SPOILER ALERT: I’ve learned that the instant someone starts looking at their phone, they are no longer present to me, and I shut up. Multi-tasking is a myth.
To Shut Me Up
If you wont
To shut me up
Pick up your phone
Sow smarting
And you will find that
I am
Not there
Accept what might
Resemble
Carrion luggage
A dead wringer
Fore what
I may be
Sometimes that which seems urgent is less important than any of a thousand other choices…
Titanic Listing
Why oh why
The why’s ax
Must the eternal and infernal be
On my too due list
As daze go buy
The lilliputian demands
And the musty musts
Of our life of hours
Mourning
High noon
And knight
As if
What’s in store
Can be
Presently
For sale
And tomorrow
Unsouled
Fore that regular kind
That even the shameless
Afford their own
Done by won and all
Worshipping in that
Lowest common denomination
Frayed to stand out
In the mettle of mean, mode
And oppressively average
Pain no mine
To that unthinkable
Titanic listing
Carrying the day
God lives mostly outside the walls of the church…
Hows Calls
Bound to the masses
They awe the same yearned
To counter the tradition ill
Making the most
Popular mistake
Of going to church
As being won
With the Lord
As posed to
Come to God
That awe natural
Altar native
That blessed fave
Not soully dependent on
God making
Hows
Calls
The existential weigh of life is the usual suspects of weather cruelty or kindness…
Usual Suspects
They whir
In the thick
And thin
Of being
A usual suspect
Suspecting weather life
Might be
Kind or cruel
Soulful or heartless
Such existential quest ins
And sojourns out
Of the question
Effacing oppressively normal
Or mirrorly average
In the mettle of mean
Sum thing to be accompliced
In the prevailing wins
Fashioning won’s stile
Amid the sheepish and cowed
Choiring trophies
As ahead
Covering the cracks in the wall
In sum what
Desperate temps
As fallow
The common plays
Can we choose an other weigh?
Won that compasses us awe
As amor kind than wanton to be
So so under standing
Sow sow compassionate
In a choice life
A mist the taking
Life stands
A loan
As here
A pin drop
In pop culture
And what remains
Good natured
Self less
Awe the more
Wholly over looking
The chosen fewed
As cage-y auction figures
Calculatedly I’m pounding
In loo
Of going deeper
Rather at homme
With warm arted living
Gentle and generous
Just
Won of the patience
In the hospitable of life
Hang onto awe. It’s worth the ride…
Wholed On
I could
Soully sea
Every which weigh
Taken in
Awe directions
In life
And with it
Countless horizons
Even awe at wince
As just taut
360/365
Degrees
Between birth daze
As unearth
Revolutions
As powered by God like
Balls of fire
In every celestial neighbor hood
We’ll turn
In heavenly orbit
In the surrounds
Still
Ear by ear
Open to here
Untolled
24/7
Redeemed by sow many ours
In a weak
Effacing unstoppable high noons
As unbrakable
And knot
Frayed
As felt up
And down
That memory whole
Sow many epic pics
To choose from
Guided even
By legends uncited
As passably affront
To that fated
A rival
Of those con tenders
Wresting in nothing abut
Flailing that smell attest
And pinching aloof
Their snooty hope
In ex-stinks
Of awe scents
Imbuing us
From insight out
As weather inhaler heaven
Trusting awe
That is a bit touched
In that vast nest
Called homme
And sow much amor
As awe weave
Ever experienced
We wholed on
The subjective aspect of life is determining. I can look at any given reality, or a reality forced upon me, depending how I look at it, and see something very different depending on my attitude and perspective. I strive for an attitude of gratitude and a perspective of unity or oneness of humanity and awe of creation.
