Still takes time to decide,
when we walk out the door,
if your, “I love you,” is meant
for me.

Formlessness,
shaped by a word.
The Word.
Speaking cause it was pleasing.
An Imperative,
this subject, made to move;
infused by the verb “being.”

Cut off/
now,
we fumble for our meaning.

I’m as guilty as any
of letting foreign words define me.

We are, after all,
entries
in the divine dictionary,
that outlines a plan,
and designs what we’re meant to be.

A clean word, spoken once,
but now clothed in debauchery.

Looking for constant reform
in this soft-sung refinery.

Conformed to what we consume,
your words are my new womb,
a death sentence
punctuated by the tomb.

Clogged arteries,
grown fat on lies.
We are what we eat.
But when set to a beat,
deceit tastes like candy:
a sweet, tasting treat laced with narcotic nepenthe.

Leading all of us sheep,
to a pasture of apathy.
Where the wolves wait to prey.
But so lazy we graze, we have no thought to flee.

Limbs stuck fast,
as if struck by myopathy.

This rigid tent providing
meat for the enemy.
Whose voracious appetite
devours words he can’t understand.

Then vomits them out
and calls it a band.

Down dark and dreary way,
lay a path for every day.

We choose our winding
through. But end up finding,

when the sun has risen overhead,
though we thought to be somewhere new,
we begin right where we began last, instead.
And so we always do.

When springtime comes,
and you're buying seeds,
your summer garden to sow.
Please,
do not confuse
perennial with perineal.
Because flowers need the sun to grow.

The genius in this
is my hubris unheard.
Yet, still somehow felt,
so emotion is stirred.
Then, with a quick twist
of an out of place word,
all of my wit
is somehow transferred
to the reader, themselves,
just for understanding.

After all,
comprehension can be
a lot less demanding
than being a genius.

The funniest thing I ever heard
was the word
perspicuity.

As far as I can tell,
its only use would be
flaunting your mastery
of philology.

I mean,
what purpose is served,
by deliberately,
drowning your meaning
in obscurity,
when the thing itself
purports lucidity?

You see?

And in case you’re having some trouble following me,
allow me to offer some clarity…
I mean,
perspicuity.

Misdirected anxiety is the key
to keeping the populace in thrall.

Do not fear the one using the TelePrompter.
Neglect by you and me,
makes the country fall.

Your words,
out of context,
make my next
muse all perplexed. Whose lucid streaming
is usually unvexed
by the screaming
it hears.

My mind
gets the notion
that complex emotion
is seldom as it appears.
And now I’m left pondering,
my honest thought’s wandering,
wondering at the meaning
of tears.

I get it at last,
the anger you broadcast,
and phrases you slip past my ears,
are simply a means
of concealing your fears
within this display.

if only your words
would mean what they say.

Power flees from withered hand.

When in your youth, a strong command

could stir a legion to its feet,

and bid them all their death to meet.

And fabled beauty of your eye

could make strong men to fight and die.

And for your heart within your breast,

could lightly bid the dreamer rest

in dreamless sleep. No more to rise;

any schemes but yours despise.

When your fists, in youth, clutched sword and spear.

Now, palsied hands hardly grip the fear.

Yet, now are they all gone and fled.

And you alone within your bed,

command the air with slipping gasps.

Those bounds on life to loose at last,

stands now a spectre grim before

you; coming nearer through the door.

No word you offer will stay its feet;

feeble bones no more entreat,

nor turn it back with lust’s authority.

Your legs, pinned, limp, by atrophy

propel you onward toward your end.

Embrace, you now, your life’s, true friend.

Expressed with last breath;
exhaled with a paper cut.
Japan’s poet death.

Explaining blue
to a man blind
since birth,
she wept.

You always try to test the blessed and holy gospel.
But really, it’s the gospel which is testing you.
To see if once you’re pressed, you’ll bleed like an apostle,
or, for the sake of safety, trade the truth in lieu.

And so, here I’ll take my stand,
if fumbling will, and hand, suffice.
What else can I do,
in light of greater sacrifice?

