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The poems

• ordinary poets
  • ordinary poets
  • waitress
  • desk clerk
  • chaplain
  • cable guy
  • for sale
  • luck
  • to the rescue
  • personals ad
  • warrior
  • fashionista
  • valentine
  • normal
  • sean and teresa
  • fame
  • prepared
  • caste
  • soldier
  • PR girls do pepper jelly
  • chick place
  • in Hovland
• outrage
  • baja
  • priorities
  • illusion
  • mobile home
  • tour
  • mother
  • hair
  • hurricane
  • loser
  • Red Lake
  • privilege
  • poor
  • weapons of mass destruction
  • Lamborghini
  • fur
  • temple
  • American
  • Sedona
  • values
  • why they didn't leave
  • efficiency
  • shelter
  • lounge chair
• love
  • marriage
  • old marriage
  • vulnerable
  • terrarium
  • caretaker
  • material things
  • laundry
  • rose
  • that's all, folks
  • lost and found
  • daybreak
  • eHarmony
  • envy
  • love song
  • reunion
  • beds and ladders
  • prom
  • farewell
  • incurable
  • reset
  • vow
• family
  • mother's Hippocratic oath
  • bridge
  • shepherds
  • letting go
  • wedding
  • training wheels
  • first blessing
  • scales
  • Patta's car
  • psych ward
  • graduation
  • border collie
  • triage
• thinking too much
  • magic act
  • choices
  • logic
  • sorting
  • grudge
  • doubt
  • caste
  • film
  • aging
  • Shady Pines
  • alone
  • getting ready
  • hedgehog
  • clarity
  • lonesome
  • planes and anthrax
• hurting
  • paper cuts
  • collateral damage
  • conflict
  • forest fire
  • lights out
  • wounds
  • breakup
  • commitment
  • camouflage
  • knives
  • unfaithful
• hooked
  • hooked
  • adversary
  • monkey
  • addicts and angels
  • the First Step
  • serenity prayer
  • iceberg
  • sober
  • enabler
  • hope
• loss
  • grief
  • monsters
  • autopsy
  • ambush
  • bruise
  • giving back the daisies
  • checkout
  • bad check
  • talking with death
  • condolences
  • closure
  • full post
  • spring
  • jacket
  • resurrection
  • first year
  • passage
  • Michael
  • uncharted
  • lightness of being
• respite
  • carwash
  • September 11
  • Kauai
  • at the lake
  • muskrats
  • crisis intervention
  • balloons
  • star over Sedona
  • inspiration
  • pilot light
  • souvenirs
  • night of stars
  • balance
• reflections
  • politics
  • what Disney taught us
  • moon rabbit
  • Herzegovina
  • poetry games
  • autumn
  • envy and the snapshot
  • perfection
  • critters
  • prayer
  • Sodom and Gomorrah
  • otters
  • winter of the century
  • Louie
  • the zone
• the light side
  • home repairs
  • almost haiku
  • body parts
  • competition
  • typewriter vs...
  • style

© 2010-2013

beds and ladders

So my relationships
Have been defined by
Numerous beds and ladders
Bought over the course
Of numerous hells
Let's see
Garden variety Sealy
Queen waterbed — quirky
Victorian double bed
Seemingly romantic
Turned out to be stiff and unyielding
Brass headboard
A good place to whack your head on
Single bed with
Sesame Street sheets
Comfort when alone
(A painful period
A bed so narrow
I fell out — reaching perhaps
For the Absent Occupant)
And ladders
Six foot, eight foot
32-foot fiberglass —
Couldn't even lift it …
(An allegory
On that relationship)
What was I thinking?
Then 32-foot aluminum
That wobbled limply and fell on me
(More allegory)
All those relationships
Marked by the constant
Buying and disposing of
Beds and ladders
A stubborn show of independence
And faith in tenuous tandem
Where did they all go?
Why didn't I just keep
My own bed, my own ladder
My own life?