THE CHANGE - BRACO

I have been changed....opened.....brought to the most peaceful beauty.....an angel walks among us and his name is Braco. His gaze shows you that God is truly here on earth working through us....

For Grandfather

If only you could be a memory to me
But I never knew you and you never knew me
You've hovered about me these past 32 years
Protector
Guide
I ask about you and wonder how close we
Could have been
And still are, in an astral sense
You never shuffle along in my mind's eye
You are always strong and gritty, with work-calloused hands
And a mind to rival the greatest of thinkers
You look about 40 and don a green coat
And brown worn boots, and you like to
Wear a dress shirt on Sundays
Momma says you painted and I would hold your picture
Of a dog that burst out of the oil and came alive on canvas
It's the artist deep within me that you could have loved so well
The one that drew gazelles from the age of 2
And filled in the manes of winged unicorns
And made the green rabbit for Hank who felt like a surrogate for you
Even though he was technically an in-law cousin
Momma says you would have loved me so
And we would have enjoyed the rays of sun while laughing
And we would have enjoyed the beams of silver moon while catching fireflies
But their lights die
Just as you did
Long before I ever got a chance to hold your hand
And missing you is like missing those lights
One day you, too, will return in summer to greet me

On Japan in Its Time of Crisis

I find it hard to sleep
Images of a sea of fire
Buckshot through my brain
A televised loss
So graciously accepted by
A people who braved the
Day of Fire once before
I'm watching them
They look like mannequins
stock-still then wide-eyed
Zombies with their mouths
Wrenched open in a collective
Rictus of horror
And yet they go on
Animated once more and bravely
Picking their way through devastation
What have we become?
It's what we have been all along
Tiny specks that fill a much
Larger landscape
The mindscape of some obscene unseen figure
Who holds our destiny in hands of ice

2010

They say the government has storehouses
Underground barracks or some such nonsense
Filled with the building blocks of our existence
Seeds
Food
Vials of medicine for the next great disease
They create and more
I am scared
But then I scare easy
The man with the gleam of a cue-ball crown
Threatens and cajoles the Enemy
He wants it all stopped
Like I do and you do
The greed, the playacting on the news, horror and death
A techno-world
Where we've had our souls replaced by microchips
And radiation from our I-Phones
When statistics frame a state of mind
So gritty with the mucus of confusion
Great Eyes that seal shut against the Fear
The lemmings run joyfully to the Atlantic and Pacific
Weighing themselves down with backpacks filled with
Fashion magazines and screaming about how each of them
Is an individual
Even as they make the same fatal jump and become inconsequential
I see the world I knew has changed
Soldiers that look as small as toys approach from the East
an army with the most poisonous ideaology
And more from the West who mask the very same ideas
And We The People
Are caught in the middle
Ants between two sets of boots

Upon Your Leaving

Why are you leaving?
Gentle heart and precious soul
Masculine yet tempered
With knowing and nurturing
You touched us
A mere lift of an eyebrow
A smirk at the corner of ashen lip
You never left us wanting
Even while you hovered just beyond our reach
Though you tried to shed the capsule
The times number five
You swallowed our tears
Long before they came
Smooth hands reaching for ours
Desperate for kinship
Tangling threads so like the silver
Cord that frayed, even as you held to the vessel -
a half-hearted attempt
We encircled you -forlorn yet loving gazes-
Selfish and struck- asking you to stay
As if holding your hands would lock you in place
So we could dance and dance and dance
Your eyes are fierce in the starlight
Pleading with us to let you
Let go
You are air
You are spirit flowing through the earth and sky
You are the moon, glorious night-maiden
You are the blaze of a thousand suns
And will live on in the eyes of a thousand sons
I know why you are leaving
It is time.

Fallout

I can say it now.
Now it's real.
I've had dreams about it for years
Always some radioactive cloud hovering somewhere
Thinking
Planning
Plotting my demise
A thousand invading particles crawling
Inside me like spiders
Particles that will render my body untouchable
Unreachable
With a thirst for normal that's unquenchable
Radiation
Word that terrorizes you
When you picture the slow disintegration
The pain
The decay of body, soul, and mind
Bubbling puddles of putrification
Mistakes of nature, God, or Man?

