Tock-Tock

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock….
Old Adams and Eves on the ageless rock
awash in oceans that spit shells and muck.
The shrinking Earth can never run nor walk
as wilful living do around the clock,

so it must spin and spin as timeless talk.

***

It’s late at night, I’m counting sheep, a knock,
it's wind? I thought of Keats’s sweet hemlock.
And sleep has fled.  A tick…though not a tock.
My kitten's, on the windowsill yawning
enframed by stars where no human race is,

no Eliot's cat, one who could disconnect
nothing from nothing. Sleepy…nothing...tock.

Earthly Carnival

I revel in repetition, I do,
like revolving around the lovely sun.
What Earthly carnival of life, these pine
valleys, these rural grasslands, rolling plains,
velvety rivers, groves of olive, beds
of wildflowers, these woods where lions roar.
This Ferris wheel of soil contains souls too—
in wrinkling skin, pumping their failing hearts,
who hold on tight as Earth circles and spins,
and sun takes in the sights and smiles once more....

Feet

I hear between you and I

explosions that wail
that sting the skin like hail
griefs crystallized in time.
With my fingers sense
sympathy’s frostbites
mutations of distance
carved into the hearts.
I see myself but only
with your eyes falling off
the Earth into the clouds
pouring into oceans
sinking down a million feet….
Oh how I miss hearing
the sound of your feet….

In My Own Bed

Sometimes I want to cry but I’m afraid
if I start I won’t stop until the whole of Earth
is filled and flooded with tears that hurt
the soil with salt that kills all trees and herbs,
daisies and gazanias, tulips and orchids,
and every heavenly stem of baby’s-breath.
So I must defend against destroying the Earth.

But sometimes I’m still more afraid,
petrified of something much much worse,
of shedding hot tears that always dry and fade,
of my choked weeping sounds that go unheard,
of roses that bloom, secrete their heavenly scents
just as before, trees that grow and folks who wed,
while I drown in strange tears alone in my own bed.

News of an accident

The father is alive, alert. 
The mother—doctors say—is too. 
But not the Skylark: it is wrecked. 
A nameless something else was killed.    
"The children," we regret, "are dead." 
And grandpa?  Grandma?  "Too," they said. 
But flowers, pastries, hats...intact.
The onyx colored dress, untorn.

The causes here remain unknown. 

Although the bones are red,
and smoke has spread,
beyond the dark I see
that serrated skyline, 
with same array of peaks—
but now to me they seem
exact and bleak.

But life ignores our pleas. 
So sway, the willow trees;
go on, the roads, as laid;
the Earth, as cold and gray.
While it spins and revolves,
creatures evolve and learn,
and skies around it burn
and spit, the Earth's no more
a pit. But still portend,
spoken words, and express;
observed are facts, they're named
and claimed; machines are made;
money produced and paid;
memories form then fade;
poems are measured and penned; 
Yet life‒my own‒can't be,
ever again the same.

Devouring Silence

The suitcase of silence    
is veiled in black, in white; 
it tails behind on wheels 
that dance to earthy tunes, 
spinning at whim.... 

My carry-on contains 
displaced letters only.
Homeless in frozen air— 
How they blubber!

In the flying coffin,     
relics of past, hollow.
Meaning: I call poem
my home. 

I escaped with letters hostage,  
so I can be.  At last.
Alone.  I

fear devouring
silence.