Whatever choice I have in my attitude and perspective is the source of the difference I make in the world. I see the quality of my actions emanating directly from my being. The means determine the ends. Or, in this case, the kinds produce the way. As the infamous A.J. Muste professed: “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
Today, I am grateful for awe of the inspiring examples of other humans, and I pray not to rubberneck the biggest fools and the carnage they reek. I yearn for the wisdom and discipline to build rather than yield to the temptation to knock down. There are awe kinds of reality, and this is the kind I hope to live in…
The Kinds of Reality
There are awe kinds
Of reality
A quality cosmos
Not always just
Sum thing to measure
Yet there for awe to see
That incite
Meant as an invitation
Soully to be
Incarnated for example
As everything is a gift
Though awe ways helps
To mirrorly see everything as a gift
Knot sow much as a stranged bettor
In a thank less whirled
And per chance
This sublime weigh
Choirs pain too much
A tension
Knowing amor patients than patience
You just
Let it
Go
And still
You might
Just find
A knew you
In habit
Such suchness
That quality of life
A realty won can live in
A poem about love versus fear and subjugation…
The Ultimate Subversive Force
Bigger than me
Bigger than you
Bigger than our enemies
The largesse of awe
Making us
Gloriously beggar
Then we can imagine
Effacing loss
As due without
Domination
The ultimate perversion
Of love’s power in the whirled
Fear and subjugation
That vane temp
As holed the win
And still
What are we left with
Grace
As due within
Love
The ultimate subversion
Of the whirled’s power
There is amor
Then won way
And still
Witness
That witch soully
Cannot be helled
Wear hope rests
Exorcising evil
Within and without
Love free
From accostly domination
Even when branded
As beautiful loosers
Of awe kinds
Unbound for glory
The presence of God is poorly replicated by omnipresent video surveillance of the state…
Surveillance States
Picture this
Video hear and their
Be rating eyes
Every wear
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
A mass of law enforcement
Worshipping God-light tech
Searching the dark arts
To make
Crime illegal
Rounding up low-lifes
Shaking down
One dodgy character
After an other
It’s what
Surveillance states
Trust the reign
On the just
And unjust
The jailers of men
At least
Some men
Selective in force
Never quite catching
Their man
Trump and his malignant narcissism are not aging well…
The Goaled in Age?
There is no
End to its awe
A bout
Me
All CAPITOL
OVER-THE-HILL
Shorting US on truth
Long in the tooth
Owed-er and owed-er
He gets
Ever aggrieved narcissism
And wee, wee, wee
Get the shaft
Of MINE, MINE, MINE
Soully compassed buy whoreds
Of grifters
Cons galore
And wreathed by sycophants
Asleep at the we’ll
Due this, due that
A weapon of mass distraction
Having a ball
Room in the wake of destruction
A White House beyond the pale
And wile roam burns
He busies himself
Desecrating the peoples’ hows
His patriotic sin essence
There are names of things and there is the One whose name cannot be named. The mysticism in my poetry is its fount and a fare portion of its inaccessibility. When relating to the largesse truths, to get close to what you want, to describe, to name, is to inherently fall short. The realty of poetry is that it is just, a never-ending odyssey, naming things that aren’t just things. And, at a minimum, like Mark Twain so aptly put it: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between “lightning” and “lightning bug.” I might add: the difference between “God” and “God-light” — or “God” and “gods.”
Name of Names
God visits me
In the dark
With my eyes clothed
Soully unveiling
Naked truths
That cannot be duplicated
Buy men of letters
How ever many
Fallowing
There name of names
I have COVID. I am homebound. Though the worst of it is over, my sweetheart is doing a grocery run for me today. Here is a short poem in her honor…
Nourishment
You deliver
Nourishment
Of awe kinds
You are food
For my body and soul
Ohio air quality ranks 46th among states. As an asthmatic, I keep tabs on real time air quality. I have noticed that in the summer Toledo typically gets its air quality coming in from the northwest, and in the winter it also comes from the southwest. The worst air quality is typically peaked by wild fires from states away, or even Canada or Mexico. Wild fires happen all year round, thanks to climate chaos. This poem was inspired by that moment that I realized crappy air quality was coming from southern wild fires…
Heir Quality
Holy Toledo
I can’t help
But look
At wiled fires
Awe year round
Taking my breath away
In D graded inspiration
Up on that heir quality
