When the Neighbors (villanelle)

All the birds wake and I have not slept.
What will this day yield
when the neighbors start fighting again?

Listening to their fights makes me feel inept
like my mood’s a soup on the counter, congealed.
All the birds wake and I have not slept.

To my ears, their decibels have never crept
lower than a jet engine, cacophony and steel,
when the neighbors start fighting again.

So our quiet is, every day, usurped
and I want to hide as the yelling builds.
All the birds wake and I have not slept.

No one more than me is perturbed
that each day begins with another fighting reel
when the neighbors start fighting again.

Each night by nine I’ve leapt,
with water glass, to my melatonin fields.
All the birds wake and I have not slept
when the neighbors start fighting again.

Regress (waka)

Repeating your questions
will not give you the proof
you think the past deems,
but you continue to pace
the treads you’ve already walked.

Playing Dylan (Triolet)

Playing Dylan at the cusp of dawn
and he’s singing about pain and driving rain
This song has not gone too long
but I’m playing Dylan at the cusp of dawn.
and I’m alone to hear that song
but the hours are beginning to strain
Playing Dylan at the cusp of dawn
and he’s singing about pain and driving rain.

Sleep Placeholder

Night snakes into itself
and we sleep in its coil.

Folds of moon clouds
cocoon the sky.

Our dreams are silky strains
that roll in tides.

Tea (snam suad)

Sirens wake me
when most we
want to sleep
before
another day
demands our stay.
A day to
restore

and best keep
hopes we steep
like tea –
full,
brimming warm,
cupped in form,
still.

Small Pit, a Saddle (Paradelle for Jeffrey Lee Pierce)

Let’s ride where the hills meet the moon.
Let’s ride where the hills meet the moon.
We have smoke and blankets for the night.
We have smoke and blankets for the night.
I’ll ride to where the moon meets the hills
And we’ll blanket the night in smoke.

I partner with the Devil in many costumes.
I partner with the Devil in many costumes.
Our fathers’ ghosts rise to spread our stories.
Our fathers’ ghosts rise to spread our stories.
Our fathers’ ghosts partner with the Devil
To spread our stories in many costumes. Rise.

Let’s forget what the machine age made.
Let’s forget what the machine age made.
Together we’ll forge the invisible West.
Together we’ll forge the invisible West.
In the invisible West, let’s forge together.
We’ll forget what the machine age made.

In the invisible West, we’ll ride to where the
moon meets the hills; I’ll blanket the night
with The Devil in many costumes. Our fathers’
ghosts, in smoke, will spread our stories,
partner; the machine age will forget
we forged together what we made.

Armour Henry and Waylon – Prompt 14

and Cloudy do not wake up all
at the same time.
Nor do they eat together or
play together.

They are all who Ron and I imagine
them to be in our future home world,
the one in which we have room
for Armour, the pug, Waylon, the cat
and Cloudy, the ferret.

After his first Gulf War service was shortened
by returning home to nurse his dying father,
Ron acquired a ferret he named Sonny.

There could never be another Sonny. But, there could, to reference
THE FRENCH CONNECTION, a Cloudy, one who would be as intuitive a pet
as his predecessor.

Waylon, a tough cat named for Waylon Jennings, would watch over us all
as we slept in with little Armour Henry, the pug we want to find to adopt.

That’s our small menagerie that resides in our imagination,
but, within the next months, will develop real form.

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