O, say it ain’t so,
I’ll go deaf in Heaven?
I’ll go blind in Heaven?

Then what is Hell?
Pragmatic fears fueled by pessimism,
Though I see through the ruse,
The Trap of it all.

I pick Heaven,
With great sounds an sights.

The ultimate Sin,
That lies within,
Is but a test.

I’ll gladly gleam,
Between the seams,
Skip two, do not collect 200,
Gladly.

Sights and sounds,
Lead me through nights and Bounds,
In delight, fleeting on the ground.

I watch the
parade of
trivialities line
up like
hemlock,
like mad dogs
yipping at
my ankles.

I'm too
crafty for them.
I laugh and
yawn
and watch
my cats play with
an electric fish.

An empty hand will keep on searching,
a full hand is satisfied with what appears enough
The heart pleasantly echoes an expression of love,
but it’s a blinding siren, without putting the mind to it.

The eye is the most jealous body part,
the mouth an unkind blade of a man’s great envy
The ill of man, is quickly giving a judging
depth between their sins and others;
As according to us; the next person is the greater sinner.

Your faith wasn’t a quick given,
as you learnt how to cherish it firstly, as a beginner
How you live, comes from the ways you choose to adopt,
some do start out strong, faithful, loving caring and humble,
But throw in pieces of fortune into the combination, and
their morals are bought out and lost.

Your greatest mistake is what isn’t done yesterday,
and the longest regret isn’t doing it at all
Drunkards can drink together, laugh fight, &
drink together again; yet a sobered heart, will hold
onto unforgiveness until death.

Finally and true, a childish person,
still chases after their old youth
As a child forced to grow up quickly,
despises their own youth
As you’d find bliss in a lie of your own desire,
and would be disgusted by what is spoken in Truth.

I loved you
as a thief
loves his secrets

buried you deep
where surface-level
lies
could hide you

I
wanted you
needed you
lost you
wanted you more
wanted you deeper
felt you
wanted you sorely
needy
I craved you
felt your lips
down my back
'tween my legs
on my soul
breathing into me
your spirit
your charm
your wit
your laughter

I'll never forget
your voice
the soothing grace
of how you felt
beneath me
in our dreams
in our living nightmare
of being alone
wanting
lying
falling asleep
in the arms of the ghosts
we've made
of each other...

Philosophy does

not help you to become learned --


but to be virtuous.

There were black shoes, black shadows
white cuffs, white clouds
black shirt, black boards
white belt, white butterflies

You tell me, your world is black and white,
but,
I ask you,
"Is that all I saw?"
What more, my dear pessimist, you jeer,

So, I say,
Well, of course,
there were blue skies, blue scorpions
white doves, white daffodils
red roses, red blooded hooligans

You tell me, typical American -
so patriotic,
you bleed the colors you fly,
and die draped in your pride,

but I see you
in your myopia,
your dull diatribe of patriotism

I understand you

you are blind to the mind of your soul
you only see
what I tell you
you only see
what you consume
you do not see
what is between
the slats
of your window

when they shut
you do not peek

when they open,
you imagine night has turned to day
when they close
you prepare your bed for the night
despite the noonday sun
you are a prisoner of shallow waters
drowning
while ankle deep
hollering
believing no one hears you
shrieking - how the world has changed!
unaware that the shores move
in ballroom dancer rhythms
sweeping back
and forth
along the bay
because the seas are alive
but you are standing still

not even the earth
beneath your feet
is still,
despite holding your entire reality
safely,
motherly,
in the insurmountable expanse
of its grasp

Yet, should the earth shake
and rock you
should the hurricane blow
and displace you
should the mountains tumble
and smother you
should the sky open its celestial gob
and expel you
should the mother open her subterranean maw,
and swallow you deep
deep
would you, deeply, care
that the possibility of it all
was an open invitation
a sealed letter
that was never
at your behest
to open
and display its contents

I, too,
have bequeathed upon you
a sealed invitation
to the worlds I paint
with these jigsaw vignettes we call words
and all
you had to do
was open the seams

not with a file

a file to cut the purse
the bounty
of the promised speech
no
I ask you
that you but pry open my soul
with curiosity
and peer within the tattered layers of my story
my lives
unlived & overwritten
letter by letter
slip in that noodle protracted by your pineal eye
and taste the essence of the realities
you have failed to purchase
that meander about the words you,
selectively,
chose to ignore
like the milk around alphabet cereal
or the broth around alphabet soup
or the fine-grained blank spaces
the parchment
the canvas of woe
around the words that comprise
a stack of divorce papers
or an exam
or the dread of a long-awaited raise...

