i rented these words
you may
have to read them quickly
before they are
returned

That void awaits
a warm welcome
for each syllable
back from service
into some warmth
as reward

for years
in our mouths
wet and angry
or loving
or scratched out
on pages or
hammered

into some mind
****** meanings
screampt again
and uselessly again
at the night
at the light
at the moon

let the poor
******* go
i wouldn't
pass through
here as they've
chosen
through spit
and ****

yet here
they are
gifts and pleasures
sweetness and light
tongue tripping
delights arrayed
for our pleasure

I want my lollipop
don't you
This line sponsored by
the feel of my sleeve
the style of my attitude
I am conquering things
here
and I want you to cheer
me on

Soberly waiting
as if puzzle pieces
are being shaken
and they fall
into place

They will fall
into place
though few
might agree

The shortening of things
a constriction
of couldn't
say

while I wrestle away
from any target
the broad side of the barn
I love missing
is here

I am parallel
And antagonistic
I see you or maybe I just feel you
Coming alongside
What do I do?
Slam into you
Pull away
proceed shoulder to shoulder

Lob a grenade gleefully
cackling at you in
conflagration
clever little animal
that I am
racing on
unaware
I have lengthened
the track
and never

This is bleach these lines
raging supine

Wrestle a day down I say
wrestle a day down
and let it go

The speaker hams it up
laughs it up
lets it flow

The inside turns out
turns in
days all a spin

Lies and rhymes
callous lines
this is fine

Coughing up slime
finding the time
this is mine

Everything is an eternity from now
where i don't want to be
so alone

so of course
poetry take me home
Nothingness in a song i yearn to be so

I stench this moment
with fulsome smell
of you at your earthiest

blown away now to nose
at a rose of spectacular
lid lowering sweet musk

I'll wait for your imaginary
neurons to catch up and
breath deeply of that would be

wafting through imaginarium
the exquisite elemental smell
of you nearby

It's all about
The attention you get
Not from poetry

That's a bath
of unmatching
Angst

Uncounted syllables
and unrhymed
utterances

Splashing about like
some lower form
of soul

Raisins are needed
to offset
your parched

Appreciation and
foregiveness
that suicide themselves

in that barren
self
you call home

This distance
how far is it
between us now

How far do
my entrails stretch
in your hands

As you examine
so coldly
my  failings

You are
of course
right

Its just
the price
is wrong

You charge
every thing
exhaustively

Your great skill
constantly
misapplied

to death
the reasons
we should be

Maybe our job
  us scriblurs
to get us all
  into flow



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

All of us
making our waves
carefully or not
need to be felt
welcomed
or stopped clearly
with ought

we've errored
in jungles
best forgotten
that distance
do not quiet
these found songs
still talking
while you
keep squawking
and I don't know
what is aloud

The hokeyness of time
its environs and its chum
change
Taking up all this space
occupying restlessly
ever
The next door neighbor's
fenced-in green acre
rising
And while you're sorting thru
waves, lines and knots
tangle
Laughing or is that coughing
with here's the thing
again
If I can find you reach you
settle somehow in you
convey
Oh the center of thought
and say all 'bout the laying
of now

All the way down
is where I came from
you might recognize
the scenery

All the way up
All the way up
is a fairy tale
is a night for sale

All the way up
in disbelief
All the way up
coming grief

It's a pinnacle
of *****
This airy thing
being brief

Or any belief
unheld
broken welds
silly thief

I'm losing my humanity
they has exited
stage left

It appears
this always
happens

yes more
to come and
more...

Not me
I'm stretching
and filling
Now up

So i
need more humans

Better and more
connections
reduce sag
And enable spring
and singing

It's the almost eyes
seeing

What i'm hiding
don't look

is the skin
in a panic

carrying its salt water
out of here

i've almost eyes
to almost

it's this lesson
sandwiched

'tween breath
and death

i've scurried
along

Hard ceilings and leavings
I'll get back to you
if
kind of day

This jumble of mumbles
Oh I laugh at me
in a tag cloud
talking

Waiting in a cool
September breeze
for now to come back
bringing me

I wanted to find something
I hadn't written yet
and you hadn't
stopped reading
as if a new sentence
wasn't an internment
of much thinking
after much thinking
perhap seed within earth

These little scraps
connected back to
some **** god

argue with their
progenitor about why
this is stuck

this movement inside
your mind
needs to ease on

these bricks of notion
building these
black fears

discard this and that
on their way
to being aloft

evaporate

and singing with time
to talk and laugh
while being

Or do I
have you
tonight?

