A.G.E's Joint

  Emily is not used to the cold Sweater never off Dreaming of the cute instructor In the lounge. Pastor piqued interest Of skiing down the peak Mom thinks he's a creep As she peeks into the room She's along for the ride Everyone else is the same way Built for warmer climes Beach is her sandman

  I wish for the hush of the snow A silence enduring  Freshly plowed streets Crystal Icicles I look out on the white abundance And sip my coffee Until the last moment When I hear the children sledding down the hill. The world, for a moment Is at peace.

Watching the colors Fade to away To white. Knowing I wouldn't Make it home. It didn't matter. Freed from the routine I greet my neighbor. Give a push. And at the Waffle House I pray for the waitresses To deliver my coffee Hot and fresh In the crush. The antipathy of anonymity Is long past. This isn't virtual life Only real life. Where we are Accountable, To ourselves And others.   And where when We feed each other We feed ourselves.

I've been having fun this week trying to figure this set of prompts out.  I started with some bad poetry: Wisps of steam obscuring the view Of a snow covered walk We look like something the cat drug in Disentangling arms Sweat soaked hair Tender skin We love like lions Fifty times a day. You are Zachariah Level higher than others. Burning brightly Over all. And while everything is in there (the odd fact is Lions can mate up to 50 times a day in season), there was something unsatisfying about it. So, I tried again, using a story about how my cat drug in an owl (or the owl chased him in). And that way, I could mention how owls have three eyelids, one for blinking, one for sleeping and another for keeping their eyes clean.  And I could mention how awesome (again on the level of Zachariah) it was to have the thing staring at me.  But, then people would say: "Pics or it didn't happen".  He was so surprising, I grabbed a beach towel (to toss ...

It was a beautiful spot, way up the hillside with a view of the valley and river.   It was now in the hazy shade of winter.   My skin stung with blowing snow.   There was not going to be any digging until the storm subsided.  Nobody outside the family knew she was dead.   To everyone else, she had just taken off.   Back home to Omaha or wherever.   She didn’t have any other family we knew of, so there was no way to for anyone to disprove the claim.      But he knew.     It was his form of divorce.   Always in control, he had been the one who buried her up here.   What was he thinking, giving me this trinket?   It was Mom’s.   The information he would never tell the police, he left to me as he gasped his last in the infirmary.   I looked down at his shell and knew the worst was over.   I signed the cremation papers and said the ashes could be flushed in the sewer.   The German Storm T...