3 Quarters and a Bottle

If you risk nothing you gain nothing. If you risk everything…

I took a chance, hoping those words would coagulate. But they cheated me this time. I wanted to grow my beautiful life. When the smoke cleared, the lies still hung in the air encouraging me to do it again.

Now she’s gone, and I don’t quite have enough to buy a cigarette from the tweaker on the other side of the park. Actually. I’m afraid he’ll beat me up and take my change, so I’m not even going to ask.

My drink has gone dry as my wife the day she left me here in the park. The day she made me reap what I had sown. I look at the sunrise through the distorted glass pretending I made it. Pretending all that gorgeous refracted light is mine now.

My coin tinkles in the bottle. I chuck the whole truth into the river’s arms. In a moment, I’ll chase after my fortune there.

White Men Dancing

They lost their rhythm
not their love
of the beat
that connects their feet
to the turning of the spheres.

Trying to find the time
the time
the time of the music
the time of the music that
poured treasure
into the ear and the feet
the feet
spoke clearly in response.

The talent took a turn
toward couples coupling couplets
toward symbols of love and marriage
and lifetime
of promises kept.

The tribe was forgotten
but still its voice pleads
pleads in the memory of eons
pleads to bequeath
the beat back to the feet.

The rhythm
the lovely rhythm pours
back into the heart that beats
that beats as one.

One tribe under the great Wheel of Heaven.

Easy

We gonna build a wall!
We gonna save some queers!
We gonna make some money!
We gonna buy some beer!

America!

We gonna pop some idol!
We gonna drive some truck!
We gonna talk real smart!
We gonna f***!

America!

We gonna stop climate change!
We gonna cure cancer up!
We gonna eat soy brats!
We gonna raise Jesus up!

America!

It’s no sweat!
We’re professional freedom fighters!
Waving the world since 1776!
Liberty is our name!
And not thinkin’ twice is our game!

America!

We gonna Tube our Yous,
with red, white, and blue!
We gonna Book our Face
with Amazing Grace!

America!

We gonna shop Black Friday!
We gonna let Love Win!
We gonna show our boobies!
We gonna thank you for your service!

America!

Boundaries

We like the fences so long as they are ours. We delude ourselves into thinking they shouldn’t be moved. We are blind to the intended impermanence of the rules.

But fences can be moved, yes? Rules can be changed.

I had a rule:

“No justice, no peace.”

It was a fence to keep me out but let others in.

A one way rule.

I think peace happens when we can have a cuppa across our fences, admire the workmanship, and then meet each other by the gate.

Why knock down the fence when, with a little love, you can be invited in by the gate? Sometimes, the fence is built to contain you and there is no gate.

No justice
No peace

Broken rules
Broken fences

And cows in the corn.

Forgiveness

Collective guilt visiting the sins of the fathers is the lynchpin of dictatorship

This bazaar shape that morality takes when sheep go on the hunt for wolves

Wolves that are age long dead

We need a climate change

We need to look into the eye past the collective mask

and touch the individual soul.

Touch his shoulder

Offer her unearned smile

Embrace

Let the awkward moment cleanse

Remake

Renew

I will not look into the eyes of the pack or the flock

But I will look into yours

Will you look into mine

Will you see

I want to see

Do you

This hatchet, with so much blood

So much memory

It’s not even ours

Let us cast it into the sea