status update

 getting to it again, I hope. I'll be in the new Paper and Ink that drops this week. Definitely check that out, it's going to be good. Now, some poem-thing:

status update

this is no
little mercy and it is
certainly no absolution.

in our defense,
we've been busy figuring
out the specifics to identify

exactly what this is
or purports to be. so,
you'll have to bear with our

appearances as we navigate
the moment. as we 
proceed and stop to smell

the proverbial flowers
(they smell like urine, we're
told). hey, at least there's 

flowers. usually we're
just getting the whiff of
roadkill or old, barely warmed

leftovers. fodder from a fading
microwave. this, this one is
a feast by comparison. we 

digress. no more mercy.
we'll sort the rest at a later
date. thank you for your time. 

Napo 4/6/24 Surveying the Landscape

 Today's prompt. 

The flowers revealed their truth to me,
a humble listener, drinking in the tenets to
a life lived in the elements. "Don't drink 
old rainwater after business hours."

My father told me to question 
anything that sounded like a sales pitch.
"Gold glitters and the soul latches on
with its tendrils of avarice."

The flowers were apoplectic. "Who did
I take them for? Garden weeds?"

Why mention business hours? It seemed 
like a racket to me and I said so.  

My father, away on business, said "Keep holy the
separation of business and health."

I wondered aloud, "what does health mean?"

The flowers responded, "Health is the thing with
muscular legs that carries us from one commercial to the next.
We are living in a glorious time to move capital."

I took my weed eater and turned the errant garden to a finely 
ripped up, dry dirt. We were praying for rain again.
I contemplated drinking the standing water, flush with the buzz
of mosquito and the dull smell of eggs.

My father once said, "to know thirst is our greatest advantage."

I wondered, as the flowers howled their apologies, their remediations
for living life in service of currency, their action-plans and committees
to become better, if I were doing the right thing. In the silence
of the hot afternoon that followed, I looked to the sky and heard the distant grumble of thunder.