Protecting The Child

From the camera lens,

shoot the photographer.

From the ocean,

drain the waters.

From the insect,

set fire to the fields.

There’s danger in the garden.

There’s peril in the stars.

A stranger’s smile could be

the most threatening thing out there,

discounting, of course,

the smile of a friend.

From the music,

blow up the band.

From alcohol,

pole-ax the barrooms.

From stillness,

set the wheels in motion.

There’s menace in silence.

There’s a hazard in whatever

can go into the mouth.

Fire and flood are obvious

but a household is a predator

always on the lookout 

for its next victim.

From love,

deny all-comers.

From the middle ground,

sharpen the angles at the sides.

From colour,

syphon every hue 

until there’s only black and white.

There’s risk in a child going unprotected.

There’s jeopardy in you not being around.

Freedom is another word for complacency.

So store his life where he cannot get at it.

A child’s own mind would just get in the way.

Dear Miss Right, Now Miss Wrong

The thing where

the heart is the only true eye

has been totally obliterated.

The togetherness that defines love

with relative simplicity

has faded into something

so arbitrary

it may as well not be.

But this is the world

we are left with,

a precursor to the breakup,

gearing our intelligence

to take the bold step,

get beyond the relationship,

find, within ourselves,

the overriding symmetry

of exactly who we are.

And then of course,

that intelligence must

put a stop to itself

with the onset

of the next round

of spectacularly unbound visions.

I know the routine.

It’s like staring through a window

at absolute heaven

occupied only by

the multi-level loveliness

of another woman.

Love –

it is all exits, it is all entrances,

and I project myself wholeheartedly

into these relationships

just so I can ultimately recoil from them.

There’s no end in sight.

It’s the revolution of the planet

within the infinity of the universe.

Your Introduction To Mermaid Beach

Here I am,

strolling on sand

I once carved into castles,

going toe-to-toe

with the foamy outer edge of the waves

I long ago plunged body and soul into.

I see the little girls

that never once interested me

and their older sisters

who, as time went by,

I learned to love.

And the boys

who annoy me all the more

now that I’m no longer one of them

and the tanned Adonises

flaunting the abs

I turned my back on in my teens

in pursuit of poetry.

And you’re beside me,

hand folded in mine,

walking at my pace,

as we share footprints

in the stretch of beach behind us.

This is not the shoreline of your youth.

Everything you do here is the first time.

Fortuitous is how I describe it.

Divergent on the way,

harmonious when we get here.