If My Words Could Rise & Other Poems

Image: If My Words Could Rise & Other Poems

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Dedicated with my love and gratitude
to my sweet Ron

The following poems appear in my collection titled If My Words Could Rise, available on Amazon as paperback or Kindle.

1 If My Words Could Rise

Dedicated to my sweet Ron

If my words could rise
Like smoke
They would form your face
In the clouds
They would hang
In the tops of the trees
Looking for a nest
Where a mother bird sits
On eggs
The color of your eyes

2 In the Tops of the Trees

“As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, then attack, for God has attacked in front of you to defeat the Philistine army.” —2 Samuel 5:25 Common English Bible

–for the moldman, who screeched, “That’s my line!”

No, dude, that is not your line!
No matter how many times
Or with how much spit
You spew it.

Trees and their tops
And the words they live in
Belong to all of us. Go!
Dig your hole–grovel in your slime.

3 Dreams and Days

“His tongue cuts / Slices of meat / From the hearts / And livers / Of those / Who would love him” – “Between Slices of Bread” —from Linda Sue Grimes’ At the End of the Road

I quote myself, well then,
I quote myself —
I include multitudes —
Uncle Walt taught me that much.

The man in the poem
Cannot bring himself to say
Or to pray about his own lividness
He shuts out spaces and commas
Lives in his own relevance.

He murders his own children
With his viper attitude
And nibbles the ankles
Of prostitutes
Who erase his will to power on.

You have seen him
Perhaps did not recognize him —
He has sat in your parlor
Sipping your coffee
Dusting off his duplicitous moves —

He fears death but not yours
He imagines you at the bottom
Of a cold, black ocean
Your tongue bait for the fishes
His Bolshevik brain conjures.

Your freedom is a fantasy
If you remain too close to his heat
Get your life back – get your love back
Where God made you in his image
And you are close to seeing it.

4 Flesh and Desire

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” —T. S. Eliot

Into the fire of wisdom, thoughts go to perish.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” Christ commands.
But we still wobble behind the Devil
Hoping to be snatched from the arms of death
In time for supper and for the many tomorrows
We image we still possess.
In the valley of dreck and poison, I have lived
Even as I knew better or thought I did.
No, I am not here to testify.
Although a word or two of testimony
May slip out every line or so!
I can pound sand with the best of them.
But I can also bitch and moan.
Where is the beginning of joy and rectitude?
One might ask. Where is the promise?
O, come on! You know where the promise is . . .
Yes, just testing the waters and they are warm.
Every time I delay, I am warned. Just pray
And wait and listen close and tight to the hum
In the brain. I will follow. I will follow close.
Yes, I will. And flesh with its crude desire
Will no longer taint the years
With their distractions.
The mercy of Spirit will wipe my tears.