World Walker - ghazal

World Walker

Knock me down if you like, sweetheart. I'll land on these feet.

Oh, the revolutions I've measured and planned on these feet.

I am a balloon animal, tied all up in colorful knots,

Head in the clouds and sweet hot sand on these feet.

Hey honey, I know things. I've walked over pebbles and shards.

Over dirt and concrete, and across hallowed land on these feet.

I have been worshiped and spat at, kissed and ignored,

I've been puny and I have stood fiery and grand on these feet.

Failed at wheels. Fell from trees. Scared to jump. But I've walked!

Count the decades and roads that I've trampled and spanned on these feet.

There will not always be another sky, another loud horizon.

When the sea cracks and the earth boils will I still stand on these feet?

You can't prove I exist. You can't see me or touch me.

But I chase you and whirl to my silent big band, on these feet.

You are my whispered wish and I am yours.

We keep going, my secret, hand in hand, on these feet.

Fewer still make sense.

All things are possible at some expense.

This backpack's almost full. Just one more stone?

Few things are beautiful; fewer still make sense.

Be rain. Be a temple. Grow outside the fence.

Let a drum live deep inside your flesh and bone.

All things are possible at some expense.

The whys and hows hurt. I have no defense.

The ashes soothe me smooth as abalone.

Few things are beautiful; fewer still make sense.

Come be forgiven. Dance the old suspense.

Ancestral questions won't leave us alone.

All things are possible at some expense.

What doesn't kill us makes us scared and tense.

There's only so much space inside the zone.

Few things are beautiful; fewer still make sense.

Be slow. Be wary. Love the present tense.

Remember what you touch. Make it your own.

All things are possible at some expense.

Few things are beautiful; fewer still make sense.

Easy - slant sonnet circlet

Easy rolls me down the steps in footsprings, racing gravity.

Gravity loves me round, doughy, the sweet thing you take a bite out of.

Of all the granddaughters I am the last, knocked down, fighting lazy.

Lazy is like easy but harder, sadder. Lazy is stuck, but for grownups.

Grownups sprouting where you don't look, painting a picture.

Picture us all a bouquet, arms and waists, family is overbright.

Overbright where fading's a gentler thing, softer would feel easy.

***

Easy clouds the windows with a slow start, a rainy breakfast.

Breakfast the sharp beginning, all day the downhill chorus.

Chorus the chirpy memories swearing: it was always like this!

This is the loping way of the days. They were straight and sly.

Sly the sneaking sense now: time springs detours and do-overs.

Do-overs, dominoes, falling and rising their snaking refrains.

Refrains and endings. Falling and falling is easy.

The Log in My Eye

The Log in My Eye

Here is the day stretched thin with its hours

arcing stiffbacked from sunwake to stop-it-goodnight.

Here is the day with its hours fanned out for us, shall they be pushy-loud,

shall they be quiet-slow? Who gets to ask the questions?

Here is the day just waiting, holding its working hours ready for me to be ready,

there for me finding the minute to pounce. Who gets to read the signs?

Here is the day love-tough, lace-old, and me walking

right through the middle, eating the hours like air macaroons.

An American on a train - ghazal

I can be whatever I please for a while, an American on a train

I can snarl and trip little kids in the aisle, an American on a train

If the moon is chasing my werewolf phase I can slip into clouds of oubli

In German or French I can fool them and smile, an American on a train

See them skim in and out without knowing the stories I spin about them, about me

I marry them, wait for them, love single file, an American on a train

With the lurching I fall into strangers and laps but the smilepardons set us aright

And I know I'm still me, even stacked in a pile, an American on a train

I am old enough now I can snap them all up in my memory-washed rainbow traps

All they see is my middle-aged blandself, sans guile, an American on a train

When the fancystrike hits me just so, I can make my own movie at grandmagic speed

Stardraped with blinding invisible style, an American on a train

Where we go doesn't matter. The rushing makes bitterness sweet if I watch it askew

The hopewaking comes to me mile after mile, an American on a train.

The nightwords

The nightwords speak themselves and they fall

            into the middle of the absent days.

The  nightwords sing you to fear and wonder, smalleyes,
            the songdollies count you to overtime. Let it go.

The nightwords count to forty-five and then they go rounding up

            daughters-in-law for the long widowhood.

The nightwords rhyme when they are not paying attention

            and they interrupt each other when they are.

The nightwords change every night but the beat, the beat

            says I am the nightwords, listen or don't.

The nightwords speak babbletalk when you look straight at them

            and blank uni-verse when you look away.

The nightwords are old words cracking and respelling themselves

            long before the reform is passed.

The nightwords don't remember tomorrow any better than you do

            but they run, they run, and they are going to get there first.