Promised Land

With this life nearing its mortal years...I ask

What of those conforming days? 

Happiness...

Joy...

A life well lived

Then why the unceasing calamity inside my soul?

...if it is near...

Who will hold my dying arms?

Who pull me closer to my spirit self?

Away from this fertile land?

Away from this barren land?

The promises made to me, but I never received

Or, I never accepted

Or, I ran from...

I don't imagine what is in that promised land...

If it exists at all...and if it does, can it die on barren soil?

But I lift my heaviness and understand my arms are still strong... 

Time left to redeem and mend my mortal earth

And wait for heaven as much as heaven waits for me...

Once again, I promise to my self, I will not wander from the light of passing time

Under a Mournful Moon 
When I feel a midnight melancholy I put on rough out boots and walk under a night sky. It is late in my time. The years between you and me have left us faraway. I walk alone along a strolling verse of loss. My grieving thoughts spin slowly under stars held in distant homage to friends who have died. Oh, yellow moon...you hang against the night sky...I walk under your silent gaze. Who have you seen wrapped in white linen and buried under black earth? I ask you futilely, and sing to you forlornly.  Then in the suddenness of life as is in death, the melancholy is gone. When the morn's first light passes my eyes... When I see the fresh dew on the grass and hear nature's young voices... I am friends anew with this hopeful earth. I revere you moon, in all your silence and light. It is to you I will go in final rest.

In memory of friends:

Ian,
Mike,
Wallace

 

Shutter
He held the old black Nikon to his eye and took pictures. Every day for years he walked the urban streets and and with a short lens framed an alley man and engaged the shutter. The slap of the mirror startled some. Some grew angry. One threw a bottle at him, just missing his camera and crashing against a pissed up brick wall . But over time the Alley Men got to know him and accepted the pantomime of his photography. For all the years he took pictures, for all the years he engaged the shutter, and listened to the slap of the mirror and felt the weight of the camera hanging across his neck and shoulders he never loaded the old black Nikon with film. He never pulled TRI-X out of a yellow cartridge, nor spooled it, nor closed the film door, nor turned the rewind lever. Some Alley Men believed he processed the photos inside his head. His brain like a dark room where each image of misery was printed. Other Alley Men thought that was crazy talk. The old Nikon was empty. Nothing there. Just a short lens and the dark negative spaces of time and madness. 

 Waiting

I dream sometimes of barely floating atop a dark black sea...praying for gentle waves to safely take this soul 

I don't know where or how...whether ever it will be 

I don't know if it will be today, tomorrow, or when my spirit passes 

But someday the waiting will end and perhaps I will be saved,

My life may be preserved...a drowning, praying captain safe from a dark black sea

Blackbird
I remember the summer of Tokyo time...between the gathering of darkness and a sun's rise.  I close my gaijin eyes and hear the rumble of walking lives...the ghosted  memory crowds from Shinjuku trains hurrying the blended mix of jazz and cinema samurais and swords and sullen Blackbirds singing into the dead of night. Oh, reimagined salarymen as Shoguns stumbling into red lanterned Izakayas to embrace Kirins and taste the grilled catch of the Japan sea. Where did I stand in all this loneliness? So far from home? Nippon handkerchiefs absorbed my sweaty brow. Two years in Tokyo time...the end. Back home to where I can drive my car. Roll down my window; feel the ocean breeze. Look to the east...and dream of samurai trains; remembering how much I wanted to come back to my town.  And now with the decades passing I wonder how I was ever there and if in the dead of night Blackbirds drink Tokyo beer and sing forever into a sun's long rise.

 Beatles Library

The Alley Men

I have an evening secret... 

Under a rhyming street light.

live alley men who come apart

Like broken parts, Like wheels that come unwheeled

Minds astir, crazy, unwell, mad city birds fly ahead

I have an evening secret, I stop at the alley and take a breath..

my mind a bit astir, but no broken parts, and the wheels still wheeled

the devil cries inside, compels me...

I roll bye in defiance of the sorcerer's mind

Not yet ready to walk inside the rhyming alley

To sing Psalms to an atheist's Spirit

Not yet ready to walk within an alley's tears and madness