Imagine,
for a moment
ignoring the obvious
the letters,
the sentences and paragraphs,
the divorce papers
the exam
the pay-bump,
and just look
at the parchment - the fine-grained,
thin sheet of sophistication

touch it
taste it, maybe,

run your hand along it
the surface of it
or the edge of it
***** your finger on the corner
slice your finger on the edge
the paper has a malice that invites
your masochism
curiosity is power
but also
despair
peer deeper

turn your head about
lower it, sideways
all
the
way
down, and
press your ear,
left or right
against the parchment
the paper
the papyrus
the product
hear its screams
the CHURN-CHUG-GGGHGGHHGRRRRR!!!
that chainsaw
like a thousand hatchets
splayed out
dancing on the circumference of
a taught merry-go-round of death
cutting into the mother
the father
the child
the tree
cutting it open
that it may be cut again
again
again
tormented
pulled apart
pulverized
tenderized
pulped
poured
pushed
pressed
preened
­glossed - maybe
matte - possibly
the choice is yours
harvest the living
for the living death of your divorce
your exam
your raise
massacre those families
not just the trees
the bears, the deer, and the little fox, too!

I'm green with envy,
thinking about all that potent pulp
coming your way
the smell of it
place yourself in its abundance
the smell of industry
its factories
academies of excellence
an office
a school
a registrar, magistrate, Corporate HQ,
the Pentagon, the Taj Mahal,
Big Ben,
the daily mail of any place where
the morning paper
is LAW
and
should this be the first time
you heard the screams
just imagine being a tree
coming to pay respects to your family
smell that death
as you creep in
watch
look about you
at the carcasses
strewn about
in neat, pedantic stacks labeled, A4, A3, letter,
fax or snail mail?

My world is plenty black & white
& white & red & blue,
but it's also got screams,
and the stench,
the carcasses of the forest's children
fit for your pleasure
to tear up,
chew up,
gum up with saliva
and shoot through a straw
into the neck of a fellow butcher
and laugh
laugh and snarl and howl and cackle

Laugh
because,
you never dared to kneel down
pay reverence to the
screams
in the parchment
you let the blinds close
you dared not peek through
you let yourself rot there
in the closet
of your mind
in the dark
and when I say, I'm sad,
you say,
"That *****."
You don't ask,
what's around the sadness,
what came before and what could after,
what's in the folds of sadness,
guilt, regret, and loneliness kneaded in

no,
you look at the sadness,
the dull blue,
and you say,
"Yeah,
that's blue alright,"
then you close your coffin
and go to sleep

Cry me a river
of joy,
she said

I knew she meant it,
by the silence
by the memory of her laughter,
how she poked fun
how she rubbed me down with giggles of mirth,
bellies gyrating with angst
and rambunctious
passion

I knew it

It was not the idea
of her
that scared me,
not anymore
would I think of women
that way

What
it was
that scared me
was how I knew we'd say goodbye
and I'd be okay
for once
okay
and happy she said goodbye...

Happy we didn't shovel moats & forge keeps,
establish plans of attack & surrender
belabor, humming & hawing, over broken treaties,
over civilian casualties
the banishment of civil liberties
and the proverbial
dictatorships of,
"I'm not the problem, so, it MUST be you."

Reply with,
"Yes, it is me."
I knew it,
"I'm sorry!"
Jinx!
Not this time.

This time,
she said goodbye.
And so did I. At least, inside.
And she meant it,
and it was honest.
And so was I. A small comfort.
First of many...

Her goodbye was a kiss that could rival
daydreams
of memories that are
more remixed than the splotches of oil
on a painter's palette,
and,
more dibbled and dabbled, than ten playlists of slow jams,
in my arsenal of hopeless stratagems,
bearing the desperate subtext of,
'park your rear end
where I can't begin to ask honestly.'

Because,
honestly,
if this weren't goodbye,
I could only trade this goodbye,
for ten thousand "Hello's"
whose end and beginning are lost to the tides of status quo,
of forget me nots
and anniversaries,
and picture frames
of days where we forgot what 'goodbye' meant,
because we learned to speak the truth...

And isn't it the truth,
that goodbye,
was so much sweeter than,
I can't stand,
how much we fought for a t-shirt
that eponymously said,
"I cried over spilt milk, and all I got was this t-shirt."
because none of us know
the name of the game,
but we know we hate playing it

when did a camp fire
become a wild fire
raging through
two hapless
souls blinded

in love with love--

how did it all grow
to a spreading inferno
with bait that satiated
opportunities denied
threatening what is

to be lost forever--

carefully built
solidity over years
of hard work and much
sacrifice, seeing the long-term
goals, knowing that a flash in the pan

often ends in a bitter rainstorm--

when did a camp fire
become a wild fire
raging through
two hapless
souls wounded

so stop now--