apropos

the way
in which I
express myself
so oft
sans sequitur
and apropos of nothing
I flit from thought
to word to deed
a galloping
galumphing steed

ensconce

rain patters in lulling percussion
echoing purring lap fur puddle 
gray blanket covering legs and chest
as gray blanket covers sky
book and tea on table beside
pillows and peace piled high
and I, ensconced in such comfort,
long for nothing more or less
than the quiet continuation of
this moment's cozy content

pace (preposition)

i do not think i am by nature vain
i do not consider myself
as better or brighter or righter

but i confess with some distress
i do not understand how some
justify their positions driven by suspicions

i feel i have lost some i have called friend
to ideals more fierce than mine
and though i respect their fervor
i seek a different way

the world we both see falling
and i would save some bit and use it
work from within as i cannot see how
to change the world from without

pace the righteous warrior in his rage,
i think there is still a gentler way in this day and age

and yet, and yet, and yet

and neither my way nor my friend's
seems to make those we both oppose
to yield or change or even bend

disparate

we are mosaics

laid out to set in the sun
we shine

bits of metal
broken shards
of ceramics and glass
bound to boards
with grout and grit

so similar we are
yet not

telling a millions different tales
but one story
of beauty through adversity

that it matters not
how we've shattered
if we gather
to artfully arrange
the scavenged detritus
of our souls

knowing - greater than the sum
of all our disparate parts
is our whole

broadside

a million, billion words
are writ and spat
as we bicker
over this and that
and controversy flamed
fingers pointed
and names named
by the broadsides
and the pundits
in their boxes
bellowing to
distract us
from the fact
that really
we are all the same
as those on whom
we place the blame
pawns trapped in
a larger game

anathematize

last time 
for "I wish I"
or "I should have"
conjecture and regret
and neither solves a thing
the past is static
the present fluid
the future...
intangible and insubstantial
as a gas dispersing in the air
and in situations such as these
to anathematize is facile
and fruitless and bootless
focusing on oughts and didn'ts
distracts from the business
of doing and growing
and attempts to forget
keep us from knowing better
next time

legerity

so quick with hope
the mind conjectures
even as sense lectures
a slower course
for longer distance
I outpace myself
with the legerity
of a cheetah racing
after impala leaping
but rarely catching
though needs must
else hope starve

toothsome

and yet again
from heights
to depths deployed
swept up in a moment
so toothsome and fine
that I, for a moment,
lost my mind
upended by a kiss
forgetting this
that which we sweep
goes into the dustbin
and we do not keep

yeasty

with a tentative smile he reached
across the gritty barroom high top
over the dark wood marred by
a thousand spilled stories and beers
and the board games stacked beside
continue in their pile to reside
as ignored and unnecessary
while instead searching fingers
found her own and intertwined
and within her smile returned
a yeasty hope roared and rose
that maybe here he'd find
a kiss and kismet, for once, aligned

shofar

segregated by his guilt
he sits alone in the
high holiday crowd
supplicant before G-d
whose forgiveness
rings in the wail
of the shofar, but
only so far as
he can forgive
himself

holus-bolus

sorrows come, as Willie said,
not single spies
and so holus-bolus
life is higgledy-piggledy,
yet again,
as we scramble
and scrape
and scrappily
ignore the ache
while we pick up the pieces
and piecemeal
make glue with our grime
to wattle and daub
the sucker back together
and rebuild better
once we're in
for some nicer weather

glabrous

porpoise with purpose and poise
you leap skyward and swivel

splash down and squee

dive again
to nose the kelp flotsam
in a gleeful game
of capture the flag

your glabrous grey and glistening

and I listen to
your clicks and whistles
and wish I was with you

amanuensis

at my best I am no writer
but merely an amanuensis
scribbling down the words
as I see them in the air
seasonal butterflies
beautiful and all too brief
wishing I had shorthand
or a stenographer's skill
that I could catch them
as they flit past and pin them
to page as the collectors of old
to be marveled at in days to come

portentous

we make our own omens
in sky color crayons
a stranger's child's fridge
finger paint Picassoing
and with as much merit
our minutia portentous
and all fairytale fictitious
as to cling to the hope
that we may divine the
indeterminate destiny

travesty

the beautiful people on screen
walk and talk and laugh
and seem to face the struggles
that you do too and yet
they somehow do not reflect
their houses all so fine
and their features all well placed
even all their tears attended
with such poise and grace
and the cast is all one shade
and the men take center stage
even in the film about a woman
of a certain age and yet it's acted
very well and so it's easy to ignore
the little things that make you
forget it well before you even
make it to the door and you
wonder at the cost that went into
the production and the other scripts
they overlooked and you leave with
the deduction that the travesty
is not in the story that they tell
but that the studio decided
that other stories wouldn't sell

