Postcard 185

It was one of those days crested in tears, swelling and trembling as a rough gray ocean seems,
in its fullness, to be higher than the battered sand. Higher than my own eyes.
I know this cannot be true. I'd be submerged, but I feel the trembling possibility
with each tremendous wave, clapping upon itself, sliding up the shore with a hiss.
Between the gray sky and gray sea, the sand glows gold.

It was a day like that with trembling sorrow more delicious than despair.
Colors jump sharp and the wind dances across skin in small salty steps.
A day when bad news would not surprise. Not bad news of commerce or politic, but
news of loss. A death day crisp and bitter as a wild apple.

My son calls  -- angry and confused. This is the heartbreak I conceived in him and foresaw
as clear and bright as battered sand. He's been up for days -- madness? spirit walk? amphetamine?
He has fragments and much disconnect to say, in essence: What have you done to me?
How have you made me so? My tears crest and provide that wide angle lens
through time and its tides. Yes, so clear to me, this has happened before.

I see my decades of man's work. I want to wield the golden bough to tell him
Kill your idols, kill you kings. I want to hand him the sharpest blade -- sharp as light --
and my own bent neck, thankful, it is a tear crested day. That tool is double sharp
and we are fleshy beings served by myth but not myth ourselves. I am sorry I say to him.
I know I often failed. I am sorry, but please know how much I did try.

Postcard 184

I must love this man,

who's every bent was born of hammer's blow

But must I?

I must love this man

where man is a cracked, chipped and shattered shell

mended poorly with ego and will

But must I?

I must love this man

who's peering underneath is not man but crippled being

But must I love this man?

I must

Must I love this man

who's twin is a ghost, ever tugging at his sleeve?

I must

Must I love this being

who's center is collapse

who sets pillars in sluice sand

who's edifice is gilded crumble?

I must

But must I?

I must love this man

who death-sat his own hateful provenance

who is wrapped in every twisted father's coil?

But must I?

I must love this man

who through mad power resonates

I must love this being

who must collapse or be brought down

But must I?

Yes. This being, labelled poorly, man

who's redemption is likely death, must be met with love

This man who's angry works may be neither healed nor undone

I must love this man

iron orange where blood should be

-- same flesh as me

same but magnified

I must.

Postcard 183

Inasmuch as you did to the least of these, you did it to me.

It should be clear by now, that what
you did not do to these least beings
is what you have done to your own self

There ought to be music filling these streets
but you arent singing. Tightly
as a chain constrains its own steel
from ringing out, Wraiths!
Arent you starving for every single thing
you hunger for?

Call hunger virtue, call fullfillment vice and
there is your ghastly security. There are
no starvation songs. The least of these is
a flowing spring, juicy with experience
outside your door locked safety

You did as you did to me, as to
them as to yourself -- no son nor
daughter of divinity, no prophet
of singing,  you have refused
your own abundance

You shall have none and
shall lose even that you have
that false security

Postcard 182

I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
It is the unknowing of what is wide
The broadness these four walls, bodylike, enclose

Are there parties? There must be parties,
celebrations, wild nights: tremulous
and frightening imaginings in this tight cell

Roads and choices. Are there new flavors?
We miss the old tastes, bonded to a feeling
on lips, in arms, on eyes, on fingertips

There must be stories to be told
with more color than these slate grey stones
than could be believed, that would

leave us with nights of ceiling gazing suspicion
and light argument between us -- the only color
we recall is blue, a shred of some free sky

You did not visit and it is the unknowing of why
Perhaps you are too occupied with work and family
all those obligations of life rolling by

But then it occurs to me: perhaps
you are too in prison, bound
by hard lines & the same mysteries

Postcard 181

I was naked and you did not clothe me.

