Poems

We were barely twenty, I think, the first time you told me, 

"it doesn't matter what you think Marshall!", but like a 

stubborn Homo-sapiens caught up in his own selfish 

feelings of ignorant, over-importance I strongly bucked 

your theory, replying, "no Mitchell, you're wrong, it does 

matter what I think!"; yet fast forward now to sixty-two,

where I finally get to hold your truth, which you had way 

back when, that it actually doesn't matter what I think, and 

as you also said it really doesn't matter what anyone else 

thinks, although you didn't say why, but I'm guessing it's 

because human thought is nothing more than silent signals

worthless, meaningless, invisible electronic impulses sent 

from a space already dead and lost forever to the sizzling 

hands of a red giant star and a shrinking, lonely white dwarf

It's a feeling, a Universal dynamism created by atoms built into 

brains of Homo-sapient, Earthbound beings, a power that melts 

hearts, changes minds; has the capacity to bring all others of our 

species instantly to their knees, ecstatically weeping, pushed into 

states of spiritual surrender, all bowing at the humbled feet of one 

miraculously freeing emotion, rapturous, all-healing humanly love

Life has a way of leaving us

in the summative tapping of time

Corkscrewing astern

like marionettes in reverse

Strung to the last deadwood cry

Life has a gift for forgetting us

in drifting flits of sleepy breeze

Keeling over and over

like capsized bathtub toys

Unmoored in raging, listless seas

Leaving is life's way of lulling us

in plaintive lappings of the tide

Wending willy-nilly

like rain in unavailing squalls

Kissed austerely goodbye

It takes a lot to boldly go, start upon journeys with unknown 

conclusions, as the safety and security of whatever home we 

currently inhabit always feels less scary and more comforting 

than all the uncertainties of adventures with unwritten endings. 

But don't worry, Uncle Spock's sending you two Vulcan salutes, 

reminding all of us, the Universe too and everyone in it, all fear's 

logically irrational, so off you go now my dear, brave young man!

"I'm going to let you go", said my distant in-law Aunt Betty

"well adios then", came a most unrehearsed, natural reply

she laughed, like my response carried stowed away irony

yet I distinctly remembered the strangest of reasons why

My reclusive Pa, oft showed a same sort of awkwardness

dropping me easily as soiled sombreros forgotten in bars

I didn't mind much though because something felt missing

a cultivated blindness of an unknowing closeness gone far

Oh parting is only candy sorrow

if the misery of breakup is sweet

as all agony in sugary un-joinings

is the reason we soon again meet!

I'm saddened the admiration for my older brother

is floating away like Wilson's ball from Hanks' raft

as if the hard anchor which kept me from drifting

has now been untethered by old storms long past

I'm getting that thing we once called 'the feeling'

she's with me now far too often than I'd be liking

stealing my energy till not enough is left for living

I sure wish she'd leave me alone here by myself

but like sands in an hourglass, she's still draining

Strange now being so far away 

from the fully filled space of our 

dear mother's long, roosted nest

a place of nephews, nieces, cousins

and such, great aunts and uncles

why the whole family treed bunch

were everyday made easy pickings

I'd been kidnapped by a dark energy from outer space

it wrapped me in tin foiled soil, then pushed up and out

the intention felt very sincere yet harshly cruel and kind

I leapt from babe to dust bone ash in the blink of an eye

becoming the seeds to browning flowers as seen before

the momentum carried my skin to an eon wrinkled shore

where geologic ticks hid time lapsed photography of me 

I've a pinching in my chest

causing worries and unrest

but as a long procrastinator

and a devil's just don't carer

I'll let chances meet the odds

and become the slop of hogs

I wanna grope you but I can't 'cos it's a salt

I want your touch, but you won't sans the fees,

As Epstein I'd have just made homemade porno

Directing 18, "now drop down upon your knees."