Liquid Platinum and Lightning Lake

gold dune sand blowout

inscribed with staircase

resting on log bench 

pausing frantic chase 

wind biting down but

in a friendly way 

like my two lap cats 

nipping just to play 

autumn forest shades

juicy apple red

lemon tangerine 

in plum wine is wed

pebble jeweled sands 

winking at themselves 

precious treasure trove 

for gem mining elves

upon monkey bars

climbs the lake-eyed boy

up and down he goes 

in self-contained joy 

comes the hurried wave

lunging at the beach

the running away 

always out of reach 

ever moody lake

with too much to do

were it me, I'd be 

tempestuous too 

sun upon the seas

casts her fractal rays

liquid platinum 

lightning color days 

lake contained within

every little stone 

with a piece of beach 

you're never alone 

Swing like you're five and it's your birthday!

little girl in pink posy dress

small shoes on the wrong feet

in crooked birthday girl badge 

she is so unutterably sweet 

I bought the dress for the child

with eyes the color of Lake Michigan 

wears it now to make me smile

and I have fallen in love again

"Omi come play!" she shouts to me

less an invite more a command

which I shall never disobey

holding chipped nail polish hand 

the pink cupcake frosting grin

lasts as long scattered crumbs 

as elder Omi knows that when

a thing called "big" she becomes 

but for now, let's just enjoy 

much delight in sticky face

for grownup comes all too soon

let's inhabit this time and place

we drag out feet in primordial sand

we swing together companionably

while brother and cousins clamber about

my primrose haired maiden and me 

She asks about her great Omi and Opi

who walked with me on the same beach

I try to show them as I saw back then 

when I had them safe within my reach

My liminal spaces danced through time 

Colossus straddling them and me 

connect the dot posterity 

empty and overflowing memory 

each moment fluid and frozen

unholdable as the child's shadow

wind guttering birthday candles 

gone before I even saw it go

I dwell too much in endings 

I want to snatch and clutch 

and hold back the passages 

of youth and time and waves and such

it's trite yet true nonetheless 

nothing lasts forever, the old folks say

people grow up and go away 

but that's too much adult today

Carpe diem, enjoy while you can

live in middles, seize the day

but even while I'm swinging high

I feel it inexorably slipping away

like post-partum with CPTSD 

trauma screams in nightmares nightly

I can't ever let it go for

it holds me ever so tightly 

How can I just make my peace

with all that I'll never understand

that in the midst of this life

falls the relentless hourglass sand

I think this poem is about

when to cling and when to free

how and when and what to hold 

learning how to let it be 

I can hold space for mine

though I can't hold back time

for the children on the swing

and the rambling kids who climb

May you always swing like you're five, my golden girl. Love from Omi now the Omis back then. 

Choking on exhaust from funeral hearse

iron burn irony

could always be worse

choking on exhaust 

from funeral hearse 

sad predicament 

should I say or go

choice was luxury 

I was not to know

leave but never go

speaking with no say 

adulting as a kid

giving them their way

So I find myself

word searching today

no way to express

no clue what to say 

I can only write

by trauma gaslight 

spelling out in scars 

have you got a light?

souls remember 

every nasty word

that the ear was told

it had never heard

alive yet deadened

to all but the pain

baffled litany 

from the circus train

rise above and beyond

Forgive and forget

be the bigger person

just get over it 

but I ain't a god

ain't even much good

I can not unhear

as they said I should

I can't get over 

I can't see the top 

nor just let it go

too heavy to drop

If I go around 

I'll  simply revolve 

ending on start space

and what will that solve?

can't tunnel under 

it's buried in sand

when i tried to dig

I busted up my hand 

what's too deep for depth

neither short nor tall

full and yet empty 

too big to be small? 

could fall over it

and you can fall in 

you might drown in it

though nothing's within

translate this riddle

If you'd know my plight

untying one knot just

knots others too tight

I am back to front

inside wrong-side out 

twist pretzel puzzled 

with too much self-doubt

So I keep versing 

what I can't explain 

anything to help me

break this ball and chain

Riddle answer: A hole. And also childhood trauma. Both of which are where I find myself much of the time. 

