"Night" – 4/25/22

I lie awake
Jet-lag alert
Exhausted but hopeful

I imagine in each fingertip
What it must feel like to be
Hiding, hope lessening

With each passing hour
As War's gruesome cruelty
Singes cells with doubt

So sharp the point
Of each moment's
In question problems

Of providence don't quite
Add up counting stars
Is impossible underground
---
Tonight the sky's so clear
Clouds make way for future
Tears on this side of the world

Would that we could lift you
Precious bereft unstranger
Out of darkness more swiftly

Than a live wire
Burns what can't be
Contained ancestors mock

Patience grieving bloodstained
Purpose no logic comes
To Love's rescue only madness

Louder and louder the moon
Beats like a silent-film drum
Iridescent celluloid brightness

Drowning out reason
Delivering longing same as
It's always done, immutable

Silence, intractably senseless

"re: moved" – 4/19/22

tonight I am alone in a hotel room
thinking of you and "you" they are different
the one you showed me off the record
the one you share with the wider public

I like to think that the friendship I did my best
to offer freely and the loving support I chose
never to take away roughly were only rebuffed
because hope was sheltering, not because it

turned to hate which nonetheless I understand
is a thing that happens for some types of people
when disappointed in particular outcomes
out being the operative word when patience

like a tube of paint becomes depleted with time
making it harder and harder to move to the same
life-rhythm or worse, labored to be as kind as
cells ideally strive through distance's divide

still, I hail you from afar and cheer you on
hoping one day the plans we made playfully
when we were more assuredly ourselves
may still bear fruit in different weather yellow

sun shining down on pale pastel cheeks
transforming pallor to promise letting both
soul and surface shine diamond mines
sans damage sacrifice diffused in favor of

Muse, close cousin of commitment once removed

"Imelda" – 4/16/22

Let me tell you about Imelda
She stands in the wings and watches
Her support acts and then later on
In the heat of her audience's adoration

Without hesitation she reminds them
We have cd's for sale and to come early
And skip dinner so they see and hear
All of us: "music needs you!" she declares

As if proclaiming it so could shift
Tectonic plates of ambivalence
The world over her passion is the stuff
Of legend Ireland incarnate her voice

Echoes in your soul with every nuanced
Gospel run rich with history synergistically
Nature converges in her wingspan port de bras
The ocean tide the moon a whispering wind

I have come quickly to love her spirit
As much as her music effusive but never
Falsely so as down to earth as ascendent
As sparrows levitating toward indeterminate

Goals after goals creativity's ebb/flows afterglow
Poems rich in imperfect rhymes a sensual
Sibilance t's and s's lingering in the air
Reverb clinging to her iridescent fairness

Open and honest mysterious mystical
The eyes of those who listen fixated on what's
Factual: a woman a mother a singer a poet
A bandleader boss-lady loving resilient

Friend-in-the-making a name unforgettable
Shaking the rafters mistaking no one for
A fool respect-vibrations pouring out
Of every facet catching light from unsuspecting

Prisms of insatiable love for to glow a bien tot