WordPastels

It’s not easy being a polar bear
And it’s not easy looking like Winston Churchill
But someone must do it
As sure as one must lose and another win.
So to all the pretty people
–You know who you are–
To all the pretty people,
Enjoy your parties and debutante functions
Enjoy the cuddling warmth of a winter’s fire
And when you look up at the skin on the wall
The one that scowls like Churchill
Remember that it’s not easy being a polar bear
But someone must do it.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.Words.

I don’t believe you…

Some days weigh heavy
As wool drenched in winter rain
Lingering not as the aroma of percolating coffee
But as the unyielding drum procession
Marking not the passage of death
But recalibrating the beat of life
Now unsettled by the shock.
Life was this way when I found it.

Words are razors.
Yours are hyacinths.

I would rather you thrash and scream
Ripping your claws through my flesh
In boiling tempest and blood-spattered fits
Than to stand frozen in time
Muted contortions, alone
No time, no direction
Reduced to memory
An archived friend.

I eat applesauce now because there is a
Parking boot on my stomach clamped
Because of years of unpaid nutrition tickets that
Seemed such mambo jumbo at the time that no one
Could possibly be serious about them.

Protein shakes like liquid bricks drip past the Guardian
Who passes each drop on inspection
It takes me thirty minutes to savor what used to be three gulps
Of afterthought to wash down the burger-and-fries mash.

I eat applesauce now. It slips unnoticed past the Guardian
Who must think it’s for the baby.

Bear wobbles like a bowling pin
Hands on his hips tip toes to the syncopated Latin piano
He tosses his nose to the sun and draws a drunken pirouette
Inhaling the intoxicating aromas of summer

He looks so flat and angry on the wall in the crackling glow
He is not himself.

Nature knows no equal where Christ’s power on display
Rends the holy veil between heaven and earth
And banishes evils that skulk within night’s folds.

And every flash a lash burned across the back of one who loves
Bloody rain poured out till all in wrath consumed
And after the violence the world at peace sleeps
Under the blanket that covers the head of a child.

Strange thing, this thing we know
But never call by name
For fear we’ll ‘rouse it from its place
A shadowed dank domain.

Where dark things grow, it lurks about
And slithers on its way
With orange eyes that never sleep
Intent to strike its prey
Strange thing, this thing we know,
But never call by name.

Bright light, white light, quite suddenly
Pierces through the paper skin
To set a boundary ring of flames
To halt this thing we know,
But never call by name.

“You may not come this way!”
A voice beyond our days
“For at this border life begins;
You may not reach within
to snatch the one that I have found
and called by my own Name.”

I am a fool of myself so readily
Naturally as a baby’s wet burp
Surely as a drunk ex-mother-in-law.

There was that time when I said, “hi”
And another when you said, “hi” back
And I didn’t know what to say next,
So curled up like a possum
Wishing they made shirts with necklines nine inches higher.

And then tonight I said, “Good night”
And you said, “Good night”
And I ducked under my blanket wishing I were someone else
Maybe Frank Sinatra