Sunday, August 21, 2016

A Ballet in the Ruins















Balance, grace and beauty,
Kind people, feed human achievement…
A few greedy men kill off all life,
Creating a world of bereavement.

Desperate people strive to survive,
Hanging on to any loose thread,
While dancing in the ruins,
Choosing life, to honor their dead.

Human kindness is mandatory,
It’s absence, flows like a stream…
To another downhill location,
Where others dare to dream.



Friday, August 19, 2016

Escaping Dakota
















Drunk on Bali Hai again,
Perched upon hay bales;
Ice skating in a frozen park,
Were my winter’s Dakota tales…

This bearded, pierced-ear protester,
The Vietnam war, growing old,
Had an iced-in prairie prisoner's dream,
Of escaping his exile of cold.

Want ads for a ride share home,
Attracted a recently jailed,
Braless, lesbian, with hippie dreads,
And me, whom the Midwest failed.

Exhausted in Wyoming,
We stopped at the first rest stop,
The hippie took a topless stroll,
Attracting a pink Cadillac cop.

The license plate said, “Sheriff”,
Between the two pink fins…
He threatened to arrest us,
For her Godless Hippie sins. 

Not guilty, but really mortified,
How the start of our trip went down.
The Cadillac and a cowboy posse
Formed and led us out of town.

Our u-joint started knocking,
Finally breaking in Salt Lake City;
The disapproving Mormon glares,
Said we’re in the Town Without Pity.

Safely back in California,
The hippie used my parent’s phone;
They discovered her huge phone bill
A month after she left their home.


Saturday, August 6, 2016

Sand Dunes

















Running down a sand dune
Is a lure for anyone frisky…
A hard fall, like on a cotton ball,
Cushioned; so comfortably unrisky.

Sliding on a feather falling,
Or a raindrop on a cloud carried.
Some fly to the bottom, others trapped
In Earth’s hour glass, and buried.