Sugary mouthfuls
Glee in ev’ry single bite
Warms this adult heart
Tag: China
Bicycle~ Pic and a Word Challenge #410
Simple steel design
Keeps Chinese world in motion
Flying Pigeon bike
Frame ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #409
We share a gaze
He a brave stance
At the Entrance
I from the street
Eye to viewfinder
Framing the frame
Within a frame
Click
Decades pass
Scanning through the scans
Seeking inspiration
From days all but forgotten
Memories vague
Impressions with few details
But for a few frames
A moment caught as light
Falling on silver
Frames of reference
Scanned to bits
Then left unedited
Until today
Another frame
Before and after
The unremembered moments
What happened before
What happened next
The unknown frame
Of time
A frame
Within a frame
Within a frame
Within a frame
I can call up
This moment
Captured in a click
Beyond that
In time and space
Is outside the frame
No Greater; No Lesser
It’s easy enough to forget
Not all the world lives
In a land of strip malls
And freeways
With manicured lawns
And high rise apartments
Where a bicycle
May be a family’s
Only mechanical transportation
And great fortune buys
A donkey and a cart
It’s easy enough to forget
Even after having been there
Spent time with and among
The people of the world
Who consider themselves
Wealthy and secure
While owning so little material
Commanding so little wealth
The people
Who are no greater
And no lesser
For the value of their possessions
Or the education they are allowed
Or any other outward marker
I have been taught
Signifies sophistication
Civilization
Value
Are these not
People who love
No less
Laugh
No less
Live with vigour
And consequence
And meaning
No less
Who are to be valued
And loved
No less
It is the lesser of us
Who believe otherwise
And it is they
Whom I pity
If these lesser beings
Exploit those with less
Then it is they
Whom I abhor
Innocence
Innocence
Knows no boundaries
Knows no hatreds
Knows no wars
But it is not all coy smiles
Happiness wrapped
In a best friend’s warm arms
Even the innocents
Know hunger
Even the innocents learn fear
I would wrap these two up
Protect them from such lessons
But mine is the world
They should learn
To fear
The world men made
The world men maintain
A world not made
For innocence
Shadows
In the bright sun of day
I am shadow
A mask without a face
A smile without a reason
Laughter without glee
A sign of existence
Without presence
So I breathe
Bury my hand
In the hot sand
Shout out the pain
Of heat and grief
And emptiness
Give voice
To the being
Which once cast
The shadow
Until the voice
Becomes being
A vessel
For the light
The pain and grief
And emptiness
Become the shadow
Life and Time
Photographs remind us
Of all the life we’ve lived
And all the time
Which passed between
Of all the life we’ve lived
And all the time
Which passed between
Courage ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #180
We span the ages
you and I
across all sense
of time and space
our stories twine
you and I
across all sense
of time and space
our stories twine
And I can’t say
where it began
or where it ends
or if it ever will
It drives you to
the edge of mad
(where you found me)
but with your ever
growing faith
it’s clear
Life is not so
rational
as you would like
Discontinuous
In fact
Time sometimes goes
from front to back
while space folds in
upon itself
and plops you down
in the middle of
you know not
what
Yet still you stand
amidst the fray
(such dark embrace)
to write these words
you promised me
Love is not so
rational
as you would like
But its beauty
drives you still
Rolling through the Ebony
Rolling through
A land of crushed ebony
Tarry asphalt dividing
The slender white lane markers
And scrubby tufts of amber
A land of crushed ebony
Tarry asphalt dividing
The slender white lane markers
And scrubby tufts of amber
I scramble up an ebony mound
To find a landscape of ebony mounds
Growing to distant mountains
All of the same ebony skin
“At least,” I think, out loud
Into the air so dry
It swallows up the words
Right off my tongue
“the falling sun seems less
Like a fire
On a cast-iron skillet.”
Pix to Words 