Choices are our answers

Choices are our answers

How loud are their replies

Actions are clearer than

All the words of the wise

To view our lives backwards

To explain here and now

It is our chosen path

Where we arrive and how

I am not a singer

I am not a singer

And yet I have a voice

I am not a fighter

A pen is my first choice

Because I cannot hear

I try hard to listen

When I don't understand

I long to be christened

There is no gold to pan

There is no gold to pan

Best get on just living

Accumulate knowledge

Take less, do more giving

Carry the best forward

And rectify the past

Although we are islands

One ocean, we are cast

What does deeper get you

What does deeper get you

Is it greater insight

But sparks in the darkness

Are not a guiding light

Is it the immersion

A summer swim to cool

Cold at first but colder

Getting out of the pool

In this melancholy

In this melancholy 

Its thin clouds filtering

Reality trumps Hope

And begins pilfering

Both weight and weightlessness 

A sinking not a fall

The simple words grasping

The most meaning of all

Exercising my sight

Exercising my sight

Looking for the details

Buried in the vastness

The needles in hay bales

Daily journeys of why

On mysteries of time

Each day may be new but

I'm looking for the rhyme

Love arrives unannounced

Love arrives unannounced

Not by invitation

Ransacking your insides

No negotiation

Shaking the furniture

Until the vase settles

And the daily bouquet

Blooms from buds to petals

Skipping stones are short lived

Skipping stones are short lived

And their ripples as much

Brevity in breaking

The surface with their touch

More past now than future

Needing to skip quicker

Choices and chances are

Beginning to flicker

Lyrics without music

Lyrics without music

Just waiting to be sung

Not a hum or whistle

The notes on bars unstrung

Waiting on wind to bring

A melody alive

Or on a moonlight beam

A sonata arrive

The sun painting a light

The sun painting a light

Made for reminiscing 

Impressionism struck

Look what’s here, what’s missing 

 

