https://thedirtyrat.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/img_1187-1.jpg It is often necessary for me to write a prayer. I've done it a few times over the years while I was drowning in life. This one was composed after visiting a website with hundreds of positive affirmations. I scanned over them and assembled one. Its never occurred to share any nor have I …
Poems Are Happening
April being National Poetry Month... But I'm not tripping. Wasn't even intending to attempt a 2014 poem a day for 30 days challenge... But its happening anyway. The last poem I posted, A Small White Bottle, triggered a shower of poems and writing over the last several days. A pleasant surprise. I re-wrote S.W.B. which …
A Small, White Bottle
I hadn't seen her in more than 20 years. I had to ask for a hug. She paused, as to think: Did I pack one? She looked the same; her body neither overstuffed nor sickly. Her hair is different. Long & sinuous. And she's still sexy. Over breakfast, the great shifting of gears of family …
The Only Way Out Is Through
Here is how we whistle for hammer head sharks --steely torpedoes awaiting to be soft served in bowls of sweet meat we won't finish before dark-- let them swim to a shoreline of 1000 suns curved like so many jaws, abutments of bone between now & minutes shook hence in tremors before this island volcanos …
Touch (Abstraction)
There are hospitals where hands are a type of medicine I smooth the tremulous lines along your temples with my palm In these cellular rooms, bodies are worshipped in religions of disrepair We burden our mouths to carry more than language I align your tremulous temples in the rooms of my palm There are hospitals …
Memorial Lighthouse — Trinidad, Ca.
Memorial Lighthouse, Trinidad Civic Club, Trinidad, Ca. -- JCagney Bone spur of the lighthouse Excavated from the hillside By diligent shovels of weather Stands purified under the administration Of the sun; overseer to an ocean Of scales flashing white and green. An old man sits at a bench shepherding the wet painting of …
Hold The Phone
Hold the Phone - Jcagney There used to be one in every house with its own end table or altar. ours was a wire stand crammed with phone books-- the first internet. if you remembered to clean it you'd wipe it down like a baby – its umbilical cord would braid itself over all the stories …
The After Life… with God
After Life with God - Jcagney The other side of the white light is a stage light. God’s monologue subsides as the last breath eases from my chest. Relatives gone on before now sit in audience cheering my entrance. God’s hair is a tsunami shadowing a beach, cresting over remarkable brown eyes. He’s in …
What About Bob?
Who was it said Poems are never finished, they're just abandoned? I begin writing a poem after I assume some understanding about or appreciation over what I've just seen, experienced or remembered. Sometimes the poem comes out in one chunk and I let it rest for a while, then go back and tidy it up: Remove, add, clarify. Sometimes …
The Dirty Rat 
