But a Birth

The motherboard brain

Soft to a needle’s prick

Can’t take on more

Than the dealings of one day.

The moisture in eyes dries,

It’s lids lightly burn,

Calamities may come to settle and nest

Till roused

By either sun, bird,

Buckshot thought

Or just the dumb

Of once again.

In bondage to the hungers of our bodies

We toil.

Free but to the need

Of necessities.

Between material and ethereal

We dispute ourselves;

Kindly or not.

Otherwise claiming

Only one

Makes a man mad

In spirit

Or greed.

I carry on,

If only myself,

In blind spite of odds

That would turn Las Vegas sick.

To give chance,

To chance,

A bullet that just may graze,

Grace

And the blue

In sky.

To scrape at life

Till death.

Choice

My chest crests like a wave

Then falls.

Each choice

An equal chance.

We compose our speech

And push

Our own bones.

The great spokes spin

Encircling,

Blood, skin,

Artery, heart and tendon;

Cowardice, risk and courage.

With age I’ve lost

Much of my rhythm,

I just don’t move as well.

If I knew nothing of my past

How would I dream

Of the future?

Likely I’d leap,

No longer lame.

Risk Navigation

Born into life,

We move through

Moderate extremes.

Ghastly.

Holy.

Gruesome.

Grace.

More man made now

Than heavenly.

Asphalt, beams and steel

Have taken place

While the wilds been whittled away.

Some sit on earth to pray.

Some sit hard on wooden pews.

Some kneel in certain directions.

Some don’t pray at all and anyway,

All plea

For suffering to cease.

All aghast over death

And cringe at mortality.

Our time is a test

To see how long

We’ll live.

Forgive.

Listen.

Forsake.

Fear.

Burdens

Which bend spines

Year to year to year.

Flight and freedom, unbound,

Found only

In the oldest texts;

Like resurrections, levitation,

Compassion and surrender.

Illusions, trickery.

We are bound

And in motion that will seize.

Soothing self-reckonings

Amidst those who sit bedside.

I engage in respiration

And call that

God.

The Natural

We are deceived;

That the things

We’ve given names

Are mastered.

Compared to these heavens,

What are

The inventions of man?

When beneath my feet

I feel every inch of earth.

When silence

Fills the space

Of every sound.

The stems stand

As petals bloom abound.

I dare only look,

The hands of man

Just muddle.