Focusing on 2020

 

 

This retired senior captured a sunrise today

in natural light with a full-frame camera.

She is an iPhone witness to birds spreading their gorgeous broad wings, a rainbow in a fountain, and can attest to having spotted the Easter bunny.

 

She is among the multitudes

transmitting their art from remote locations across the vast wireless divide and

wondering which photographic filter to apply in a world frantically adapting to change.  Observing through a long lens

 

her fellow humans scouring novel viruses from cracked fingers

Flushing the disease   down the muddied drain

of remembrance.

In a daze of black and white.

In search of the new normal

avoiding contact, maintaining a six-foot distance, then touching gloveless 

the same credit scanner, dollar bills, soda can.

 

As the idiots spit into the lettuce, cough at clerks,

Their vacant stares mock the establishment.

 

The rest of us are

scratching itchy eyes, ears, and noses

 

reckoning our mutual frailties.

A merciful how and when, if now, 

will the end come?

 

Innisfree Gardens

I will arise and go now,

and go to Innisfree.

W.B. Yeats, “The Isle of Innisfree” (1888)

 

 

Innisfree Gardens

 

August’s golden dawn 

whispers

Innisfree, park you pay.

 

Cup Garden

fills tranquil

to brim.

 

Sunshine and shadow 

point fingers

woodsy sculpture.

 

Komodo dragon

stretches

seating for one.

 

Fountains shower

mist

poet smiles.

 

Contemplate genius

living art 

by design.

 

Meditate on

mastery

of rock, water

wood, sky

 

Alice

drinks spiked tea

with Mad Hatter.

 

  

 New World Order

 

 

Should that annoying Lone Star tick have a large following:

 

Administer Muse CPR. 

 

Make a List

Lower Your Expectations

 
Event Schedule Highlights

 

1. Insult all ticks near and far.  

2. Dig out the disgusting Dictator head

3. Hold a rally in the Deliverance woods

4. Invite All Your Friends and Some Enemies

5. Have a Tick Eating Contest 

6. Force the defiant to watch as you ingest their loved ones 

7. Build walls

8. Shout and March as IT controls and limits basic tick rights

7. Celebration Party for The New Politically Correct- (Lots of Balloons, Fireworks, Dancing, Rioting, Wars, Fires, Ruin, Mass Graves)

 

8.- 10.  Make History (All good, all fair.)

Tick Types in Office(s)

 Tick Types in Office(s)

 

 

One may misinterpret this lone star tick

for another

do not be hasty. 

If it continues to rule

that will be your last self-governing choice.

 

Make no mistake

this tick is tricky and nasty

it can and will make you sick. 

Not to be mistaken for the deer tick or the brown dog tick

which are something else entirely.

 

This spangled lone star tick

has a white dot under that coif

and very large incisors which it sharpens

on a wit tick a new tick on the block, 

not funny at all.

 

It has an even smaller stick, 

if you get my drift

which I sense is why 

this Lone Star

lacks any standards at all.

 

Don’t let it kiss your babies.

 

In my unbiased opinion

this tick

will only trick the nitwits

infecting us all with 

nervous party politics.

 

Golfers Senryu

 Golfers Senryu

 

Chipping-in from rough

white ball disappears at once

swallowed by the hole.

 

You’ve got a birdie

usually is good, unless

it tweets back at you.

 

A greenie in golf

means that your aim is steady

and your ball behaved.

 

Having a low score

is highly desired but

tough to accomplish.

 

Bionic golfers 

one putting keeps the pain low

control beats power.

 

Focus, concentrate

soon you will beat us

winners grin in place.

Lives Lost in the Fire: A Reckoning-(The Katya Chronicles)

 Lives Lost in The Fire: A Reckoning

(An excerpt from- The Katya Chronicles)

 

Katya was clearly in danger. The prince was deranged. It was time to travel again, time to face her fears. Where is Tiki? 

 

Clean the black mirror, the Prince commanded, the private room is no longer secure.

I need to see past my reign.

 

I'll fill you in later, Katya replied, not anything we need to discuss at length.

 

 

I am a lonely hero, crooned the Prince, reclining on the bed pillow behind her, arching his back, ready to pounce on a moment’s notice.

 

" Get up, my brother, she meowed get down with this badass kitty and talk dirty to me.

 

I don't speak your language, he sighed,

got lipstick stains on my passport, and no exit visa.

What is this chemistry you speak of? 

 

She leaned in 

put her face inside her reflection, it swirled as Katya M. Cartouche, April's Fool

danced alone in the moonlight to Alicia Keyes, “On Again,” and looked back at the comfort one last time.

The mirror smoldered as Katya turned and fell through the looking glass, tumbling down into the fiery maze.

" Help, I don't understand,” she cried

Katya, the gypsy, thought, lately, I've been losing sleep, but I'm happy

counting stars in this faraway country, where there is evidence of past lives.

 

Let go, Katya, the mirror challenged

Here I will stay until you find your way back. Let the storm rage on

take that money, watch it burn, everything that kills you makes you feel alive

and besides, the heat never bothered you anyway.

 

So here comes goodbye, she cried, her meow echoing down the proverbial rabbit hole,

The gravel road beckons.  Don't let the door hit you…

…

I am Katya, the many-faced feline

I seek the way.

I bow before no kings or fanatics

My modes of transportation are alien 

to those who cannot see

cannot bend time

cannot reckon that every little thing must be considered 

in its proper sequence.

 

Katya confronted the fruminous Bandersnatch

It was a liar,

had to be shrewdly dealt with.

These nonsensical creatures clearly had a problem forgetting her.

 One of the pitfalls of time travel.

 

Another Day On The Roof

 Another Day on the Roof

 

The cock crows

as the blinking moon slips into a dark corner.

She crawls out of bed and pulls on her faded jeans 

long stiff from the stench 

that no machine can wash away. 

 

Soon her well-worn shovel will crack the old tar and gravel, splitting it into thousands of shiny black chunks, the black dust settling everywhere. 

Fragments become tons and are hurled into a lumbering truck caked with dirt.

The roof is swept and swept again, exposing an acre of plywood and a growing mountain of debris; as the boom box drones in cadence, to

 

Shovel, hurl, sweep

Shovel, hurl, sweep

Shovel, hurl, sweep

 

The body learning what the day requires. 

By eleven a.m., the roof is sporting a black tar paper suit studded with silver nail buttons

to be finished by day's end, when it will be complete in modified bitumen torched down to create a seal.  A silver reflective coating is later rolled over it, as the sun continues its onslaught, frying her soot-soaked skin.

 

She works until sundown, and they drive to dump the debris. Then, to Safeway to buy dinner, looking like a trio of grimy vagabonds, hungry and bone-tired. Drawing curious stares as she brusquely fingers moist cash and blows black snot into wads of brown paper napkins.

 

Hours later

sinking into the couch

her feet are propped up on top of the coffee table

ten painted toes pointing and flexing

inhaling Rocky Road ice cream.

Exhaling slowly as exhaustion sets in

as she steels herself to begin again tomorrow

for another day in paradise

another day on the roof.