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.