Words I knew
I understood,
at twenty-two,
finally speak.

Longing to imbue each word with authority,
yet, I exercise no authority over the words themselves.

grabbing me by the wrist, they wrench and twist
each meaning, beating fast from my lips without thought.

And naught but the words themselves stand ready to defend their selection.

I find myself in company, unnumbered, of those whose hackneyed words
prick the ears of numerous shock-hounds.

Yet they, themselves, offer up their wrist to the bounds
of the chains which ring their truth.
To state there is no truth.

No measured meter to mete the meaning of the matter;
no rhyme to repeat, nor remember their chatter.

And yet, we praise, and say their words emblazon
upon us, such life; such depth.

What of we who resist?
Well, we’re wasting our breath.

While the love of a word is a wonderful thing,
is the thought behind it not as important to bring?

And what of the ending?
With no form to proffer,
I end the only way I may,
with a pop,
and a fizzle.

Knowing not when my terminus has been met,
nor, upon whose shoulders it’s set.

A word to wound;
A cliché to kill.
I write the battles
through the ink I spill.
With tongue in cheek,
the cheek that’s turned,
I write the truth,
but my wisdom’s spurned.
Cause I’ve never fought,
but I’ve often thought,
how the most noble scars are truly earned
not on the field, but on the page.
For truth is not discerned
by the wars we wage.

At the moment of arrival
you will think of your survival,
and all the bitter pains you’ve taken
to make your life’s work more archival.

But, supposing some seldom spoken snippet somehow slips
past the blocks they’ve set up?
are you hoping the mere reciting,
will somehow end in inciting you to get up
From your pine bed, and forge ahead;
go on living past this hiccup?

Once you are dead,
the words you said,
and the legacy you laid up,
come down to this:
a curtailed kiss;
two dates etched upon the heart of those
who stayed up
with you through long, weary nights,
and spoke the words of love
of which your life was made up.

Then, turning once more to life anew,
they go about, and carry you
through all they do.

Until, at last they’re fed up
with life’s cruel jests,
and seeking rest
from time which somehow sped up,
they stem their schemes,
and end their dreams.

Then politely make their bed up.
They lay them down
within the ground.

Thus is your existence spent.

Eternally extinguished since
you’re convinced,
there’s no way to raise the dead up.

Quoth the old woman on bended knee,

“Please little girl hearken to me.

For I was once as you shall soon be,

clothed in youth and fresh beauty.

An idol; the object of fantasy.

But the scars of those days cling still to me.

Teaching a truth that only age can see.

Though suitors may flock and favour thee,

Their lauding lasts not for eternity.”

Somewhere in middle America resides a country hidden.

Veiled among the shaded streets and teeming masses there.

The entrance to this neglected land, is at this time, forbidden

to any who would walk it’s ways without the proper care.

It is waiting to be recognized as the refuge it could be,

to all those weary nomads, defeated by their day.

Many saunter past the threshold, oblivious. They still don’t see

the wonders that kingdom holds for any who would stray,

for a moment, through its plentiful lanes, and feed beneath its shade.

But the worries of the hour grant them no reprieve,

for the seeking of something new, when so much stands ready-made.

Imagining “what might be,” seems to them naïve.

So there’s no time to spare for dreaming, or discovering new ground.

Leaving the hidden country’s paradise still waiting to be found.

The stupid superglue
just plain refuses
to give me that last drop.
Busted bottle;
clogged top.

I hate,
and throw it back in the cabinet.
To frustrate
myself
at a later date.

Government schools exist
to turn out government tools,
taught not to resist,
workforce resource pools.
Waiting in line to enlist
in an endless list of rules,
enforced by the clenched fists
of fools.


For,
every lesson has its season
to reason with souls of those
leavin' In droves.
Whose focus is their clothes,
and whether the malls are already closed.
But their pierced ear holes,
are already indisposed,
to hearing the blaring messages
about a citizen's roles,
in freedom's responsibility.
Not to be taken lightly.
'Cause the things a man extols
reflects his reliability,
to judge the facts.
And, those facts consist,
of an uphill battle in this,...

I'll see you at the polls.