I Like This Office

I like this office
Clean glass in floor-to-ceiling planes
Shining brown desk, stone smooth
Polished and perfect
Crisp black chairs that roll purposefully
The only hint of "out there"
A painting of flowers trapped in a frame
It can't get to me in here, I think
Clutching my notebook with its familiar lined sheets
Sheets that offered comfort and escape to this world
A world I could create with sharp blue ink
In here is a world of Work
Corporate
Buttons fastened smother-tight
Obsidian phones and slick grey computers
Beckoning like jewels
It can't sift through the window cracks
Or find its way into the elevator
Or up the stairs like a creeping stalker
If I just stay focused on the mundane
I like this office
Smelling clean and cut and dry
Filled with paper doll people in bright bold attire
Starched pink blouses and electric blue ties
Gleaming shoes with unscuffed soles
It's memory, Citibank, Daddy, Safety in this office.
I will stay until I am unafraid.

Mystic at World's End

All ends.
I wait.

A cloak of mystery cast about my shoulders
Tiny and wizened - on the inside a bear with
Brutish strength and brutal claw
Green fire beams from my small frame
Snaking around the lone traveler
Who holds up a hand to cover an eye

Why do they seek me? Why him?
My wisdom is not for fainthearted fools
You must have come very far to see this old mystic -
Tired seeker of truths sealed, quietly witnessing
The great paroxysms of Gaia.
The laplands are falling into disarray
Bolts and knots of space-time are breaking
And stars litter the ground - dirt that reeks of sulfur
Pools of light frosting a mud-cake
My dear traveler, you seek a refuge that doesn't exist
Here it is less safe - here you will learn to hate Knowledge
When you discover it can't save you
Atlantean wanderer, wayfarer fair
Your beauty can't hide your pain at my words.

Sit.
I only have tea to give you
Tea with cherries, rose petals, and chamomile for calm
And soup made from leeks, potatoes, and rosemary
You will sleep like the dead here in my stone cottage
And no wolves will cry your blood
Here the earth is shaking - rocking you until
She has lulled us all to sleep.

We will wait.
Until the ships no longer flee their moorings
And the sun rests his shrapnel head
And cats no longer scream the agony of the lost and damned.

Why do you cry on my knee, traveler?
Why do you, with a soldier's gait of confidence
Suddenly weep like a child?
You know the future is lost
That rain no longer cleanses but defiles
You know the acid drip of defeat when an enemy slashes your weak spot
You know that breathing is not the unconscious mechanism it once was.
And no, you haven't failed dear man,
Even though your quest brought you to to the core of evolution's science
And you neither moved nor swayed the lemming law.

If I hold you in my withered arms
And sit with you by the rolling liquid cradle of sea
Will you let my broken lullabye fill your empty eyes
And relieve the pressure in your warrior's heart
As we both say goodbye to the world we knew?

So let go of the loss of family
Of structure and civility
Of the need for friends and function
And the need to know too little or too much
Of the mysteries of love too short or too long.
Walk into an uncertain eternity of newness and right ways of being.

My traveler, well-fed and given his fill of rest and light,
Sees a dawn on impossible beauty and hope
Kisses my cheek, compliments my cooking
As one would a soft old grandmother in a storybook
And thanks me for his freedom though it was never mine to give.
As he slips away, I reassemble myself
Into the form I know best - atoms taking the shape
Of a woman just in prime - golden locks shimmering,
Body full of amorous promise, eyes shooting green and golden sparks,
Primordial rose blooming in this old forest.

Another traveler will come soon I am sure, to see this mystic
Ready for my Way.
I cloak myself in shadows.
I will wait.

