There’s scaffolding constructed
to create the facade of our temple,
the establishment of our legend.
Making our hovel, something
elaborate, decorous and protected.

Constructed with words and
stories, and categories,  I am,
I’ve done, in my time, and place, 
to display and disguise as the
case may be… our very selves.

To fit our simple lives into a
legend we may want to read
about, to fit words and time
construct, and memories
we built brick by brick.

If we are lucky, we do not
brick-over windows so we
have light, and air to breathe.
As we try to remember just
what we had hoped to build.

Sometimes there’s nothing
but the birds singing to the sunrise.
Sometimes there’s nothing
but the hum of machinery in distance.
Sometimes there are no words
to fill the space between the margins.
Sometimes there are no words
for festooning of ideas floating by and by.
Sometimes there are no ideas
which present themselves in a lyrical way.
Sometimes there’s no idea
how this time in quiet is so fleeting.
Sometimes it’s good, just then
to remember how fortunate we are.

Shave a little here,
a little less right there.
Save money and give
them something they
think they want, there’s
so many of them, there’s
so much profit to be made…
they will never know.

But Mother Earth is watching.
Thinking what fools they must be.
What short profits can make of me.
For when I shake my hips as I do,
they will be made to pay and it will
be unfair and ugly and I will leave
a scar unto you, for you
failed to respect me.

And the sirens will wail as the
walls come crashing in,
and the heroes will rush to save
those who can be saved, and those
who can’t will pay the price of
profit’s greed, and it will not be fair,
it will never be fair, for how could
it be anything but a tragedy.

As Mother Earth straightens the
wrinkles of her dress, spinning
to her own music, with no sorrow,
no remorse, for she is who she is,
compellingly beautiful and often
deadly, and she will be respected,
she will keep her own counsel
on when and how, and where
she will be heard!

Crazy or normal is the stated choice
but which is which is untold and
left for us to decide….

Are conspiracies and grievances
and anti-wokeness,  of which
we don’t really understand
normal?

Is governance in the interest of the
people, giving help to those who
need it, and ensuring fair share of
costs crazy?

If so, then, Sarah just call me Crazy!!

And a cold wind blows
but no-one really knows
how it may change us yet
turning away so we forget
the bite the wind may hold
and the sorrows it has told
for long and painful years
freezing mothers’ tears.

And we look away as best
we can, or impugn them lest
we would feel what they feel
and it would be painfully real.
And it is for us in dubious denial
it could not be our problem or fail
when it is but slim fortune and fate
by which we avoid such a sorry state.

Foolish following of a fawning fool,
Acerbic, acrimonious, and alien
Rabid, rotund, rancid racist
Tantrum throwing terrible tool.

Trump, terrorizing and treasonous
Running rueful Republican rabble
Unhinged, unamerican, uneducated,
Malignant, misogynistic, miserable
Pompous, preening Putin puppy.

Thought I’d play around with Alliteration for fun… 

Maybe we are all Frankensteins
creating our own monsters,
engaging technology to be
more than we otherwise would be
to gain more than we are owed.

Inventing ourselves as something new,
but inescapably missing something,
something of the soul,
something of the heart,
and thus we fail to love this new creature.

There is ugliness in the new us,
and in the world for which we
toil in self-invention, as we
see it turning around only
us, the narrator of our story.

Redemption is possible with empathy,
and love, and the practiced art of seeing
the world as tangential to ourselves.
The accident which is making us late
Is something far worse for the injured.

The world turns with or without us,
the time is not for me, it is for everyone.
We may choose to be part of a great love story,
the actors most beloved for the love-shared,
rather than the lonely narrator of a horror story.

It’s MLK Day
the mail will not come
some people take a day.

Too few people think
about what his words
really mean to them.

Too few people share
his dream, for it
requires reaching out.

Too few people find
his words in their
sheltered hearts.

Too few people will
understand what
I’m saying here.

Only that the
mail didn’t come
and school’s out.

We’ve spun out of control.
So I heard it said.
It did not start this way,
but here we are in the
spin-cycle.

We start with a spin
around the room,
a fun look as babes
at the world so
beautiful, so small.

We spin for the joy
of disorientation
as we stumble
and fall about,
still growing.

We spin for love
in the ever-blessed
dance-of-life for
which it is perfect
to celebrate.

We’ve seen the world
and room spin
as we take fun and
celebrating a bit
farther than advised.

But the spin we can
really do without
is imposed by those
who deceive in their
sucking whirlwind.

They spin so fast
they confuse the
momentum of the top
as stability.  But it
surely is wobbling.

When it crashes,
losing power against
the resistance
of truth it will
spew out a mess.

However, in the end,
the world will spin-on
unchanged no
matter how we
or they tried to spin it.

I was listening to an article on the topic of lost and found, and the writer was putting things from her life into these categories.  But what was not said, at least in the NPR audio, was what I thought was the essence of the words Lost and Found… that only something of value could be lost and anything lacking value will never be found.  Value is the determining element… and so this poem:

LOST and FOUND
Look here, look there, look in your heart
for only what is precious can ever be lost.
Find this, find that, and feel for this, for it
must be valuable to be worthy of being found. 

And what is valuable to me may not to you,
for there are things and more than things
of which to consider.  

What can be replaced, and what never 
will be replaced, and what can be repaired,
and what will never be repaired, and if
the value is no longer there, it is no 
longer lost, nor could ever be found. 

But what we can never lose and we can
always make valuable is what we do
and say and feel in the precious moments
of now we find for ourselves by grace of 
fortune and spirit.