Ace

February 22

Ace

Like an ace in my pocket step one is the beginning and end of my step work.  This step carries the high and low count; its rise is so near to the ground I didn’t have to lift my chin to clear it as I crawled my way in here, its appeal so exalted that it is all I hear when I finish the twelfth and am on my way back around.  The high and low of any hand plus the card I keep up my sleeve for emergencies.  The greatest blessing is I don’t need four of a kind, not even a pair; as long as I have step one I am guaranteed a full house, full heart, full life and between you and me that’s just how I like it.

Lick your lips then smile

*

SHAME

I push shame around my plate like a chunk of spoiled meat.
The toxins leaching to every interface and cavity
With an inverse half-life, the lethal substance grows
Reinforcing and sending runners and tendrils
To worlds known and those yet undiscovered.
I wage my war on this shapehifting plaque.
Thrust and parry, I step back from the unsurmountable walls
And set my sights on tearing down the bunkers
In my personal city.
Like lead plumbing
The danger eludes the observation of my fellow citizens
I am labeled a lunatic
And no attention is paid to my evaluation of water quality.
I search for similarly crazed friends
Variants within a theme.
I depend on the poisoned sanity of my wounded compatriots.
We shovel the plate loads of spoiled meat and detritus.
The foreshortened mountain of shame
Allows tiny strands of light to glimmer across the surface
But the shamed devotees turn their heads.
We, the few, face the glowering mass.
I worry like a petulant child.
What if we cannot prevail?
Is shame stronger then recovery?
Have we traveled this far to miss the glaciers edge?
As it slides away from us
I console myself with the sure knowledge that,
This life of sobriety is better than any other offering
Healing the world, What a lovely thought.
Living free from shame today, what a necessity.

Jellyfish and Peanut Butter Cards

November 22

JELLYFISH AND PEANUT BUTTER CARDS

Jellyfish and peanut butter cards make for busy days and cheerful nights, sunlit at the beach and lantern light filled with double-decker solitaire.  Camping as a way of life suits some as they run from their lives.  For the more balanced, camp is a temporary retreat.  To the overly invested, camping is an aberration, a threat to the foundations of civilization as we know it.  I can take a bit of sand in my hair, smoke in the air.  Though I do dread the feeling of coming back to the life I love and feeling like a stranger.  Temporary disengagement estranges me from the place, the things, the dog.  I need time away, variety of experience, expanded horizons.  I need my entrenched home life.  I need it all and must accept the clock never stops running anyplace on the planet even if I am enjoying a good game with sticky camp cards, regaling tales of man-of-war.

Don’t break your wishbone.

*

One and One

The person who has nothing is vague.

The person who has too much alludes.

And these people may falsely mistake one another

for kindred when what you draw your conclusions from

are the poems and sweet words,

which flow out of these divergent folk.

A paper house is built, but the living is impossible.

Tying strings to dreams doesn’t permit you

to fly away to fairylands it just leaves you prone

to lightening strikes and long wet wicks.

What could be the truth unfolded;

spread broadly for all to see?

Where could the roads so very far apart

lead to a home, a hearth, a life?

Or is this just a field of fantasy flowers blooming in our minds?

Mist is vapor pretending at a marriage

to a world it will soon evaporate and leave.

You and I are passing ships on a short sad night.