The Politics of Peace

I found the one sunny spot
in a yard, long with gray.
Sitting here, the warmth envelops me
as if nature had the arms of a mother.

The fountain bubbles on
practically frothing with intel,
spouting tall tales of long fish
as the starving minnows gather
for tidbits and trivia, peddled as evening news.

Crows hold heated debates
that course through me in stereo
right ear, left ear, right, left, wing.
Politics was never really very clear
and I haven't the temperament to care
not with the sun...just so,
the air ripe with nurture and the lettuce pushing up
as proud and determined as any armed guard.

I leave you the city
if you'll just leave me the yard love!
Everything we built, all the structure
the inroads paved, the fortune...
the square footage, and our four high top bar stools.
Consider them bequeathed.

I've never really asked for a single thing
that came from the part of me that so needed to make requests,
but I'll give you everything that came with this nomination,
Your Honor.
Just leave me the garden.

One-Two Punch

They say it's the old one-two punch.

THE JAB: Something horrible happens, or has been happening, or is about to happen. Maybe the dreadful-awful-very bad thing has been happening so long that you assumed it was just the way life happens for everyone...that it was "normal" to feel stuck and trapped and small...that the panic that lived under your first layer of skin was the very smallest part...and all the gory details and horror flick frames were actually lurking in deeper sub dermal layers, cloaked in some kind of anonymity that posed as faulty wiring. And then one day maybe you realized "normal" was anything but, or you reached the point where "normal" was gonna be the end of you so you might as well leap from the cliff and grasp at the rope swing. The miss and fall was always a possibility, but you never thought the rope would reach out and hang you.

THE CROSS: You decide to hope...a sliver beam of "if I tell, it will end" and this last possibility grows like a sunflower until it is tall and strong and facing only light. Maybe you ditch school and hop a bus. Maybe your fists are clenched so tight you can barely release the quarter. The sound it makes rattling down into the receptacle is so loud you flinch, thinking it will sound the alarm. "The" alarm. You notice that "the" alarm is always poised to strike. Flower to sun. Flower to sun. Flower to sun. Turn. The bus stops and you manage the longest most hopeful two steps taken since the first moon walk....at least it feels that way. With the heat at your back...the sun..the strength..you are propelled.

The building is imposing. The elevator smells oily. The secretary is startled, having seen your photo gaining height throughout the years but never expecting the image to open doors. You are ushered in.

Afterwards, as you lay on the floor, the wind knocked out of any sail that stupid sunflower had dared to unfurl, the boat begins to sink. The bitch of it is, that it really was easier before you thought there was a boat. Before hope...before the only person who might hold the magic power turned it against you. "You are at fault. Therefore, it is."

Only decades later did you realize the weakness of the power. It shrunk in the presence of evil, and evil was all there was back there. The only power available to you had been in re-writing the story...until you ran out of paper, or ink, or metaphor. Then evil catches up and the power has to come from your broken bones...reset....healed...stronger. Maybe it was the last time you went to your father for help, and rightfully so. You can get your punches elsewhere, much cheaper.

Labyrinth of the Blind (description of a depressive episode)

I am throwing peanut shells in the fire
like kindling
like gossip
the kind of dry, unsubstantiated fodder
that hungry flames feed on.

I'm getting tipsy on gin and limes,
the moon-shine of full agreement.
Clouds are forming a canopy of heavy blankets
woven with depressive fibers.
It's almost as if someone loving
is laying them across my shoulders
as if they were made for me
as if they were comforting.
But reality seems an ocean, black and bottomless.
The corners of my mouth are cement shoes
and this night is a potter's field.

If I occupy the darkness...
let loose my attachment to the illumination I can find,
I will be lost
and only a deity can find me there,
in the ink spot,
the labyrinth of the unseeing.