My Poetry

The sun has no mercy and the wind is grim. All it takes is a spark to light up the hillside. Birds explode from trees as fire crowns the ridge. Like a child doing cartwheels it bounds across the land. Firefighters climb with heavy gear yet flames  consume the other side to shut down the highway. Santa Ana carries embers to new tinder. Columns of smoke rise. Angry dragon clouds form breathing more fire. Louder than a furious freight train  it approaches.  Packing to evacuate is a game of Tetris. How do you jam your whole life into a car? Survival is an apocalyptic movie flames flank the race out of town. In less than thirty minutes history erased lives displaced businesses, homes childhoods up in smoke. Scattered bricks mangled metal and soot are all that remain. But through the ash friends and strangers  anonymous heroes reach out to make sure others don't have to experience this crisis alone. It's unthinkable catastrophes that bring out the best in humanity.

Ever since the election I'm walking under water breathing through a straw pushed down by all these red-hatted guppies. They follow the orange one who gushes bigotry and hate.   It makes me dizzy. The whole world has vertigo. We drown in information but starve for insight. Lost in all the headlines.   It's crazy crazy on a sliding scale from endless grifting to the "Lecter lectures" a pandemic of stupidity a hurricane of lies an insurrection an insurrection!   The next four years will be a wrecking ball. Just thinking about it makes my skull feel two sizes too small.   He will pulverize the foundation of our Democracy. It feels like my future is behind me.   Sometimes history rhymes sometimes it just repeats itself. Sometimes history rhymes sometimes it just repeats itself. Sometimes history rhymes sometimes it just repeats... itself.   Eight years later we are back at the beginning again.   I am pulling my hair out in frustration and resentment. This c...

  How fixed is my mind?   How many times a week do I see someone out the corner of my eye who moves like you? With the same hair line, the same brand of sunglasses, or driving the same kind of truck? How rigid is my brain? How many times  a day do I forget when I hear someone with the same baritone laugh, and I turn to greet you? How many times, will I deny that I touched your arm while you lied, unmoving in your coffin, and I expected your skin to feel hard, like a mannequin, but it wasn’t. It felt like you- only cold. And how frozen is my heart? How many times an hour, -a minute, will I be reminded of the fact that you are gone, and yet I am the one who is motionless?    

  The first time I was homeless was when I ran away at seventeen.   I never had to think about food or shelter, I just stuck out my thumb for seven months my shelter was the car or truck I was in people were nice enough to feed me. I was too dumb to be scared.   Yesterday, I got a letter in the mail, telling me that my name was near the top of the list for a low income apartment. I put my name on this list, NINE YEARS AGO!   Nine years ago when housing market was getting really tough. I was nearly 50 years old, disabled and my son was still in high school.   Nine years ago   After my divorce and my mom's death I knew I would lose the house I couldn't pay the mortgage on my own The bank would not even talk to me about lowering the payment because only mom's name was on the paperwork and she didn't leave a will. Nine years ago   I applied for the few apartments that were in my price range but so did dozens of others.   Did you know they charge 30 do...

  I said, "I'll see you tomorrow."  You nodded weakly and replied, "Tomorrow."    But tomorrow never came.  "Tomorrow" is the last word  I ever heard you say. "Tomorrow," haunts me.    For weeks you said you were ready to go  because you were in so much pain but I was afraid to lose you, Mom,  to lose your wisdom  all your love your strength.    The world is colder without you my poem shivers on the page.  I try to embrace the echoes of your voice that still linger.   Your dog stopped eating no matter what I tried  he just laid  with his head on your purse still full of prescription bottles and butterscotch candies.   Graham buried him this morning under your favorite pine tree.  When your heart stopped for a moment  I thought all the clocks everywhere, would too.   How can the world   continue to spin without you?   I pretend you aren't gone I'm just too busy to ...

Men envy the cigarette pressed between her muted lips. Her body speaks every language breasts high two peaches in the tree most men want to climb.  Skin smooth as the glossy pages of a magazine. She is the yardstick real women stand against the ideal measure of beauty. She infects other women with insecurity. She is the cure for Ethiopia spreading anorexia to devour starvation. Ageless as a vampire, sucking wallets dry in the latest scheme to stay young. She is paper and plastic music and electricity she is air-brushed perfection. (She does not exist.) _________________________________________________ I know that there are women as beautiful as the ones we see in the media, but what we see in magazines and on television, in movies, is a fantasy. Models and actors don't look that way when they roll our of bed.  Personally, I have pretty much accepted myself for what I am and don't strive for perfection the way some women (and men) do.  It was a thrill to meet you at The Mi...