"See How We Fell"

See how we fell without knowing...
Years ago, ago, ago...

Blowing air through the barrels of our nostrils,
singing songs surrounded by walls of people.

Pounding drums and plucking electric guitars,
roar of low heavens in our ears...

Hollywood movies bulging our eyes full,
then drugging them almost shut.

Dancing circles of crowds flaunting,
nights dark with flashing bed escapades...

Too young to know
down the hall hospitalizations...

Stumping our barefoot dreams and schemes,
mind murdering those we seldom thought of...

Dead toads on the road smashed
and dried behind the high school auditorium.

Always wishing for true love
and marrying a saint we didn't deserve.

Babies crying in the middle of night.
Sending them to school in a blink of shock.

Working 2 jobs into old age,
wishing for a reboot with bags under our eyes.

The world becoming chaos in a diaper.
The dollar becoming acid in our pockets.

The only way out has always been before us.
A prayer of grace with unending tears, tears,
tears....

When The Lightning Struck

     I wasn’t there when the lightning struck the top of the fireworks stand out on HW 80, the year we were broke and had lost our apartment. Peddling silver salutes and cherry bombs was a dream come true. We started selling three weeks before the 4^th and slept on the grass of our locked fireworks stand. Each night after we closed at midnight, I put the cash box in a hole I dug near my sleeping bag and covered it with a box. 

     We were hippies then, in our late twenties, peddling rockets and silver salutes. We hoped to take in enough cash to spend spring and summer in the mountains near Santé Fe, New Mexico, on national forest land.

     I’d taken the pickup to get change at the bank. Katherine ran out the back door when the lightning struck with a boom, and high up the structure began to burn. Everything we had tumbled off the shelves, but not one rocket took flight or one firecracker snapped, crackled or popped. Nothing even smoked. The fire up top on the Mr. W sign went out by itself.

    Katherine said she was rather disappointed by such a tepid divine intervention. There should have been a bigger show, happenings more impressive.  It sprinkled dribbles of rain only a minute or two.

    She waited for about ten minutes, went back inside the stand, cleaned things up, and waited for the cars to start pulling in. The lot had been empty with the lightning hit. I thought that was divine intervention enough.

     Soon Katherine was again smiling and selling. 

— 

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http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/Chuck+Taylor/all

http://www.redbubble.com/people/geezerpoet/art?page=4

http://sloughpressbooks.googlepages.com/home

http://www.rheagart.bravehost.com/SloughPressBooks.htm

About choosing a friend

A friend is a balm for the soul. A true friend is always present when things are going wrong. When choosing a friend, a person should, first of all, be educated and worthy of the chosen friend. If you want to be friends with a good person because of your bad behavior, you will naturally be rejected by your chosen one. Start your first friendship with yourself. That is, you are your own friend. First of all, sharpen the mind, purify the psyche, follow the rules of etiquette and discipline. Then it’s time to choose your friend. You choose a friend based on your personality. That is, your friend’s soul should be pure, and he should also follow the rules of etiquette and discipline.

When Light Becomes a Slave of Hopelessness

exasperation from a gloomy stream

came and swallowed my little tears

when i was trying to reminisce the memories

of my love buried in a distant land 

beneath the house that produces hope.

my love is a very atypical love

treasured in the heart of tears

that lived on the plate of agony.

what would be your light to dream

if the person you agreed to share

your smiles with had built a hatred’s farm?

i was served a food in a burial shroud,

i was given a water to drink inside a casket,

i was asked to eat loneliness for many days

which my neurons would never remember.

so hope has become a distant land

that i can never perfume its nosegay,

& i know, thousands of kilometres are

atween my entire being and hope—

as all i eat is a cooked or boiled hopelessness.

1

fluffy goldfinches 

at the birdfeeder

spring snow flakes


a feather fluttering down

signals an intruder


Christina Chin/Kimberly Olmtak Gomes


2


spring rain 

fills the lily cups—

impassable stream


up to my knees

in a flooded street


Christina Chin/Kimberly Olmtak Gomes



3


sweet and plump

in the faded family photos

—aged envelopes


prying eyes search 

for a birth certificate


Christina Chin/Kimberly Olmtak Gomes