We cut one another
Down to the very flesh
While we miss each other
Deep inside our bones

Isn’t that ironic?

You are not the first to stand here,
shifting your weight from heel to toe,
listening for something that won’t answer.

This was someone’s altar once—
iron-veined and humming,
burning red under the weight of hands
that bent it to their will,
knuckles split and salted,
prayers exhaled through gritted teeth.

They worked like men who had no choice,
backs arched into the shape of tomorrow,
sleeves rolled past their elbows,
skin browned with the kind of sweat
that never washes off,
that seeps into the ground
like blood, like proof.

You were born too late to know them,
but their bones remember you.

You carry their names in pieces:
a slanted initial in your passport,
a jawline that sharpens the same way,
a craving for salt, for silence,
for anything that lingers—
but never long enough.

Time has worn them down
to a Sunday ghost,
a muttered grace before supper,
a name no one says right,
a thing you promise to remember
but never write down.

The rails are rusting,
but still they hold.
The ties are rotting,
but still they grip the earth.
The past is splintering,
but still it snags your skin.

You wonder if their hands ever ached
the way yours do,
or if the ache was different—
deeper, heavier,
rooted in something you can’t name.

You wonder if they knew
they were building a road
no one would walk back down.

And you wonder if they’d still have done it,
knowing they would fade into dust
long before you came looking,

long before you ever thought to ask,
before the rust reached the marrow,
before their prayers turned to silence,
before you let their stories slip
like sand through your teeth.

I will soak my mind in kerosene
and strike the match with my teeth;
I will burn myself to the ground
a thousand times
before I will become
the worst of my natural beast.

Only when there are no options
will the stinging vines trap me there
in the ditch of dark consciousness.
Only then will the mud at my feet
finally seize the rest of me
and feast on my warrior bones.

Not saying I don't like you.
Your skin, your hair, your eyes...
I'd just love to see your blood,
to taste your sweet demise.

I love your pretty teeth,
shiny, sharp, and red.
But oh they'd be so much sweeter,
tasting them while you were dead.

Darling, little Moon Beam...
shining so wonderfully 'Blue'.
Let me see your Bones.
Let me finally taste you.

The carrot and the thread are still
my calves and hooves, motionless
chewing on a bitter pill
eyes take in the stillness

A slight neigh to sigh a sigh
the usual sounds and usual grunts
the clicking tongue, a pitch too high
pavement castanet-ing
under screaming sun

The carrot and the thread begin to sway
my calves and hooves, they shake
chewing on spit and year-old hay
eyes that want to take

A step and a clack, forward I move
A step and a clack, the carrot too

Words may not break bones,
but they sure enough can break
souls

~ encore un autre, inspiré par Sally B.~

another poem excised from an
interdepartmental message from
The Dept  of Poets, (Global), a
ridiculous thot mine, deserving of
removal, remorse and regret,
(modern human’s woke 3 r’s)
nonetheless deserved of exegesis,
mainly because I think so…

Surficially, I comprehend that of the bones,
of the billions of those who have gone to
their where~ever, if could speak. we would
require a huge commitment to building out
our cell phone networks, the best comm
tool, for portability between differing
dimensions, times and spaces

let us cut to the chase (thank god),
my bones shall be without a doubt
return to a granular dust, my minerals
contributing to some future breakfast
cereal, thus assuring my recirculated
inspiration for generations to come(?),
acknowledging that my “gifts” are
the product of apriori Jews who wandered
this planet, forever rootless and semi-
displaced by their haters for reasons
that have nothing to do with reason

By way of my gratitude that you have read
so far, hopefully to continue, let me assure
you that this P.  will not trend, nor spit or spot
or high lighted, as it’s worth is as fleeting as my bones, when one dwells on the size of space expanding and the time & space
continuum

that disclaimer claimed, we breathe easier,
and I happier, and now at last to the meat
of the matter:

My poems will wither, and eventually their
ions will be erased when the internet servers
undergo the many purges that yet will come
(better this than purging people)

yes, my ego’s cells, which one of you will
no doubt will imbibe and perhaps????
imbue, may actually reappear in a newness,
in a refreshing refreshment, that some Believers will think is absolutely brand new
(which it won’t be), for the new treads are on
the old treads, only now, dug a little deeper,

and I, in my ionosphere, inside my cells
yet within you, will muse amusedly,
“there is nothing new under the sun” (1)

but the sun will be shining and that is
good enough for all of us

Nov. 23
9:04 am
nyC

Cedar wood house
aching with arthritis
still standing atop a hill,
at me, she blew a kiss,
dreaming I could feel,
and as made my way
down the horizon
where the flowering
dogwood-covered
peaks rose
to this valley,
where whiskey flows,
old mountain ranges
have always been
November’s ghost.

I’m on this road
thinking it will lead me home,
but all along,
I was wrong,
my home lives with me
in my bones.
Faces I knew by heart,
in time faded until forever gone,
I’m left here singing their song
with their names etched
on winter stones.

This road has grown weary
leading me to golden places
that weren’t even there;
all the while it was I
chasing castles in the air,
and I was foolish enough
to care about running after
a mirage anywhere,
all along,
by my side, the happiness
that I dared myself to find,
has always been with her.