From me to her and back again

Writing love letters

to her who was when

little girl replies

to now me, again

Dear child, I'm sending

x's and o's back then

addressed to your fort 

in dune hemlock glen

I receive a note

from long ago miss

kid scrawl envelope

sealed with a kiss 

wintergreen ink on

berry stained fingers

mint scented memory

in cortex lingers 

I wish I could go

back in reality 

to beach combing me

by Michigan's sea

what's real anyway?

and what's memory?

is it something to sip 

like Insani-Tea?

bespoke misery?

I'll pass on that drink

already drunk on

gin and printer's ink

Let's dwell for a time

in warm mica sand

my far away child 

will you hold my hand?

we'll jot our love notes

along the lakeshore

in backward glance through

the wide open door 

Dredging dirges rung by the reckoning bell

quilling in reverse

of deep septic pain

handdrawn scars tattooed

with indelible stain

there's an ache droning 

like a killer bee

igno-ranting insults 

drilling deep in me

be careful passing

judgement on my verse

if you think that's bad

my real life was worse 

no lowest low in

my trauma bleed brain

spelling out spook house

just might find me sane

so I'll keep taking 

bucket to the well

dredging dirges rung

by reckoning bell 

putrid and ugly

no sheltering womb

tailor made fright night

colder than a tomb

so buckle up if

you're riding along

no happy lyrics

to requiem song

loud and discordant

keened harshly off key

got to keep screaming 

to find harmony 

thank you for holding

space and time with me

carrying the banner 

in solidarity

With love from young me to now me. 

Going where only Amygdala knows

the girl then recalled

parents looming large

quietly sinister

corrosively in charge 

clown parade balloons

high on pride's LSD

punch drunk delusions

of Grandiosi-Tea

sarcasm IV drips

from mean emojis 

garish caricatures 

impossible to please

love was a blanket

held out then yanked away

knit to bind not warm

cat with mouse did play 

never any words

explain way back when

no exit out of 

her misery then 

and then is still now

a spiraling she goes

blinded by betrayal

only Amygdala knows 

I'd love to pen a 

hopeful word or two

yet pie crust promises 

simply will not do 

airy and airless 

broken by a breeze

pointless platitude

said with careless ease 

bandaged over bleed

just to stem the flow

of mother nature tears

wound dressed just for show

feather pen laments

reticulating pain 

drawing scars as flowers

in healing refrain

no other way out

must pick up my pen

no more to do but

verse and verse again 

Call off my black dog

wind chiming vespers 

angelic melody 

composed by the breeze

four part harmony

innocent or evil

it sounds of coffin bells

terrifying tinkling 

buried alive foretells

for my soul wonders

by much darkness known

is devil percussion

calling to its own?

when I found the switch

on technicolor TV

I saw what I missed

in black and white naivete 

It made me question

all I ever thought 

all their fabricated 

nonsense that I bought

trust wears a double edge

with deadly overbite 

if given too freely 

to them with no right

mercy and respect

likewise cut two ways

didn't understand that

in my gaslit haze 

I've been driven mad

angry and insane

by demon tinnitus

hammering my brain

in my mind's mire

dwells snarling hell hound 

baying for my blood 

invisibly all around 

call off my black dog

I cried in choking yelp

to Boadicea 

from whence cometh help

the raison d'etre 

why I clack this rhyme 

hope avenging angel

makes it here on time

thus explains wind chimes

ringing Morse CQD 

alerting goddess to

child drifting out to sea

sewer water muck

murky memory

flotsam and jetsam 

rank polluted sea

not my mother lake 

named Michigan 

nor Elysian fields

I go to again

the lake is my friend

yet I've dates to keep 

miles to go before 

I lay me down to sleep 

and regardless if 

the lake's friend or foe 

I've much to do 'ere 

to dark night I go

I think perhaps that might be salvation in itself. Reading the celestial GPS and seeing my destiny or calling written in the stars. 

Amen.