Must have been an omen

To me it was an adventure -
new city, new life.
Our home was a 1941 Dodge ambulance,
parked in a friend's driveway
where five people, 10 dogs, two cats
and a handful of chickens shared
a two bedroom house.
Our cat, whose life had been lived
almost exclusively,
in a one bedroom apartment,
lived in terror in the oleanders,
hiding from the dogs.
When the dogs ate her shoes,
my bride began to cry.

Garden Horror Story

It promises to be a hot day,
tache de soleil in an altercation
with the electromagnetic spectrum
making the radio scratch and sputter,
has melded its intensified radiation
to high humidity and no wind.
Winged insects with bulbous eyes
and high pitched buzzing attack,
always around the eyes, nose and ears
like they’re seeking ingress,
spelunking for the liquid gold
they know pools in the mucous membranes
somewhere deep in the sinuses
behind the freckles surrounding your eyes.
Dahlias marinate in the humid sun
while the hostas and impatiens hide in the shade
ignoring the droning insects,
waiting for the crepuscular creatures,
when the fireflies rise to mate,
the signal that soon gastropods
that shun the sun
will creep out of their dark crevices,
antennae aloft like chopsticks seeking rice,
slowly, almost stately inching forward
a grand poobah entering the ritual chamber
to devour the acolytes.

Ok, this is a jigsaw puzzle using words provided by my daughter Megan and her friend Leanne Fawkes. The words were: marinate, altercation, freckles, bulbous, gastropod, grand poobah, chopsticks, fireflies, tache de soleil and liquid gold. Thought they had me stumped, they did. Little did they know just how bizarre (perhaps perverse) my mind is!

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Opportunities lost eat at the soul,
a cancer of ‘if only,’
a litany of despair at having survived
without having lived.
Warmth, content, these are the thieves.
Discontent, cold, pain, fear, all true friends
that give brief breath-taking gasps of life lived.
Once, risk was oxygen
and the faint scent of disaster
an intoxicating perfume.
Now, faced by what could have been,
perhaps should have been
had I courage to gamble everything
for the momentary thrill
that leaves a permanent memory
I am left to wonder
would my life, albeit different,
be any better?

Perchance to dream

Daylight filters
through the curtains
of sleep chasing
the dream snakes back
into the dark depths
of the subconscious.
Thoughts born in
awakening
make lists of things
to do with the day,
locking the last barrier
between dream and reality
but knowng that darkness
and sleep
will bring the snakes' return

Summertime

Summertime kisses our thoughts with a smile
that’s made up of flowers and walking for miles
down tracks stretching silver by clear water streams
or through evening forest with air perfumed green.
It whispers of lullabies played upon leaves
rustling, suspended, from moss covered trees
and dances with fireflies mating by lights
arising in meadows on nuptial flights.
The low drone of honeybees softens the noon
as bright colored butterflies follow the tune
that a summertime memory plays for our ears
a song that’s been playing for thousands of years.

White Noise

There is a shushing noise
like the sound imagined as the ocean
when putting a seashell to your ear.
It fills the mind
until thought, even movement
seems in slow motion
with only the gentle susurrus
in the background.
The somehow amusing detachment
of mind and body,
consciousness no longer seated
in the physical
holds no fright
as sensation
becomes more like a whisper
than touch, taste, smell and feeling.
“This, then, is death,” he surmises,
the thought itself enveloped
in solitude,
rippling through the white noise
like a boat slapping through riffles
on water.

mirror, mirror

Now, before your eyes
appears
dawn upon the shining
mirror
you perceive a brace of
flowers
color in a jar of
water
just before your thoughts
arrive
you can feel the room grow
hotter
summer falling through the
shutter
pictures dreaming in the
morning
on the pale walls of your
hallway
when, before your eyes
appears
me, waiting by the
mirror.