The Scream

Michael, the world is screaming.
What is left of your true choice?
These walls demand decisions,
Where is your sane heart’s voice?

Michael you were trading your house
For six years left unencumbered,
Hoping the years of smoking,
Have left your fate even numbered.

Michael you are giving up
One of your favorite vocations.
Throwing away all health insurance,
To thrive in multiple locations.

Michael you are smiling…
It was worth the primal scream!
Turned your back on everything,
To follow one more dream.

Michael, relax, you made it!
Escaped the fate’s brutal call…
Finding once you escaped the prison,
The cage wasn’t so bad, after all.

Bridges to Where and There

Bridges over canyons and creeks,
Spanning rivers, and calm seas…
The hardest bridges ever crossed,
Were the bridges between the “me’s”.

There was the bridge I built for puberty,
The canyon crossed when leaving home,
The arch creating a relationship,
The road I built to leave alone.

There was a bridge to span the ages,
Converting each decade to one year,
Bridges to the other side,
Faster crossings with no less fear.

Anvil and the Hammer

If my “first-love wish” came true,
Now at sixty years of age…
I would find myself proof reading
My nonagenarian’s obituary page.

My youthful crushes one by one,
Fell in a systematic manor…
The second hand is relentless;
The anvil and the hammer.

Honor Among Thieves

Seagulls have a conscience,
Sensing to do what’s right…
Neither biting the hand that feeds them,
Nor painting the server white.

Touching Infinity

By day his world is minuscule,
200 dark and dank square feet…
A rusted out Airstream Trailer,
No longer worthy for the street.

Each hour his world grows smaller,
Wood interiors warp with age…
His diary entries grow shorter,
Time daily, turns another page.

Yet every night for thirty years,
Ron drives out to the beach,
Staring at the crushing waves,
Until the sun is out of reach.

He escapes the trailer's confines...
Focusing on horizons past the sea,
Touching, for at least an hour,
The universe, and infinity…

My Neighbor in the Trailer Park

My neighbor in the trailer park,
Speaks little to the others and me…
A fisherman called “Buddy”,
He is a slave to the fickle sea.

A quiet hermit in off seasons,
Fish and tourists chart his map,
He’s recognized by his personal logo;
The fish-hooked bills on baseball caps.

Winter finds him random boat jobs,
From Lincoln City to Yaquina,
Summers find him riding limos,
Steering trollers from the marina.