The Women Who Raised Me

The Women Who Raised Me!!!  

One deeply devout
The other a little bit sly
One too young to have me tied to her side

All generous
And kind beyond measure
To be raised by them
A childhood pleasure

One taught me to pray at her knees
One taught me adventure
The value of a summer breeze
The third how to say
Thank you and please

They all have had their crosses to bear
Those crosses never interfered
With their ability to care

To walk into their homes
Is to know the meaning of Love

One offered a meal
The other instant coffee
From a custom made sink
Tea remains the thirds
Best fellowship drink

When a man is raised by women
Strong Sly and Bright
That man should stand tall
Be a defender of what is right

One is now in heaven
One bruised and beat up
From being hit by a car
The third showing her gray
With a small of a crackle in her voice

If age teaches appreciation
Then thankful am I
For the knees
The breeze
For thank you and please

I did not remember until this final line
It is my Mother's BiRthDaY
Happy Birthday Mom!
Happy New Year Simone F. Costa
Joan Martin

I Love You Both So Very Much
Live Long and Prosper My Sisters

Mom,
We will all see you again when our days on Earth are done!   I am glad heaven was looking out for Joan this week!

Donald

Imagination

Need inspiration
Without hesitation
If not seen in reality
Search the imagination

For a world of sights and sounds
Where squares are round
And anything can be found

A world where invention
And innovation are birthed
Where men create
A richer and deeper earth

Where trees can be people
Fed from lava springs
Where birds can swim
In rocks that sing

Where love is inhaled
Through the pores of skin
Where the sun beams
Through hearts that grin

A place limited
Only by how far
A mind can travel

The best minds
Make gravel diamonds
And bringing healing to
Imagination's unravelled

The Eyes are an Ocean

The eyes are an ocean

Whose depths plunge 

Leagues into the soul

If honest they will tell 

All that needs to be told

All the currents of emotion 

The waves of knowledge 

Contained within 

Are warm moving streams

Fluidity to living dreams

They are like dolphins breaching

Inhaling joy while breathing

If the light refected from its depths

Is rooted in lies

Then all those eyes speak 

Is to be despised

They are like sharks hunting

Fulfilling appetite their only meaning

If those eyes change 

From the churning waters within 

Those eyes are caught

In the subtlety of sin

Not discerning 

Where joy ends and appetite  begins 

The mystery of eyes

Is the mystery of the depths

Where there is life 

That generates its own light

Frightening to see because 

It is alien to the surface

The deeper you search eyes

The more you perceive purpose

So look to the eyes

And you will see more 

Than a school of blind fish

You will find a human being

And fathom eyes 

Made for speaking

Not simply seeing what you wish

Mustard Seed Moments II

A mustard seed moment
Is a changer of destiny
The implications carry far
To life beyond the horizon
Where prosperity or poverty are found


But prosperity and poverty are difficult to define
In a country where all are well fed
Where sadly many have chosen
To live life feeding their head


Many take neither the well trodden path
Or the road less travelled
They just park in the rut
Buying poverty masquerading as practicality
Sacrificing individuality
To the notion that they are like everybody else


Thinking as part of the collective conscience
Instead of developing your own
Means even your mind is without a home


Mustard seed moments
Are fire works hidden in the mundane
They burst forth in the ordinary
In a hand shake
A poem
A kiss
A walk down a grocery store aisle
They spark an identity all your own
They break forth within you
Introducing you to you
And what you might chose to do
When you let a mustard seed moment
Speak to you

Poetry and Prophecy

Witnessing a turned over truck
The day after you write a poem about truckers
Reminds me that prayer and poetry
Are related prophetic gifts
The prompt to write
Is a prompt to prayer

Creativites proclivity
Is too often swallowed
In spiritual warfare's  battle for the mind
When the prompt to create
Is the promise of victory
In a partnership with the Creator

To be continued......

The Wait

Cold night brings truckers in to sleep
Noses of trucks point forward
Like privates Dress Right Dress...
On the first day of marine boot camp

Heads shaved but uniforms not issued

One is oddly pointed in the wrong direction
As if prepared to lay a diesel fart
To break with conformity and convention


The drone of scores of diesel engines is excessive
In a world that has invented the train
But we have to move those microwave ovens and color TV's


Cab beds replace
Home sweet home
For men who spend their nights alone
Between one place and the next
Fighting or submitting to
The process of becoming Borgs


Sleep when it comes
Reminds them they belong to more
Than motor and machine
Especially if they still dream

Cold Friday

Cold Friday night
Fantasy
Plays in the mind
Bring her pleasure
Feel some pain

Lost in round
Pale flesh
Mounds caress beard
Cheek to chin
In softness of willing breast
The dance of Passion slowly begins

Strength gathered
Plunged to thighs
Pleasure forgets alibi
Where the body hides its cry

Limbs hold
Reward and scold
On a pallet of enlivened skin
The cold of winter stripped away
Heated from thoughts within

In want
You ache
To take
The heat
Where it bakes
A frozen porch
To burning torch

Reality or fantasy
In pleasure and pain
The heat found the same

Debt to the Dead

Paying interest
On debts to the dead
For days not mourning
Time to be measured by the heart
Not the head

Confusing depression
For grief and seeking relief
From life and its sorrows
Not contemplating
Our limited tomorrows

A hidden revolutionary war grave
Decorated with flags
Where the dead are honored
A place to be sad

A place to consider
The youth of forrest trees
The age of the bones
How rock walls were made
On hands and knees
How graves speak
Isolated but not alone

