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Monday, April 30, 2012

SMILE THERAPY 13

“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.”
― AndrĂ© Gide


Smile Therapy 13

I am in smile therapy
when my girls are doing
the dishes
more often because
I have started
doing them less.

I am in smile therapy
when I dance to Madonna's
song Vogue in my kitchen
with my friends and my kids.

I am in smile therapy
when I get to spend
a Sunday afternoon
in the sun and
dream about the
surf curling over
the sand.
TJKG
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”
― Dr. Seuss

Saturday, April 28, 2012

MY DEAR,

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran


My Dear,

Do you know
what you
could have had
until you don’t have it?
The stroll under the
urban sunset,
a dream falling to less of a dream,
and more of a stark reality.
Do you know
what you had now
that you don’t have it?
I am flanked in between
the moments between moments.
When is the time
the right time?
Do you know,
as my hand reaches for your
hand,
the linking of four finger
interwoven in four fingers is a
privileged
connection--
more private than a slow dance,
hotter than the door handle to hell.

TJKG

Monday, April 23, 2012

SMILE THERAPY 12

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. ~Rainer Maria Rilke


Smile Therapy 12

I am in smile therapy
when driving behind a
truck that sets
free a pink snowstorm
of cherry blossoms.

I am in smile therapy
when I hear drops of
spring rain tapping
on my side walk releasing
the familiar
scent of the earth.
TJKG

Thursday, April 19, 2012

THE MUSIC OR THE WORDS?

“Music is the art of thinking with sounds.” Jules Combarieu



The Music or The Words?


Burning, grinding,
slipping of steel linked
chain, cranked
down by the strength
of blue porcelain
hands.

The tufted cape of
crimson velvet
dances across the
theatrical stage of
opposing faiths.
The posterity
of a librettist’s opera.

Our script was
tangled in the
ardent drum
of scored
stars;
a forgotten kiss
wins
the unswerving need
for connection.

Do you remember the
moment when
we were weightless,
slipping effortlessly
between worlds?


Attending our opening,
we read a history of
words
written across the
musical
lines of our time.
"Tramontate, stelle! All'alba, vincerĂ²!"
(Fade, you stars! At dawn, I will win!)
Puccini's Turandot
TJKG

Monday, April 16, 2012

SMILE THERAPY 11

Support organ donation. www.donors1.org You can't take them with you.

Smile Therapy 11

I am in smile therapy
after I ran a 5K
in 39 minutes and
did not
feel like a twisted
barbie afterwards.

I am in smile therapy
when I know I can
support OUR world
and use change and
awareness to
make a difference.
TJKG

Friday, April 13, 2012

A WINTER'S STONE

What you are is what you have been.
What you'll be is what you do now.
Buddha 624-543BC



He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus 55 - 135


A Winter's Stone

My heart weeps in
the consequence of
my decision.
A winter’s stone, a deep
question, a flower filled
with ethereal reason.
My heart is swollen,
beating only to the words
you speak to me;
my pulse is threaded with blood
slowly bleeding into my vision.
A race, a game, a duty,
a chandelier’s warmth illuminating
the path of a painter's immortality,
lost in her pensive Paris.
Sketches and scores of her face
drawing the essence of
black or white,
needing the velvet of the
purled pigment to
capture the slip between
stolen moments.
My heart finds
the lines of your mind’s wings
draping over my shoulders
and guiding my fingers to
your portrait.
I wait for you to restore me
to my heart
as you are my mentor and
I am life’s humble apprentice.
TJKG

Monday, April 9, 2012

SMILE THERAPY 10

love builds up the broken wall
and straightens the crooked path.
love keeps the stars in the firmament
and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides
each of us is created of it
and I suspect
each of us was created for it
--Maya Angelou



Smile Therapy 10

I am in smile therapy
as I dance in
the cold surf as the
warm sun
rises above, pulling
the smile from inside me.

I am in smile therapy
when I feel my heart
pounding;
I count my blessings by
the number of smiling angels
I have built around me.
TJKG

Saturday, April 7, 2012

ODE TO MY RESURRECTION

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.
Jessamyn West



Ode to My Resurrection

The other day,
minutes before the day fell
into black night,
I spoke to my resurrection:
White lotus rise from mud,
child rise from the primordial ocean,
woman nourish from pagan grass,
phoenix rise from sovereign ash.
My soul’s entombment resurges
in the moment of the rising of
something once dead.

Friday, April 6, 2012

THE BRIDGE CAUGHT FIRE

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.” Thich Nhat Hanh

                                                                                       photo:T.Kraft
The Bridge Caught Fire

She saw me laughing
just on the other side
of his confused memory.
She saw me laughing
and questioned the
surging floods, the deprived tides,
the darting fish, and
slow drinking cranes.
There was not enough time for rain
to return to water to continue to nourish
the flow under the bridge or put out the fire.
(The connection senses eroding years,
slowly decomposing marred minutes,
charred wood, and fractured hourglasses
of life’s sandy moments.)
He saw me laughing
just on the other side
of what was once a bridge arching over
the vein of the river which has now
boiled into a desert.
Fossils of past actions
scattered in the dried
crevasses of a foolish passage,
reminding the laughter
of evaporating tears.
The souls stand alone on
a once fluid shore,
two sides face each other,
love four feet deep in stone;
elephant bones erect as pedestals
like stalemate chess pieces,
solitary pilings, or a
trunk-less support;
a gate-less graveyard of history remains.
He saw me laughing and she
did not know
our bridge was once a gateway
between each others homes.

Monday, April 2, 2012

SMILE THERAPY 9

Sometimes life is just funny!

If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old. Edgar Watson Howe

Smile Therapy 9


I am in smile therapy
when an elderly lady says to me,
as I stand behind her
in the grocery store
check out line,

"You can jump me!!"

Our eyes connect and
I slip in front of her,
her face the shade of
a red rose, and she says,

"Ohh, maybe I shouldn't
have you jump me,"


realizing the implications
of her own startling statement.

She starts to giggle.
I start to giggle, and
she says as I am
about to leave,

"Now don't go jumping
other customers in
other lines."


Now that is smile therapy.