inoculate

never thought I would be
so envious of those
inoculated from reality
by their steadfast certainty
that opinion is fact
and truth somehow subjective
and theirs, of course, the right

marginalia

greatness awaits us
upon the page
the empty page
to be composed
in line after lines
and row after rows
of insecurities & sureties
of treacheries & psalmistries
of life depicted & reflected & dissected
rewritten and revised and editorialized
with every drop of ink as blood
squeezed from stone and still...
it's the things doodled and scribbled
the random - both sacred and ribald
for all the tales we tell of ourselves
it's the marginalia that makes us

precocious

celebrated in youth
as preciously precocious
that position later precarious
peers prize other propensities
every gift
double-edged and handleless
grabbed by the flat
and grip fashioned
a weapon to wield
a scythe or sword or swagger
to bend the world to our will
or else
we cut ourselves

scour

this groping weed that chokes
throttles your better impulse
and leads you so astray
oh, that I could scour your soul
and find the fault, dig it out at root
I see the poison plant peek out
unfurl the slick green leaves
like groping fingers
between the branches
of nurturing shade
hiding from the sun
but cannot grasp
its stinging nettles
nor dare I brave the thorns
that enclose it so
but would that you tend
your own garden
before the insidious botany
of your jealousy
renders all round it rotten
food for fungus and decay

bibelot

Clear the Clutter & Free Yourself!
...so the magazine says,
and I imagine being free
in a moment of castle cloud bliss
until... then the truth arrives
as I sit and sort my stuff
piles of bibelot and bric-a-brac
that raise old ghosts or take me back
to the times that made or broke me 
to the ones loved and ones lost
and the ones loved and lost
and the roads traversed and the rivers crossed
and I remember the things I most often forget
and resolve to be better, have less to regret
the mementos cling to me with a magnetic pull
and the garbage bag stays empty...
and my shelves stay full

conversant

i fumble the words
as i would a ball
thrown with the call
think fast
i am not conversant
in the ways of the suave
equipoise is an enterprise
i seldom emphasize
as i realize my strength
elsewhere lies
and yet my sincerity
unmatched
my heart no less true
because i cannot find
the way to say
without saying
with sang froid
displaying
those three
forbidden words
i love you

disport

car speeding
down the highway
our voices mingled
in giddy glee
as we disport ourselves
in raucous song
all heaviness of heart
for a moment forgot
in the chorus bellowed
together off-key
but finding our own
kind of melody

extemporaneous

though being there
I knew them untrue
the yarns he'd spin
extemporaneous and
extraordinaire
so exquisite
like a city made
of blown glass
that I would wander
there and wonder
at the majesty
and ignore the fragilty
of his lovely lies
lost in the blue
of his merry eyes

propagate

time and chance

and circumstance

against that need arrayed

from choices made 

or left unmade

now upon that bed 

I'm laid

or rather...not 

my thoughts

I propagate instead

maternal instinct

the beast inside

left unfed

tho hungry

bedraggled

aging

weak

still not dead

robot

Amazingly lifelike, he had me fooled - handsome simulacrum of sincerity.

Oh, I wanted to believe in him.

How I dismissed all the signs on our road trip through the uncanny valley
and out the other side,
my robot love and I.

Until he broke beyond repair,
unable even in his android way to pretend to care
and I saw behind the eyes and thinning hair
the mechanisms spinning there.

scrupulous

the pages blank
an empty book we are born
each passing day writ in ink
we scribble and scrawl
cross out and overlay
until our undulating
and dogeared leaves
like rorschach blots become
a dream perfected
in scrupulous detail arrayed
in modernist masterpiece
of joycean conquest
and our Ulysses
upon the shelf displayed

fruition

befuddlement
at life's odd serendipities
a suggestion becomes a plan
in an easy turn
and that easily
a moment of maybe
becomes a may
becomes an is
a coming to fruition
of what once
had been a whimsy
and in these
random twists
of possibilty
to prosperity
a life is built

vociferous

the gathered throng
cheers and hears
rejoinders vociferous
as if in echoed opposition
the other team's position
a balance weighed
in equipoise of noise
zero sum as one
advances the other defends
and vice versa in a
pendulum without end

enthrall

a laugh, a touch
a knowing smile
a dimple, a wink
easy my heart
to enthrall
but to lose this
use unkindness
and smallness
and rudeness

confrere

easy to retreat at the end
of another defeat
to take my ball
and head home to hermit
but for these, my confreres
in whom I confide,
and who make me realize
I've lost nothing more
than a little time
and a little pride
win or lose
whatever team we choose
life's more fun outside