The Birth of the Self-Made Man

She filled the grey with green --
She was the rolling hills, the tumbling rocks,
and the tide that licked the beach clean.
Mother Earth, she colored his world --
the saffron, the golden, the crimson blush
of the sun rising behind the eyelids of dreamers.

But not before to him she bestowed
the mallet and the pick;
And along this beach she sent him
with the task to dig beneath the sand

And for his entire lifespan,
there he did remain --
Giving care to muscle and sinew
as he carved himself from clay.

The Lighthouse

My beams of light will welcome home
The fisherman from out at sea
To where the scent of salt is sweetest
Along the white-foamed beach

You leave the sky as pink as when
You first teased the sun from sleep
Yet frivolous play subsides to dusk --
It is violet, where red and blue will meet

My splaying rays, your only guide
To the bluff contoured intricately
From the relentlessly undulating waves
That boiled until licking your oars clean

Persephone Touches Down

There once was a myth
that was weaved beneath the rainbow
She thought it was a hero
she had seen standing there

But storm clouds overruled
that sweet, delicious sunset
And he was gone, cross the Atlas
on magic wings with wake of thin air

And she boiled and bubbled
beneath her skin
Because the world he’d abandoned
was far too heavy to bear

Until she met the Knight
that was the rainbow --
And the lands wept
as Mother Nature restored her fair.

Killing Pablo

Once Upon A Time, she said
and it weaved like the webbing of a happy ending;
She tugged her pants pocket wide-- the gaping
   mouth of fabric
and slipped it inside to keep-- like a secret.

Were you there when he broke my smile, she said
When his pointer finger jabbed my ribs
like a sentence ending in shock?
And I spat whole, my mouthful of laughter
to scatter across the tile-- like broken glass.

Were you there when I did not think of breathing, 
   she said
When my initial inherent notion was death--
   she said;
Unraveling like a plot thick with anguish
and I slipped away with my rubber spine.

You’ll be there next time, she said
clutching the bulge at her hip.
And how he swept the fallen shards into his hands
when no one could see;
and sprinkled them into his ears-- like a song.
 


[Laughing Out Loud - 'the myth']