The Pug

No longer at home in his world
at the end of a leash he didn't quite choose
pulls once to the left and then to the right
from a fraying french collar
that's so much too tight

In their youth they tumbled and dug
She was his Robin Hood, he was her knight
they followed their hearts and their noses
no one yelled if they barked
or trampled on roses

Back then they slept under stars
a sheepskin bed thrown over coiled hoses
created a fenced-in oasis
breathed into each other
exhaled all their crazes

Now her eyes look a little like his
squinting at moonlight and strange passing faces
face full of jowls from eating too much
fat rolls that jiggle
and no one will touch

Tonight he looks out at his baby and wife
a yard that's too small; his throat starts to clutch
yanks at the tie that's so much too tight
pulls once to the left and then to the right.

A case for Love

In the end
you will be asked,
"Did you pursue
what stirs you most?"
not if
you've saved
more than enough
or traveled coast to coast.

Sometimes
for me
it's hard to find
what flutters deep within,
I have a sense
of weariness
my patience
can wear thin.

So often when
I just can't find
the next step
I should take,
I search out places
far and wide
in which I have
no stake.

I think that
other people,
will help me
find the way:
I ask
and then reject
advice,
It's like I have no say.

I get confused
I cannot think,
my spirits
can sink lower,
I eat some ice cream
drink some tea
seek answers
from some "knower".

Of one thing
I am certain,
though we pretend
it isn't so,
only you 
can save
your life,
it makes no difference
where you go.

Not through
the love of others
will you find
your heart's desire,
your deepest
and felt-senses
will reveal
your inner fire.

Listen to
your body's rhythms:
harmonics heard
in rustling thoughts,
the hum
of inner voices,
revealing truths that they have sought.

Like an inner city's
rumblings,
is your own internal light,
sirens wailing
heartbeats pulsing
dancers twirling in the night.

You can
touch it all,
it beckons,
even that
which puts up walls;
your world inhales
with deepest longing,
unseen inner-pathways call
for your open-hearted tenderness,
not some wisdom from afar
just the brush of calloused fingertips
along your jagged scars.

No one upon
this earthly path
will ever really know
what waits for us
behind the veil
that's thin and richly flows.

But when your time
is finished
and Love comes
to your door,
will you say,
"I saw you coming,
it was you I waited for"?

Or perhaps
you'll greet Love warmly,
as an old, familiar friend,
say,
"You've been
here with me
my whole
damn life,
I wonder where I've been?"

We won't have
candied possum tails
or jubilee regret,
I'm sure this end
is not like that
though I've not been there yet.

One thing I know
is while we're here,
each moment we can choose,
to enter fully
into life
and all our messy ooze.

Or we
can keep
a careful distance:
"It's not me,
it's him" we'll say,
but then we really
have no light
that helps us find our way.

We have one chance
to open up,
or perhaps
we've lifetimes more,
but it doesn't really matter
Love is what
we're put here for.

if we
can look
within
and feel
the fever
and the flow,
we'll solve the mystery of life,
and war
and hate
won't grow.

instead we'll find
new ways that we
can reach
across the chasm,
to try on
someone else's shoes
or sense their cytoplasm!

So today,
and then tomorrow,
for all the days
to come
say, "Hurrah!" for all we're given,
'cause of us, there's only one!

Childhood's Not-So-Empty Lot

Through my eyes
she watches
children
watching videos
connecting through facebook
staccatoed texting and typing
information overload
until she swirls in memories
of her own childhood
beckoning from the light behind my vision:
kick the can
flag-football
empty-lot baseball games
with the boys
all that energy
to be released and inhaled by
her whose brother
(at first protector and guide)
entered doctor's offices
hospitals
and finally
left her for
some unknown
up-there-in-the-sky place
for ten-year-olds,
fogging her five-year-old mind
because there was
no service, no wooden box
slipping slowly into some
gaping earthen crater,
no burnt offering
created from a body left by the soul...

And still,
sometimes,
she senses him
cutting through her own
information overload
(staccato childhood chatter
nursery rhymes repeating
in her mind):
a messenger rising up from the void
releasing pain and anger
breathing in her broken heart
fluttering those
torn paper wings:
an unseen angel
hovering
alive.