Eighty:

80

“A visor for a visor.—What care I.”

My brother Jim bought a black VW Beetle

with a piece of duct tape 

on the passenger side fender. 

We called it it’s Beetlebrow.

The guy who sold it to Jim said:

That tape is a lucky charm.

Jim drove around with the piece of tape

on there for years.

Then he sold the car to our friend named Hat.

Jim told Hat the story about the duct tape. 

Hat ripped it off saying he was Going to paint it.

He totaled the car on the way home.

Car-ma. my brother said.

©️Mark W. Ó Brien 

01/22/2022.

Seventy-nine:

79

In the deep cold

of winter

I lay awake in the night

and wonder:

Will I live to see another 

Baseball season?

What does a tittle do?

Can you die from a 

sudden and severe 

attack of joy?

What must I do to

live my remainders without 

the intrusion of the world?

Is this too much to ask?

©️Mark W. ÓBrien 

15/Dec/2021

Seventy-eight:

78

On

days like this

when mountains 

touch clouds 

I feel as if 

Heaven 

is just there 

and were I  to 

walk towards 

the horizon line 

I might touch it

with the firmament

of  vaulted

thought.

Markle~

12July2021

Seventy-seven:

 77

That one time 

visiting me

when you saw 

sunlit snow 

striking off crystals

bouncing, childlike 

one winters day

scooping it up 

into your hands

as an adult

dipping your tongue 

into the delicious cold of it

“Would you never?” You said.

“Jesus it’s wonderful!”

~

21June2021

Markle-

Seventy-six:

76

What happens when the font 

stops flowing words lose their 

glisten and you stand   wait

ing at the ready an eternity 

for spicket to spray every

thing in your word garden

with life giving fluxions

the way it always has

tumbling out of your

word after word after

non stop gab without

pause for even breath

till you find yourself thinking

Sweet Jesus, what will I do now?

15June2021

Markle~

Seventy-five:

75

Everyone comes from Brooklyn eventually

in the still quiet of a new day. Maybe you 

worked there when you first came to this 

country. Maybe your great grandfather 

owned a saloon. Jesus, sang songs with the 

disciples at the last supper. Maybe he sang 

this very song. Maybe he sang it in your great 

grandfather’s saloon. If Jesus walks among us 

this very day, what makes you think he wasn’t 

in Brooklyn the morning your great grandfather 

met your great grandmother when she came 

looking for a job. She was right off the boat 

from Bremen, which came to Brooklyn one day

in the still quiet of a new eventuality. 

Markle~

29April2021

Seventy-four:

74

Many things have been said and done in the 

name of relationship. Good, bad, tired rehashings 

and penitent blendings of thought and speech. 

Air, from another time and place, is just the 

absence of reliable memory taking upon itself 

the head and body of desire. Shame, passed 

along from mother to daughter, father to son, 

somehow always finds its way into the old barn 

of unforgivness and jumps hopefully from the loft, 

landing instead with a thump in a haycock of pain. 

A conical heap of generational ghosted hurt 

with a life of it’s own. An old sayings says: 

...our failures provide the greatest opportunities

to grow towards the unconditional...    Bullshit.

16April2021

Markle~