A Poet's Stigmata

It appears on my hands 

As dark splotches 

As black smears 

No need for a Thomas 

To probe their truth 

They are there, they exist 

As portals to words and spirits 

Practitioners and progenitors of the faith 

Stains assuming the quality 

Of through and through wounds 

Letting the breath of ghosts and giants 

Pass through them 

Chill winds of inspiration 

Urging my writing hand 

To cramp desperately about my pen 

Drawing my eyes from 

My hands and the blotted ink markings 

To the waiting page 

Where fresh ink will pass 

From heart, to hand, to pen, to pad 

Transubstantiated through the act of writing 

Changing ink into blood 

Blood into words 

Upon paper made flesh

Somber Sunrise

I cannot see horizons from my backyard

Rooftops and trees and fences effective camouflage

Overhead, the moon still hangs in darkness

Retreating from an east that glows with the threat of day

Advancing west along rose tendrils anointing far clouds

I watch this play out as the dogs play tag in the grass

Thinking on cares lying within me like a dead weight

I see the hope in the east, needing to believe in it

Needing to feel its warmth rather than the early chill

Needing more

Safari

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Waldo Redux

Haze, smoke from a thousand miles away
Covering our foot hills and mountains
Still populated by charred skeletal trees
Shrubs and grasses only just returning
Fires in Washington, Oregon, California
Their ghosts long preceding their deaths
Stirring memories from 2012 not yet resting
Eyes turning to scarred mountain landscapes
Hearts turning to scarred inner landscapes
Fire, fear, friends put out and fleeing
Dark days of raining ash in the fire’s reign
The sky a black roof of smoke
The sun a swollen red eye at its heart
The nights glowing unnaturally to the west
As if dragons slept there, breathing flame
Ready to rage, and burn, and feast
Dry acidic air stinging eyes and throat
Making lungs rasp and cough
Windows and doors shut tightly to fear
As if denial would win the moment
And in its smoldering wake
Nature reminds us of flames with water
Flash floods off naked hills
A crying land, a damaged people
Improvement slow but coming, and now
Haze, smoke from a thousand miles away

Our Resin Lord

Roadside monument to someone passed
Crucified replica lord hanging amid weeds
Driven into cracked and arid hardpan
Mourned by wilted silk flowers at his feet

Plastic savior, eternally upturned face
To uncaring sky, and unresponsive heaven
Riveted through stigmata to metal frame
Silently suffering the elements, unheard by saints

Mocked by dust devils
Ghosts that come and go in time with gusts
Turning in fleeting dance
Chaotically about weeping silks and foot of the cross

Frozen agony searching, mutely asking
God, why have you forsaken this traveler
Whose life was robbed too soon
On asphalted road between Sodom and Gomorrah

Our Resin Lord
Caught between life and death
Upon the cross on foreign Golgotha
Not even thieves to keep him company