Clenched Waiting

A heart
I sing
for a heart

I art
for heart

Would you have
these earnest lines

Unfetched and
unrendered

Is an ****** done
with quantum mirrors
is life and death
a glittery refraction
that is just so tasty
you can't stand it
you standing wave
you coursing lyric
singing thru diamond
shaped reflections
sublimating along
hop hop hopping

Do I know the day
is it important to me
to know
Have I arrived at
the solution
some resolution
of absence
in your favor
is this steering
or just veering
away one eye
closed hoping

the manliness is over
in this millennium
of women
i say i say
king of the hill
pathetic
and my ache
smallish
yet i
this beast
smell good
have money
excite
once again
take flight

Once I take everything
out of my head
the world's put between
me and my own smell
the world's put between
me and my own smile

then I can see you clear

I know
we need such stories
to explain the game
so we know how to play

it's just
we forget our stories
are stories
we forget our games
are games
we forget other players
are us playing

listen I'm serious
my way is the way
it's no game
you better
watch
what you say
it's just you
that's on your
imaginary way

Trying to be human
amongst you beasts
amongst your bleats

Keep the cupholders
between the lanes
from the profane

sink into the condition
your condition
is in

and sing
of loss,
of what you had
for fifteen
****** minutes

and die in your puddle
small waves
absorption
evaporation
adios

you steamy
little
repetitive
beating
***** hearts
of *******

i love you
i am you
fuckus
what's the ruckus
of tonight

pre
flight
have we evolved to fly
or is it just
poetry and margaritas
and broken chips

and a cup of this
sideways of that
a rhythm 'at
can't be spelled
'thout tears

beer and country music
hijacked
into the night
while a search light
promises excitement

at it's hot core
we spin hungry
against tomorrow
just today's hand
in it's pants
milkin' rants



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

That's an ecstasy
they don't come
often
I thought as
waves washed over
waves and I was
me waving
like a light
striating on ice cream
tasting through my backbone
cleaving sweetness

So it's a thought
upside down
Bucketed
and banging
in here
going *******
for a way
to be strung out
up even
going for not easily
gotten over

What did you
Huh?
say
all this banging
has me
I'm doin
can't hear
you

why can't u
hear me
can't u see
what's going on
in here
standing
mouth open
you're no help

thought u wuz
my friend
hunh

Thought like this
banging in me

Thinking like this
ahm clanging
hanging me up




Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

There's more here
but where are you?

With your rhymes
and your considered lines
and your riches of thought
and nuanced life

Hammered I would
given the chance
your existence
flattened

I'm not
belonging

and that is a bell
around  my neck
badged for death
hung with your name

and a sigh
time slipping
out of your pocket
into mine

some notes lie
in sound and sense
leaving you feeling
whole



Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

And I
tire easily
of tiring easily

so sarcastic
this broken
strength
it sticks

and i
lower myself
to letters
and leans
on you

oh you
you don't
don't
just

see in here
curtain pulled aside
silhouette
of what you want

inked on a cell
negated into existence
pardon this reach

it's just a netting
of new things
against
old

called progress
in a direction
called inevitable
sideways
when we care
enuf to look up
wetly

and see u
reading
*****

Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

I am littered
across this
landscape

Scattered
even shattered
I've become bits

Before the lights
lose their power
I glitter I glint

Thousands as if
rings ran around
red things beating

Before the light
fails and I darken
amongst chances

collect me before
something anything
arrives and thrives

Some narrative
"you can't keep up"
wafts thru me
about you

your frail patronage
sings happy ignorance

Some narrative
"this all *****"
wafts thru me
about all of you

your frail personage
wonders with a smile

Some narrative
"i give up"
wafts thru me

The suit of clothes that no longer fits
Sits

And you are else

And I am
No ******* idea what I am

On Thursday I became
Songs of a gavel

Pount
Luv that ****** word

Out on to
.

Can't say it
Can't

And I've spread
to steady myself

fat into you
I become

lint
On a sing
U
Larity

So attractive this dark
brown
strum

curvalinear
dive
pour
drink

Stop
Where are u reading
this

What can you smell?