Well, thats not quite true. You wrapped me

with control and draped me with your gaze

Like cut exotic flowers wilting in a vase

But again you strip me naked with your lust

just to fig leaf me with your shame. Then you

spread me across old chain-link and corragate

Flaking shopping bags, brittle water jugs, my

delicious flesh - wasteland trash. Desert junk --

unspooled wire, coppper stripped, abandoned

cars without tires, windows, seats, doors,

ripped of any value, rusting in the sun, brown

as my skin. Single tennis shoes & old t-shirts

You say that I am waste, but you came 

to pick me up in new and shiny trucks, you

had airconditioned rooms to put me in. Even

then, you did not clothe me. You had

doctors come and pull me apart so 

you could spread your gaze within. As if

hate turned on itself was somehow there

As if kindness toward any 

being was your unforgiven sin

Postcard 180

I was a stranger and you did not invite me into your home

Your home is full of strangers
Thieves are honored at your table-head
Scorpions nest under the boards

Predators tuck your children into bed,
hand searching under quilt
while they tell them comfort stories
and kiss them on the head

Hat in hand, I stood
in simple need outside your bolted door
I could hear the muffled wolfish voice of
a vaunted liar spooling tales
and pacing on your well worn floor

There's strangers then there's strangers
There's stories then there's lies
That uncle that is known by all
though none dare meet his eyes


I feel the chill creeping toward the bone
The moon is drifting down
and your home is yes a home
But the warmth is a deceit

The consumptive man,
cloth book in hand
coughs hate and ill in every ear
The warmth is breath of that disease

You welcome and you honor crooks
of every varied stripe and deed
But fear the stranger at your door
with simple creature's need

Postcard 179

I was thirsty and you did not give me a drink

We are bookended by deserts
Any water found is owned and sold
as covetous as clouds are held
in this misers sky

We are becoming well to well
wanderers with long distance eyes
and swollen dusty tongues that
lose memory of wet words

like swell, wash, tide
Wave and drowning, mildew, mist
Riches of thought uncounted
in untroubled minds

Now, focused and squinted
like mid-day's valley searching eyes;
puckered like split lips searching dry and dumb
through dessicate clouds of lost and ancient thought

Coming up with only -- water, drink, and blood
And thirst, dear god, and thirst
You did not give us a drink; we are grateful though --
Each day a new word for wind

Postcard 178

For I was hungry and you did not feed me

We came to you with bellies round and empty as a leeward sail

We could have shared with you the glowing knowledge scribed

in darkness upon the thin tissue of the other side

There, hunger 's gnaw recedes like bluing flame

There, we stand and sway like sliver-printed phantoms

There, our true natures depart our forms and given names

There, we are still living witness at the court where death presides

For we were hungry and you were filled with fear of finding

your formless nameless selves within our yellowed hollow eyes

We came to you with open groans resonate

We came to you with blank and quiet sighs

The open empty space to fill; the blank syntax

to offer words like love and charity and life

For we came with opportunity and you declined

Postcard 177

Old time moves like a stone wheel

and is plastered in chipped beauty

Old time makes short work of plans and youth

Old time's ever open maw grinds on relentless
Look about you: see the teeth upon
everything you see. See the mighty tongue
wrapped around each being

Old time trucks no mark nor measurement
Has no count as ring of tree
Look ahead at gullet's void, always steady
always distant, ever ready to be the present
for man, for beast, for stone for star

For in old time's thick hands
fingers steady, nimble as rust
is every fed thing

Old time is grace itself: smooth
when slow, and smooth at speed

Old time is your constant friend
Time is on your honest side
Old time won't let you hide or obfuscate

Old time's mouth
is too full of us to lie

Postcard176

In the beggining we were in our mothers
We needed no myths to buttress the womb
All was steady steadty, swell recede and seady steady
We needed no words for want, content
Light changed all that.

Father is a symbol; mother is the world
Are there steps until steps?
Are there hands until hands?
There are no lines until clipped words
No succor but love in arms,
like center pulling gravity

In the end we must struggle
to recall continuoulsy that myth
at best, is fluid analogy
A swinging bridge between ridged edifice
built careless on stomped earth

Without, as with distant fathers --
violence and idolotry,
cold verbs applied to objects ruthless
The sad result of strife
toward nought but being free

But there are steps unto steps
there is hold into held. There is
ever -- beginning unto end
And that is -- even just
myth of fluid soul