December 9 2018

Twenty-nine years ago we waited for you on this day
for the last time. How many moments of wonder you brought
us that day for the first time? "Making you laugh," you would say
at age 5, was your reason for being and we laughed oft
enough. Earlier I would lift you high in the air while
listening to Over the Top from The Iron Man CD;
tickling your belly with my nose when the YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YAY-A-YEAH Part
came. And you would squeal with delight. Do you see
how you could lift me higher than I could lift you?
Imagination was our augmented reality. I played the dented iron giant
saved by your love for me from being a weapon. Years later
when my father was dying of a head injury caused by cancer
I would listen to the last song on the CD and remember our distant laughter
as the phrase: All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things
will all be well: embraced me. And all the best cowboys from Julian of Norwich to Pete Townshend
smiled in the promise kept: New Life.

10-4-2018 Happy Birthday Gomez

Rhymes will Roll

Alas! what's this outside my house upon the floor?
A package I sent to you just days ago!
I had hoped that today it would be at your door,
but the post office said simply: No.
Oh well, you'll get it nonetheless
although you'll get it more days hence,
after the required postage due insures success.
But now you must bear the suspense
By asking yourself over and over
What is in the package? 
A four leaf clover?
Or something more whack? Age
of enlightenment where are you now?
Better not be byproduct of cow!
Wait. Just wait and all will unfold. I send you a memory of mirth to behold.

Happy Michaelmas

Maybe John got revelation wrong. No heavenly war with the dragon
plummeting to earth and devouring it in Frost's fire. Instead, what if satan's fall
happens more like Brueghel's Icarus: an unnoticed splash in a distant ocean.
What could be more befitting of the king of liars than to become the wolf who cried beast? After all,
instead of a vengeful supreme court we get a blubbering candidate painting a tale of woe
for crimes he does not want to remember if it means loss of power. So that he said/she said
becomes the blindfold on justice and darkness is the anesthesia for the loss of truth. So
many lives have been wasted on the need to be number one: both the living and the dead.
All Jesus can do is kneel and plead: "Let the first who is without sin … "
And like a laser piercing the blindfold, the word becomes searing flesh.
O to be the change Christ wants to see, amid the drip of satan's leaky has-been
Realm. And so I try to teach as he taught me: that mercy is the best gauzy mesh
we can apply to mistakes that persist to this very hour.
Pray that bandage stops our bleeding need for power.

#MeThree

Portland, Oregon August 11, 2018

June 2, 2018

You can add artist to trash ninja and tarp handler on your resumè now.
For, what is an artist but one who takes experience and wraps
it up and hands it to you as a gift; or takes a series of moments and sews
them with tesseract thread and so defies that serial killer: time. Burlap
and joy: the day i received my experience just before our goodbyes.
i prayed psalm 30 that morning and received your gift with these words
raining in my head: "Thou hast taken off my sackcloth and clothed me in joy."
So often we preschool teachers were the sackcloth to the children's sword
joys by seizing their weapons and razing their abandoned wood-block castles and
herding plastic animals back to their basket stables; or covering outdoor play
areas with tarps to protect them from weather. How many dragon tears can
one sandbox hold? Or children's tears for that matter. Who can say?
But all the buried treasure in that sandbox i hold in my hands
With this wonder prism block of color like the universe in a grain of sand.