Past years are pushing me

Without details or word

I’m a lemming pausing

Wishing I was a bird

Behind the smile such vile

Behind the smile such vile

No feelings and pure rot

Knowledge based on nothing

Injuries not forgot

In a place of power

Swinging their sharp sickle

Poised in nurtured chaos

Not worth a plug nickel

So many young people

So many young people

What are we leaving them

Is it a better world

Here are our crumbs or gem

The progress bulldozer

Do we block and protect

When there is so much we

Have chosen to neglect

Feelings are an abstract

Feelings are an abstract

Words are just park benches

On the landscape of Life

Vast views and deep trenches

To feel as others feel

We can stay for awhile

Look back, down, up or out

And feel their inch or mile

The poet narcissist

The poet narcissist

For me, it is not true

I have empathy, can

Walk a mile in your shoe

I am not a peacock

The shedding snake, I know

And what I don't know is

All therapy not show

This is not about me

This is not about me

It's all our togethers

My heart breaks when yours breaks

Tethers when yours tethers

A shirt inside a shirt

The sharing of the sleeves

Cause for celebration

When our happiness heaves

These modern cave drawings

These modern cave drawings

Lost in books unopened

Bottom of the sea shells

Can't surface, unspoken 

Does it truly matter

It's better to give hope

Than footprints to follow

There is no map, just scope

Second guessing myself

Second guessing myself

And wearing myself out

Can't give unto me the

Benefit of the doubt

Keep school figure skating

Tracing the number eight

Were it three dimensions 

A mobius equate

Seeking a melody

Seeking a melody

Longing for its chorus

Born on experience

Where it is most porous

Uncompromised and true

Notes in brightest marker

Constellations of Life

A song in the darker

Without inhibition

Without inhibition

Like a wind in a storm

Uncontrollable fire

No sense of rule or form

Thoughts breaking like lightning

Like tree roots in a flash

On a spherical eye

That is batting its lash

Unwillingness to change

Unwillingness to change

Some minds can see no choice

Two plus two equals five

Reasoning has no voice

Is there no way to help

When they cannot see fault

A lost combination

On a security vault

Happier than ever

Happier than ever

Fireworks are hollyhocks

The Milky Way, daisies

The evenings, four o'clocks

The only robber, time

Plateaus are long and wide

The future viable

Beethoven's Ninth inside

Emotions without words

Emotions without words

The silence of forest

The steps of Isadora

The alphabet poorest

On the wave of a whelm

In the rush of a race

The expression of joy

And contentment of grace

Fingers, life touching life

Fingers, life touching life

My nose bumping cat nose

Butterflies on stamens

Clover, daisies, a rose

Us leaning into us

In the colassal All

A sleeping bee, a worm

The greatest things are small

Reject this résumé

Reject this résumé

Make it an infamous

With no academics

I can't pass the litmus

Private community

Higher noses and stares

Climbing the social rungs

While I'm sitting on stairs

Squelching the glorious

Squelching the glorious

Trampling the garden bed

It takes years to come back

Without tools in the shed

Planting perennials

For this season and next

Take added protection

Turn concave to convex

My heart went out too far

My heart went out too far

I had to reel it in

In the World's atmosphere

The air had got too thin

It was swollen and raw

It didn't go untouched

Just before it toughened

I had it in my clutch

Are my answers correct

Are my answers correct

Questions I ask of me

Am I dodging the truth

Or objectivity 

Are they what I believe

Or should I say “go fish”

Reality sober

And not just what I wish

This, my chosen canoe

This, my chosen canoe

I am oceans away

From oceans of people

Oars are my drum and sway

Slowly down the stream and

Not so far from the bank

Yet feeling boundless in

This unimprinted blank

Reaching full exposure

Reaching full exposure

Both triumphs and regrets

The happy small nothings

Mistakes no one forgets

The turning of corners

As small as a grass blade

Here, myself spotlit and

Not two leaves worth of shade

Our Lady of Sorrow

Our Lady of Sorrow

I am feeling the loss

The irreversible

The into abyss toss

The love behind a smile

The experienced shared

The future now empty

Like the open arms, bared

Hesitant to hurry

Hesitant to hurry

To reach self-imposed goals

This sight-seeing journey

These days need no controls

A left turn or detour

A backward circle loop

Let's give ourselves the time

To separate the soup

No guardrails for people

No guardrails for people

Boundaries don't exist

Only finding the breaks

When twisted after kissed

Learning to inspect more

Not admiring the bud

Looking at their roots that

Are thriving in the mud

After the forgiveness

After the forgiveness

A stroll inside the pale

No saturation of

Color of any scale

And slowly shades resume

A richness and a blush

A return to vivid

Seeping then flooded lush

Losing eternity

Losing eternity

To give myself a high

To yawn in the moment

With a short-sighted sigh

Open butterfly wings

Turtle sunning their shell

A fish in the castle

Be bewitched without spell

At the peak of the day

At the peak of the day

Across a brief blue sky

A sun slowly moving

With shadows standing by

And nothing more than this

A page in time turning

Wishing for another 

To hope, this heart yearning

Forever is never

Forever is never

Our choices and chances

Don't survive the long run

So little advances

Exist in the moment

Expand the mental lungs

Empathize with others

And hear their native tongues

Look up at the surface

Look up at the surface

At bathers and waders

The kite and wind surfers

The summer wave skaters

But here in the submerged

Counting my every breath

Chasing discovery

In the uncharted depth

I am not a statue

I am not a statue

But emotional dance

Finding rhythm and chords

Choreographed or chance

Spinning for direction

Leaps for personal growth

Emoting, abosrbing

Self or others, and both

A perpetual loop

A perpetual loop

A ferris wheel spinning

The Operator stops

When they sense they're winning

Keep an eye on the turns

When the bottom appears

Jump from the seat and run

'Til the ride disappears

Sensing limitations

Sensing limitations

Amerstdam and Van Gogh

Are not in the future

It's all talk and no show

Burnt bridges in backgrounds

Dream bridges up ahead

Leaves me on an island

With just words being said

I hope you were happy

I hope you were happy

Were we drowning in joy

Was there power in love

Creating not destroy

Did all your flowers bloom

Did every seed come up

Tending each others dreams

Cherish and not disrupt

The victim asking why

The victim asking why

Survivors seeking how

Regardless of weather

Press on and push the plow

Seeing a safer place

Securing a way out

This is how to survive

And why just thereabout

Please come dune with us as

Please come dune with us as

We let the wind give shape

To the day in nature

On this beach and small cape

In the movement of sand

In a moment of now

We are gracing with time

Without meaning or how

In a passive day sky

In a passive day sky

Ocean cloud overrules

On lion paws pouncing

On soul searchers in wools

Clearing, the Milky Way

Shoots a star like a kite

And in the stillness up

A passing satellite