What if the world is both a gift and the giver?
What if imperfection is the price we pay
to live in this world, to dwell in its promise and pain?
What if the spirit is imminent and omnipresent?
What if our flesh isn’t a prison?
What if our bodies are precious creatures
that we’re meant to tend and nourish, love and cherish
All the days of our lives?
According to my Uncle Bill
half the town was Koettings
the other half Keelers
anyone else in that tiny place had just married in.
A 70+-year-old bright-eyed Koetting rogue
Youngest of 9 or 10 or 11. . . I forget. . .
I couldn’t keep count of all
those strapping German-Catholic babies.
Everyone loved him, and he loved
Hogan’s Heroes, not M.A.S.H.
(too many commies in M.A.S.H, not his war)
He gave fatherly advice but didn’t usurp the role.
Koettings and Keelers and them
that had married in. Everyone loved him.
Son of immigrants, proud VFW inductee,
Texas farmboy, my mother’s sister’s husband.
Beloved Uncle Bill.
Detail of Phantasmagorical painting from Pripyat. Original photo by Simon Smith via Flickr, cc-sa2.0
I’d never met a boy like you
with green skin and a tender heart.
Your pain hid behind a goofy smile
My soul brother from the very start.
You were out of this world, fantastic
Above the earthling’s rough and tumble
And if you wanted to fit in
You never let us see, nor stumbled.
If fate does let us meet again
In another life or dimension
Share heart & wisdom one more time
I promise to pay better attention.
You were out of this world, fantastic
Your friendship always was sublime
My soul brother from the very start
Share heart & wisdom one more time.
( A eulogy for a friend who died unexpectedly. Requiescat in pace, lab partner.)
The music is gone
There is beauty in silence
My empty heart sleeps
Jane Doughtery Poetry Challenge #41
We ran out into the Rain,
who’s to blame?
Dog. It’s the same, tired refrain
We argue until all’s red
nothing solved
Many pointless tears will be shed.
The pattern is relentless
the dog runs
Chasing after him is senseless
At the river he will stop
Dog’s had fun.
We get pulled over. Oh hi, Cop!
And yet we have no regrets
We love him.
We’re wet. Dog’s safe. Damned beloved pet.
photo by SDRandCo, via morgufile
They are all just labels he said
See
so easy so right
All the trouble of negotiating humanity
reduced
to a pithy aphorism
that denies the
reality
of the struggle to keep up when
all those labels
keep
knocking us down.
He insists on minimizing
denying
the grinding experience of
a world where labels trump all
Yes so easy when those
labels
aren’t on you.
Harbor Bridge at night http://smartlightliving.de/leuchtdioden-statt-leuchtturme-corpus-christi-harbor-bridge-strahlt-nun-in-led-licht/
The wind tears at the red flag of my hair
Am I mistress of all I survey?
Ocean, clouds, far off island
A coming storm writes secret messages
into refinery smoke.
Trucks pass, the bridge quakes and
my heart quakes with it–
Our lives balanced on a monster
of concrete and steel.
The fear passes and there is
nothing but the view.
The smokestacks belch a dragon or two
just for me.
I am in an arranged marriage
with myself.
Married too young to
say yes,
Married too long to
say no.
I’m a quarlesome old thing;
at odds with myself,
at odds with the world.
In spite of it all
I’d like to learn to love her,
My inner child bride
companion of all my years.
The one who has the courage to
say yes
when I want to hide away and
say no.
Inconsolable grief (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have a houseguest–
his name is Grief.
Most days, he sits not speaking;
his shadow mutes the colors, saps the light.
Other days, he is drunk with rage and loss;
he smashes everything and hurls blame everywhere.
And then he weeps.
Most days he simply exists.
His breath steals the life from the air.
His hands are cold and strong in mine. We dance.
And then we weep.
T. L. Ryder 