That
Is how empty

or full
of a lizard

writhes
In you


COPYRIGHT@2019 DENNIS WILLIS

And now I'm thinking
with a wrinkle
in my response
deflected by chemistry
and calculation
and

It broke down
that bubble upton
tannic in my cheeks
setting teeth to grit
in the skin spasm

you can lead an ion
to a source
of left turns about
a vague unsatisfying
uncertain
moment

you wanted to come here
and i
given up
on arrivals
said no to leaving
and left

censored by hp

Waving my hands over words
brushing the waves of fib'ry air
sore of meaning an' solitude
an' the drinkin' gitn us here

You must wonder so perched
open to opening to burr verse
tipping up jars that pour out
known tasting things gahhhr

flimsy claim here of edge
that molecule sticks up eh
trippin' i freeze to quiet
just see what you want

Am I a poet
or a publisher
of inner demons
a fire groomer
a flood channeler
a flag raiser
for inner collapse
a grinner
for inner suffusement
a reteller of never said
a printer of listening
a this of that
or just a sound
hoping to go round

the wholistic labelling
of little bits
of said
is what we're
med ov

The squirrels
ate my
train
of something

Nuts

Right

Veer quickly

Stil Heer

are ye

Festus and I are
having a contest

Who can be most
colorless

Let the cold stone
brew

an' oscillate
or ocelot is it
again

we talk about when
we are anticipated
to be
extinct

there  I said it
no more of
surly make up
who we are hunh

the face the final
drift against the
hardness and smile

oh just for a while

I gave up on you verse
I gave up on your opinion
even if you are sometimes
shrapnel or, worse, silence
you give me groove
you give me move
i know you're right right
right
then you get righteous
and i become wrong
i hate this so long
so long so long
me luv you long time
gone

And then I didn't
cry

I reached caught
here

Fragments

Of I don't know
flutter

in my hands
dancing

Raising up
Raising

A finger to lips
feeling

as if they
were yours

under my
fingertips

quiet
enjoying

Soft warm
closing


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Raking through hopelessness
looking for
nothing
I resist the pull
of falling
becoming diving
the safety
of anger
of doubt
of the high
percentage
the low percentage
will occur
in this circle
of licking

This aloneness
I have earned
that i sing against
and sleep with
settles in my fingertips
and leakes out
in lines

in the water
here jumps
to there
our eyes
loving
disjoint

being the same
as dat joint
a trick of the light
you in the night
being right
again

quiet now
the price of
sharply cut
flowers and the  smell
of digging

i used to know
the earth
i used to know
running it

wrapping it up
not
burning it forward
not

straight down now
just let go


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

I'm certain you are fine
I only enquire because
your countenance flatly

speaks of dreams and hills
and skin in warm rays
of Autumn's afternoon

stirred slowly over heat
this wooden handle pressing
back against your hand

a lever held close against
tomorrow always seeking
a way in to these hills

bringing its ills
and i am younger
again today i think

then when I asked
perhaps impolitely
why your nexus

of dallying lines
drunken ripples
and lumpy oscillations

is calling for weather
hoping for lightning
even dull frightening

as days are stifling
and nights trifling
and lives baffling

you could have said
seeking solace and
certainty fell here

I have broken through the day
to the next
keyed up here

self starting statements that
say themselves out
satisfied

at how little
was broken
through

braking into
breaking  into
shapes unexpected

breaking into
you small and
you large

broke me
and
left me

sounds
sounds
in my head

This is burning
and I choose
to be gasoline

You looked down at me
Said a sneer

Each cell of mine
reddens

A billion bits
of bull-dreniline
released

Ready ready ready
Part of me
Ready to destroy
the threat
and make things safe

Or unsafe
for them

I am crying so hard
at this commercial
one would wonder
if it made sense
if there wasn't
something
going
on

Invent God
chirp to themselves
congratulations
and salutations

thisposition
\
angel of decline
/
angle of recline\
slanting
a
way

to fall a way
and you
and me

are falling
down time
that laughs

you

at the herculaneum factory
it is lunchtime
fish sandwiches
crispy to the tooth

inspectors examine
don't they
in earnest with focus
these things are serious

lights are pushing close
seeking tiny bones
nearly clear pulled free
glistening in the light

we sink our teeth in
wondering why these counters
are so white and so smooth
until our fingers answer

that it is for them
and so few care for color
oh but this contour
is all ours

we let them smile
under their nails
leaving the announcement
frustrated but ok