I Can’t Stay

I can’t stay
I can’t remain in a state of Indecision
In the place of fear that you call home
You’re content with your glitterati life
Living in a box, playing theatre whore
You need the audience
An artificial love to pump your ego
Like a hissing bicycle tire
So fragile but you pretend you’re the wall
Around the fortress, the dragon
That guards the castle
Who are you these days? You play-act
Like a pro because that’s what you are-
Thirty years of strutting, living as
A false entity your main career
I can’t stay
You’ve left no room for the dreamer to dream
And you’ve left no unlocked door
For the past to seep through
I’m not a poison gas my friend
But I can’t play the part of a fan
It’s alien to me and unrelenting revulsion
Is the coat that I wear
Bracing myself for the frost in your elitist eye
I can’t stay
Pauper to your prince
You can’t wake up and see the plan
That’s written by the Maker
Who built all the toys in the boxes
The one who sought to slam us together
Atoms that fight for space in a vacuum
I can’t stay
Your brightness blinds me to my sensibilities
And I find the strength to exit stage left
Away from the demons that gleefully consume you

I Almost Missed You

I boomeranged from one to the other
Satisfied with nothing, a wellspring of defeat
Different players and all the same games
They used my heart as a pincushion
I felt a stirring, then a tugging deep inside
And at last you hit me like a roaring train
I almost missed you
A dim glow in proverbial fog
Beckoning me to find my home there
When our eyes met I knew
I held on and held to my Faith
That your heart would expand to fit me
Proof that a miracle had my name on it
I almost missed you, almost lost you
In what if’s, could’ves and should’ves
Not to mention would’ves
Smothered you under the crush of past evil deeds
You never would have committed
Like a phoenix you burst into full form
Restoring me
And to think I almost missed you!

Bipolar Finance

Rent minus the gleaming leather purse
Equals a screaming frustrated encounter
Add a few meager checks
From the sale of useless items
That couldn’t benefit a one
Minus that restaurant bill
You definitely couldn’t afford
If your life depended on it
Subtract two grand for a mouthful
Of rotting teeth you pray to St. Dental to repair
Another grand for a therapist
Who doesn’t know what to do with you
Add an unexpected bonus
And subtract your dignity
As you sell your soul one final time
To make a buck you can’t help but spend

The Anticlimactic

A seventeen year quest
A battle waged—
To capture some semblance of his humanity
His truth or his darkness
And of course, his blinding light
A whimper of a storm
An impersonal gesture is all
That weaves the threads now
Devoid of the desire to entertain
This insane idea of a palpable
A tangible—
Thing that could prove the connection is real—
He sees me
He knows me
But his emptiness fills me
And I am forced to surrender
To the cavernous depth of this despicable nowhere
I see you dear one
A lifetime gone
You see me
And don’t remember the promise
Scrawled over a sweaty supple form
Or Won’t.

Birds

I dreamed of birds-
Silken black and pearl white
Floating and fluttering
Waving wings with
Wide feathers like fronds of a tree
They ate of me-
Reflected in eyes that could
See only shadows
Knowing a greater truth, wishing to share it--
Landed on me-
Breathing in whispers
Notes of song like drops on a rose
Sent by the Essence who fills all things
They weaved stories in their nests
Tangles of rough words that grated
Along with twigs
I listened to them
And wept when they were gone
Now- their stories are finished
But their feathers remain
A reminder that the greatest story is yet to be told.

The Unseen

Stars that hang in heaven’s curtain
Are no more mysterious
Than what is certain
Hiding beneath a cloak – invisible-
Like the god and goddess that linger
Just beyond our Reason
We cannot see them during the day
But they wink silently, humorous
In their contemplation of our drama

Night in the Land of FarAway

The moon kisses the earth as she trembles in the cold
Beams that rain on spongy ground
Stars peeking out of the void
Showers that fuel an empire of Thought
I hover, just out of sight, a specter in the black
Shadow of a rowan tree
Each blossom a note of thoughtfulness of the goddess
I reveal myself
Bathe in the shimmering light
Wanton yet vulnerable
Clad only in a veil of sky

Alone

Mother can you see the hand I'm dealt?
Sobbing sorrowfully as I contemplate the grim
A reality that I cannot smell or taste
Can no longer dream into existence
You told me one day I'd grow up and succeed
That flesh was flesh and spirit outgrew it
A heart in its space had more to give
Than all of the wrinkled green rectangles
Floating around our planet
I don't know where all the candy canes went
And where are all the smiles at a fiery dawn?
Caged and incoherent, I scream into the night
Lost and shaking in seizures I pass on
Alone
Forgotten
Alone.