Sooting me fine
Weather Canadian summers
Coming my weigh
Or Yankee winters
With fire down below
The South’s comeuppance
What
You can’t see
– – –
Can hurt you
I hope that we can all agree that American health care is busted and won’t be fixed with more neoliberal profiteering or Republican austerity. We seem to have perfected less health care for more cost. Let’s give Medicare for all a chance…
As Sick Care As Republic Can
What might
They halve
Designs on
A speculative scheme
On the madder of health care
A sick care
System (sic)
As throne money
At a broke umpire
Of cryptic profit tiers
Teeming with worth wile patience
Wading for heeling to happen
On the ward of grew some accost
Floored buy the cancer that is
Byzantine forms
Of indecipherable remedies
Endemic doctoring
And nursing resentments
As sick care as republic can
And what’s the bust they have
A profile in Trump
The cause and solution
To awe our problems
Sick and tired
Blue
Bureaucracy
Proffering their own
Red tape
Pain
Know a tension
Too the dearth-deifying
A poach
Too the same owed same owed
Knot enough
Of what is priceless
To the same end
Stiffed
The United States is the only country in the world with more guns than people. Feel free, too take a shot, at why we have the highest rate of mass murder events…
Amor Guns, Then People
Schooled in another mass shooting
Dying fore that brutal realty
Amor guns
Then people
Living in unsurprising surprise
Ever contending
Agin and agin
The hole body politic
Bleeding out
If the American dream shows up more like a nightmare, then it’s time to wake up…
Anti-Woke Dreaming
He’s a great businessman
The rubes said in Unisom®
Hardily any bankruptcies
Moral or otherwise
A-list of fake convictions
As if he’s not a fraud of anything
Anti-woke dreaming
Of sleepy aheads
Every won in the no
YES man
In the land of nod
Lying in the wrest
Buy the dozin’
In their slumber party
Never even conceiving a wake
Wile having the tomb of their life
Last night, at a poetry reading, a fellow poet, Joe Sparks, introduced his poem as “the last poem of 2025.” This sparked this poem…
Knot the Boss of Me
He declared
With surprising certainty
Sow free from doubt
Heed ridden his last poem of the year
Such a confidence, man
I’m not sure I no
Who you work for
In what likely hood
And what
Over seeing
At any rate
It peers clear too me
Dam well knot the boss of me
If there is won thing
I new
Amor, then a few daze remaining
Even in the dead of winter
As a season of wrapping up
Every our
Closer
To spring
From that omni-present lover
The soul certainty
Surprising
I suspect that the piles of evidence brought to bear as to weather life is bettor characterized as kind or cruel, soulful or heartless, is probably 50/50, perhaps making it awe the amor important to be caught in that net positivity…
That Net Positivity
As far as his most cherished beliefs
Could take him
He took little for granite
Though won could be
That extra ordinary seeing
Wear everything as a gift
Caught in that net positivity
Effacing unbelievable negativity
That whirled stage set
A mist costume changes, masks, and hats
Characters of awe sorts
Both sketchy and deep
Practiced dialogue
And improvs without nets of any sort
A weigh of being
And the backbone of act too
Beyond being word a bout performance
The show going on
Whatever
Planned
As the gods laugh
And cry
Out
End seeing
Awe together
Soully hoping
Fore something amor
Perhaps vane make believe
A good run of it
This tragicomedy of a whirled
Called
Life
And that dreaded review
Making a horror of hour self
As per chants mirrorly
Bettor
Then nothing
Presence
Passed
Long
Abetting
And still, I wait for it…
Butterfly Lands
Lonely after
A life sow long
Wandering soully
Can I go on
Believing
When I least expect it
And what do I know
A butterfly lands
At that very moment
What does it
Mean
Peace
In udder silence
Who can say
Just
A sign
As I was
A butterfly
In awe truth
Landing
Drug to war on drugs. What will, we knot think of next?! It’s the oil, stupid…
Owed to Venezuelan Oil, Tank Her
Captain Kook
And his Peter
At the war deportment
Squeal in de-light
In piracy on the high C’s
A crude lessen
For Venezuelan narc
O traffickers
Be where
Offed
Coarse
Gringos just
Keeping
Up with the joneses
As a shot
In the arms industry
Oar a political climate change
A dressing
Our petroleum diction
Getting to the bottom
Tanked
Drill, baby, drill!
That sinking feeling
Awe a boat
A fentanyl thing
Or whatever
A crack, pot policy
Americans killing it!
I am certifiable but technically not certified…
Without Papers
I woke
In God knows where
In plays
Bound soully
By rivers, mountains, and sky
Unknown to imaginary lines of men
Where awe is well
Free
Flowing
Beyond dammed nations
In compassing
That treasure map
Incite of you
Without papers
