thoughts of the cloistered

thoughts of the
cloistered play
large as I power

down the noise
machine reclined
in a room just light

enough to
see the path the pen
is taking in the

journal I’m
aware that every mark
could be my last I

always ask
as I close the book and tie
it’s leather laces

is that all
really that there was to be had
of another day?

there was a time

there was a time when
the search for peaceful
cohabitation was
formost in my usage of time
a doe eyed expedition
through the darkened
landscape of confused opposites
I, by luck or providence,
found it
and wear it as
comfortably as
a favorite sweatshirt

now it would seem
that small conversations
on the happenings
of our days and a chair
with proper
lumbar support
is about all I need
in the bliss department

that and at least two
uninterrupted hours
in middle afternoon
with nothing to do

yes, that and a cat
willing to trade
an air of faithfullness
for a spot in my lap as
the nights creep toward
sub freezing

and let’s not forget
a book, one with
ideas wholly unoriginal
but worded so brilliantly
that a spark of insight
flashes momentarily
beneath my greying scalp
just before sleep
wins again

under scars

in her twenties
she was cut four times
a scaple hewn
doorway for
my brothers and I
that we may leave
our first home
screaming in the
light our lungs
expanding with the cast off
breath of those who
were there before we
were there we
wiped clean
laid on her breast to
beat our hearts in syncopated
meter with hers
a few days shy of seventy
she was opened again
her insides
having rebelled
then surrendered
another scar another mark
in her travelog
under those scars
is the place I began
away in ever widening
circles I move
picking up
things she left for me
which I return to her
on my visits as if
I was the first ever
to have discovered them
she smiles
a servant now
to her solitude
silent mostly but
seamingly assured
that she was as good
a guide as there could
have been her hair now
grown back enough so that I
have to brush it from
her forhead a kiss there
her eyes letting me know
it is not complete
I have got
so much more to do

getting to the bottom

operating along a gradient
reaching conciously for the
answer sweating a third empty
on the metal table in the yard
– not a perfect solution
just one proper for
a particular bother

a transliteration
of gestures for
this gatekeeper of sleep
a translation not required
it knows
accepting whatever amount
one tolls up
and with gloved hand
swings the
gate inward