Thanks for a look guys.

If I'd been told rusty nail holes
wouldn't cripple me, that dirty bones
and mummified feet can spit out golden tickets,
stomping that spike may'v stung less.

Anesthesia fog lifted as pretty nightingales
stuffed gauze in the melon ball scoop trench,
then cast my leg knee to toe in bandages and plaster.

Dazed later a gurney in a van carted
a scared timid boy to a charity playground
for kids whose parents sweat for a living.

Crutches jammed under pits, limp limb swinging,
first pass across polished terrazzo
whisked me to the initiation chamber.

Three fellas in various stages of disrepair
conned me into a dance with yo mama jabs,
without a punch thrown I joined the club.

Tawny Kitaen on a big screen TV, foosball
air hockey table top zaxxon... in a tailspin
I plopped on a bench miles from the hustle.

Beth walked up and her softness enveloped me,
within this bubble she centered my keel
with her dark springy curls lanky stance
and crystalline voice, an opiate fairy sat beside me.

It's like a sugar bomb exploded inside me,
sweetness spread out from my rib cage
and electrified every cell in my body.

We shared meals and played pole position,
she refereed the wheelchair races and I
sat with her on the polished terrazzo
while she cried outside the cafeteria.

She wrote "Love, Beth" under her address
on a scrap of notebook paper that I carried home
and held sleepless nights waiting for her reply letter.

If this solitary man with gray in his beard
told that scared timid boy golden tickets
only conjure opiate fairies once in a lifetime,
he'd still cash it in.

Mortal frailty ails society
while the anointed wield
Mary's saintly grace
as a sword of moral piety.

Speak to her out loud hailing
while eating the sacrificed goat;
spoiled fruit, a sinking boat,
dirty deeds ripe for bailing.

She lives in fresco ceilings
and chisel grooves carved in cedar;
bowed head palms pressed kneeling
blind sheep cannot see her.

Her boy born in a manger
as a man he freed the enslaved
no stray lamb a stranger
he turned his cheek and forgave.

The son walked roads of rubble
outside the church walls
offered a hand when men stumbled
who'll raise the pillars when they fall?

Thanks, Robin. 48 today, 50 two years from today... maybe I'll feel like an old man then... but I doubt it!

Cash stuffed coffers
for dropping outsiders in coffins.

Balls of lint
all's home-town folks
have in their pockets.

Underground silos
back-forty planted,
plutonium missiles
about to sprout.

Reaper's in the field
crop prepped for launching,
rusty sickle tip
on the button.

Gravedigger's on strike
rising up for a living,
pitbull barking orders...
go on back digging!

This old man isn't ready for the nursing home just yet!

Fourteen days
into the seventh month
of the seventy fourth year
of the twentieth Terran century,
I arrived on Gaia.

An avatar slung
from zodiacal zoetrope
catapulted toward a blue planet.

Symbiosis commenced;
a joining greeted by
lip-less teeth and wetted eyes.

Skin grown in utero
clothing a disembodied entity
gestated between stars.

A crablike constellation,
frozen pincers in situ...
razor sharp scissors in hand?

I love it!

Lying on padded plinth,
sheets of linen cocoon
her unclothed loins.

Silken skin sculpting
fertile pelvis, pincushioned flanks
and summiting bosom.

Emerald irises glowing
above high cheekbones
curtained by tufts of
burnt umber curls.

Aphrodite locked in stone
behind my eyes,
out-of-touch with
malnourished fingers.

My writhing body not atop her...
neither 'neath her.

Aaron Stan Keedraws

Today I dreamt a forklift
drove onto to my head...
drive it off me!
My screams muffled
by the dirt pressing
on the right side of my skull
the truck's wheel on the left
as they killed
the engine I screamed louder
DRIVE IT OFF ME!
To them I sounded
the same; silent.

Tile and tar... littered with shells,
maternity wards overfilled.
Mahogany lined closets, inside
nine black robes hang.
Nests for snipers the jurists bench,
from high perches sperm and bullets rain.
Some look for a watchman
to rule over men's deeds,
thump on his guidebook
standing on corners shouting prophecies.
Cherry picked gospel from heritage texts
coded with numbers tools to deflect.
Brothers and sisters stand up from the pews
drop the gun, shut the book,
make some new rules.
Head for the hill or the voting booth
let sapling blueprints take root.
Deadbeat fathers reigns are abandoned,
as daughters and sons
take the reins from dad's hands!

Your consistent acknowledgement is sincerely appreciated, Julie.

Snowy feather boa
cascades milky shoulders
draping over
bustier haltered breasts.
Platinum armlet asp
wraps her petite bicep,
cobra amulet hangs
from her alabaster neck.

Burnished python leather
constricts pleated red satin
cinching her tiny midriff tight.
Her cottonmouth
h
i
s
s
lures in her prey.
A new toy is fixed in her sights.

She swivels her waist slowly,
spine rippling from hip-to-pit
slithering
the crowded dance floor maze.
Planting rattlesnake boots
at her targets toes
stealthily she traps
his gobsmacked gaze.

Then she...

STRIKES!

Antivenom...
she laughs,
her poison flowing
his bloodstream.
Under this spell
he is tonight's plaything.

By the second it wares off
she'll have moved on.

With his hammer and hands
he'll bulldoze the plaster pen
corralling him from the world.
That place he squirms in,
the grazing land
between mirage and oases
that feeds the roaming heard.
His grasp on how things work
chokes the energy from his hooves.
Stomped his shoe kicking up dust,
it won’t brush off
quicker than the cobweb does.
Just let it settle...
see if it'll morph into a helper.
It's gonna take four hands
and a pry bar
to pop out rusty nails and lath.

I've found that eliminating one of those words from my vocabulary, has lifted it's potential darkness from shadowing me.