TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // A Few Lines On Completing Forty-Seven. by Thomas Hood

When I reflect with serious sense, While years and years run on, How soon I may be summoned hence – There’s cook a-calling John. Our lives are built …

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // A Few Lines On Completing Forty-Seven. by Thomas Hood

They

Trusting myself to breathe

Is easier said than done

When a smooth cool hand

Embraces mine tenderly

No possession, a unity

An air of belonging

That tingles my sense of elation

Turns the volume up

In the world once void of sound

Concurrently, my focus is absorbed

With being in the moment

Alive, unfettered, freely expressing

Anticipating the next breath

With a reciprocal agreement

A bonding of lungs and air

I didn’t realize I needed

The Hourglass

My dead are buried here

Cycling the winds of change

Filling my hourglass with the sands

of moments spent with true hearts

moments charged with life’s passing

Experience dictating lessons

of community

of unity

of vision

A tribal pulse weaving roots

deep into the soil of my hearth

fashioning the cloak of enduring life

a version of immortality

told in legends measured by grains

creating a life worth living

Apotheosize: Miss Marge Swenson

The treasure of over a century has turned to sand

Once the breath of worship in each day

Passed through the veil of eternity

Immortality granted by those who loved,

those who love, and those who accepted

her communion of intimacy

with her flesh and blood embraces

that changed hearts with the purity of devotion.

A blown kiss of “I love you”,

The tender warmth of her beloved family

wishing her continued journey of exploration

into a place not known to the living

Her legacy resounds a radiant reminder

of a profound truth in faith, love, and family

The Stillness is

The stillness is 

where you were 

Intimately held;  

death and life blurred 

The wealth of years 

Fell silently 

The labor gone 

So quietly 

The stillness is 

Where you were 

The peaceful night 

Embraces you 

Mourning’s tears 

A grassy dew 

And yet, 

The stillness remains 

Where you were 

Glimpses of mortality 

An unacceptable reality 

Because the stillness is 

Where you were 

(coercions of compliance)

I avoid confrontations

because I’m afraid

They will leave or abandon me.

I have been taught this

with improbable diligence

I may be physically harmed

emotionally marred

or a segment of me killed

by the innate sense that I am wrong

to exist or be or live or think

or speak my truth

It’s what hurls me away from

Confrontations

Eras of rebirth

It is incomprehensible that as each year passes,

life reels forward

whether regretted or not

Whether embracing joy wholeheartedly,

or rejecting neglected needs to prove an unobtrusive being,

reborn time after time as the clock hands race onward.

Each life lived scattered on the zephyr’s of sheer will

violent and fierce as those who rejected tradition

Legend divulged through personal narrative

is fiery bursts, luminous ashes, remnants of destructive lava floes

Carnage solidifying into veins of valiant courage

a raging vocalization of injustice personified

tempered by the light of love

The gaping whole

It is broken into catastrophic wounds

The edges once pristine are jagged

Bitter with unspoken resentment

Abandoned on the side of the road

in unfamiliar territory

hindered by a lack of direction

or a sense of purpose

Trusting the impermeable

a mistake made of elevated tension

The chaos and confusion weep

from saturated sacred ground

sullied by panic and frustration

anxiety writhes in unworthiness