Mortality is an enemy
That will meet defeat
On bended knees
Before a Resurrected King

To receive rewards and
To pay debts for this life
For tears shed or
Tears failed to be shed

A bitter task
For all humans in time and space
An obligation and privilege
From the living to the dead

Sunday Night Delight

Sunday night delight
Because life is alright

Moscow mule makes me feel cool
Not too much,
Or you will I will be a fool

Pasta in the kitchen
For Monday morning not itching

No one is complaining
For a balance life
I keep aiming

Grandbaby giggles
Grandpa's loss teeth nibble
On peasant food
That is OH so good

Spaghetti just right
Ice cream treat tonight

Checkers then chess
Dad is still the best
At least against 11 year old competition

Life is good and then it is done
A legacy of love is the price to be won
From a life well lived with my family

The Forrest of Trust

Got to ride the Zip line at work today. Reflecting on what we really do!

Harnessed for a thrill
On a zip line hill
Repairing the souls
Of some who killed

Grounded in midair
To a new found care
The Love of Brothers
In a forrest of trust
Teaching art of loving yourself
In the dare


To remove the lust
Of a mind addicted to distraction

To engage in The Work
Recover is Action

To make Amends
To end the Pretend
To own your behavior
While feeling your very real hurt

To seek and give forgiveness
Is the cure for the illness
That drives us to death prison and madness

Scares remain
The prescription the same
For pain managed by the day

The reward is the thrill
Of a life Lived
Feet on the ground
Surrounded by people
Who love you
And who want You
To be around

Traffic in New York

Most people throw a fit
When they hit it
But me
I like being in it
Bumper to bumper
On The Cross County Parkway
Toward George Washington Bridge
Garage bands and jazz
Add to the Zen

Sounds echo off steel of
NYC suspension bridge!
1931 engineering marvel
How moderns still travel

Urban organization plays its chords
On lines, steel, and cables
With dashes of grass
For humans in NY

Traffic moving in formation
With no leader
As conducted as an orchestra
At a Broadway theater
Upper or lower
Too much life
Makes things slower

Creator

The creator of all
Is the creator of me
Why would a mind so vast
Consider one so small
As the ages pass

We are a vapor in time
As He describes thru James
Yet in intimacy
He communes with me
And knows much more than
My Name

My pain
My sorrow
My Joys and concerns
All of the secret things
For which my heart yearns

The chemicals in my brain
Those He created
And knows by name
But God isn't seeking a relationship
With Serotonin or Dopamine

He wants to talk to human hearts
Those that are dirty
And those that are clean

No sinner ever found Him
By a decision of the will
Every soul has been a slave
To the spirit of the age
The one who seeks to kill

If you have not seen
The sinner in yourself
Prepare to swallow
The humility pill
Kept on the
'This your life' shelf

The Lord Most High
Is Near You
Around You
Right by your side

He is not a man
From which you can hide
He desires what is best
In every living soul
We are created uniquely
Then He breaks the mold

The response of man
To this incredible truth
Should be to Praise Him
In all we do

In Work
In Play
In the things that we say
In song and dance
In our lives romance

For He is Great
And Greatly to be Praised
Once He has touched you
You will never be the same!

Collective Mind

The collective mind
Tightens its grip
The loss of individuality
Means freedom has slipped

Dad's hands don't teach
Kids don't hide behind
Mom's protective hip
Force fed pop psychology
Our intelligence dips

Liability and the fear of law suits rule
We need leaders that know when to say
Chill out dude

We got this!
Trust me!
What do you think?
Are better solutions
Than I am afraid of the blog
And the ink

I want to walk stride for stride
With folks who have a sense of self pride
Who shake your hard and mean what they say
Who look you in the eye
When they say have a good day

Nothing was ever built by sheep or drones
I want to be with those who have fire in their bones

Power to the people
But one by one
If we all think alike
Then no one has won

Mustard Seed Moments

Mustard seed moments
Can change the direction of a life
To the good or the bad
Toward fulfillment or the sad

The Glory of humback whale breaching
From the stench of a ocean cesspool mired
In the excrement of sin
A description of our fallen nature
Where self determination ends and fate begins
Are some made for shade and others for muck
If that is the God we serve
Then we are all out of luck
Divorced from heaven
Jesus came to the dirt
Nailed to a cross
Naked beaten and bleeding
Covered in less than a woman's skirt
For mankind interceding
Clothed in blood
Forsaken from Love
A sacrifice
For the vice
In the sewerage we call homes
Finding yourself in the mustard seed moments of changed fate
Remember the one God did forsake
Now is the moment salvation is at hand
Except the mustard seed and be glad

Saturday Morning Contentment

Saturday morning
Passes too quickly

Cartoons play for
Gigi on Netflix
Just like they did when
Aluminum foil was a
Reception fix

Teenager Tim borrows the car
For work at surfboard shop
Mom runs off for violin lessons
So Angelina can learn her chops

Dishes get done
From the night before
Grandbaby Hazel plays
With toys in the floor

The normality of the moment brings comfort

Intrusive work calls
Almost break the  mood but
I complain too much and
I am prone to brood

Trying hard to work to live
Not live to work
Don't want to be
A grumpy old man jerk

Could have lived different
And collected
Those pensions
But I would not change much
Despite the tensions

Don't know if the chapter I am in
Is long or short
But at the moment I am
Enjoying my spot

Cookies in the kitchen
Coffee in the pot
Wiggling my legs on the sofa
Like my Old Man did
Life is good
Even if it can be a tough gig!