanic palms my sisters envied,
light-years off.  I have been lucky.

Jesus, dance with me.
Mary, in your arms.

No one said anything, let alone,
It will be easy.
The writers said, It will be hard,
ethics and a capacity for reason and doubt,
a daily crucifixion.
The shills asked for Barabbas.
Every freakin’ day.  Barabbas!

Jesus, dance with me.
Mary, in your arms.

Just now I prayed the Kindness
funnel herself to this subway car.
I am wet clay, not the wind.
I can’t part seas of red, infirmity
from body, rage from the raging.

Dance with me, Jesus.
Hold me, Mary.

You must have the strength of
Ozymandias and consider his stupidity,
a “heart that feeds” –  a “hand that mocks.”

There is nothing out of place, Jesus.
Hold me, Mary. I might be wrong.