The I love you's
pendants of doubt
what's cold
as you grip yourself
these scratches
mean nothing
I'm held
just not enuf

Listen criminal
you've taken
breathing
and seeing
left hulking
sulking and sighs
a wrenching wrench
of regret with an
extender near bent
from strain longing
and pain of your
"reign o'er me"
splash you look
hand out in need
only and I struggle
to be human

Let's see
I've cried enuf check
I've made enuf check
I've wined enuf check
I've bled enough seconds check
haven't I?
and I lost a mirror
and i can't see you anymore
just a screen and another and me
such a glow

Just how _
are you?
Please feel in the blank
legibly
and then answer the question
with 100 percent

You're not 100 percent?

You're not 100 percent anything?

So you acknowledge that you are still alive?

To have an opinion is to die a little

to be certain is to die a lot

Are you sure that is darkness and this is light?
Could it be gray hair and gray eyes you see

I don't mean to stare but do you know
what is on your face?

The legerdemain happening here
is legendary

I know I had my soul with me here
just a minute ago
and now it's gone

Staying up late
watching
Channel has moved

This is a peaceful
story
about a unique
Stream of electrons
that have ventured
to parts unknown

Oh the angst
And anticipation

I don't know and
I worry
how it's going
for them

I wonder
if it doesn't work out
Will they come back
I can't
turn away

I'd write you another
bad poem
but

The sickness fades
glad feeling
invades

And I'm not caught
lyrically
reeling

Pull a vibe together
I think
Closing my eyes
Calling up
a frequency
with my skin
redness in this
darkness
picture a rolling
unfolding          
I can't tho
I find silence
except the dog
is quietly snoring
and this alone
reglues me

The water talks for me
it hopes so much
to be held

it's a song
falling out of an
obscene hour
of consternation

its running down
the clock tower
of ticking
life choices

imagine
these explosives
wicks entwined
being lit

count the no-
see-ums creeping
only visible
as squashed

notes rising
these cascades
a run up
of hope full

meandering
rhythms i
can still follow
say they're you

Let's snap a line
on a new keyboard
cheap as ****
plastic and lights
someone said fit me
*****

Snap from inside
your neck twang
like bridge line
snap
ping
crotches that were
cabled

Snap from now smalled
like Thursday or day
before last
fallen-in knowin'
after my cereal
no resurrection
comin'

If I stay fed up
you know I won't

'Nuf sed
'Nuf thot
'Nuf never
'Nuf that

**** legs
'n brains

innerfeering
wif my puhlans

fer yer

to slip on this
an fall
hard

zat rite there
Something needs to squeeze
something
Hahaard

Skittering on our edge

Looking like a golden brown
Surfer
Slamming waves


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

All of your solidities
are stubornities
stalagmites in your
cavernous skull
reaching out for
stalactites from stars
or imaginary skulls
similarly solidified
tell me I've hardened
tell me I've solidified
thinking your accreting
when you're flowing
and darkened pixels
cavorting as words

Stirring words
mixes them up
right

Languid fish
moving just enough
to stay still
in the current

They explain
in the sun
to river moss
and rivered rocks

the minimal
nature of flow
and balance
in quiet form

Water swimming by
appreciates
not being
held up

Says so with cool
caresses
fish desires
and stone fears

When I invented you
a moment ago
you were
a thoughtful reader
open to what seeks
to come through
these scratched lines
now you've become
a prejudiced critic
looking only
for your flavor

What are all these stories for
I gather here

Don't give me your
historical
hysterical
hey maybe's

answers that have been
weaponized
are not good
Unlove us backwards

to gravity
and stones

take me forward
without
cutting off parts
of us

thinking knowing
is complete
the final why
a final lie

Un lie
your great story
that only explained
now
for a moment
then

no matter how
apparently
deeply

Miners of truth
laugh at yesterday's
depth

including your flying chariot
you deadly fool
for then's strongest
lie

Maybe the past is alive
and winging us like shoes
at its sister tomorrow
with glee

we but
accidental
soles awakened
by flight


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

I don't care
if you cry
for me
I don't
for you

I'm sitting in this kitchen
decidedly not at
the dining room table
serving as my desk
it's a mess
a reflect hitting

accuse me
an' this
sorry these
sidelinings soaring
all out
absorb this
inta ink an' drink

an' we're here
a now wanting out
where where
I'm confused
at this end as that
striking darkness

Stuff to write with
Stuff to write on
Stuff to write about
Stuff to enjoy
Progress

You guys good?
Lift your skirt a little
Show us a bit of what you've got
Under your vowels between your aspirations
and your imagination is not in these words is it
is it in these woods when we hear what we are
all are skittering about with some explanatory look
become explained away when the sound rains down
inside the cellular convulsion i'm poking about for

Something
                to say
Said
                tasty
Something
                to be
Said
                meaty
Something
                to have
Said
                look
Railing
               I say
Railing
              Hold on

a study of beauty the musicality
of the bulging awareness or not
in d issonance to assonance we cling like
wet cabbage leaves in the porcelain sink
some things are bet ter finely ground
i have found such handsy syllables

out of grasp conflationary soup for one
is seasoned and ready tho i bought a mix
inhalations of craven veins distilled no salt
have you felt of vanquishing a foe whole
you see i have these episodes of nerves quit ting
at beginnings middles and ends or otherwise

and so dear readers our hero wanders away
delirious in a narrow band of certainty
held tightly by something other than hands

What a word
that'n

want
don't

want to
do

less
no more

please
i can't take it

more
or
less

not even mentioning
it's  cousin

blow




Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Quick sheets and
     threads of tomorrow
     under my fingers
          some smooth and soft
          some coarse and cutting

I'm stumbling on surprises
     of sudden silence

     yesterday is always underfoot
     and too slippery to stand upon

So I sit
     myself down here

To wander in small spaces
To wonder in inky bits
To one day in a series
     of discontinuities
     of land receding
     of time curling up
     of days
     with crispy burned edges
     and quickly cooling tea
     for one



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Got the call
hour ago

Uncertain

It was
50 years of dying

In a 62 year
life

Stop

If you live
for sympathy

Need people
to feel bad

for your
sad circumstance

Stop

What landed
there

A sister
falling

free.

Beneath eyes
Lies

Screening
for truth

Your day

Sideways
if found

Stay submerged
why don't ya

Nothin' here
Not even u


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

Landing it
is more universe
sounding from your
strike

When a day gongs

to your effort
alone or one of
a wave you've
put your shoulder

Ring the bell
that oscillates existence
swing you hardening
resonation

Crescend up the beach
of night's tunings
reach the bar
be one with me

I see this distance
and I rue

these spaces
we ante up

i fill up with
this stuff

at you spew
hope something grew

reach i  am reaching
an even pour draught

of making stuff up
uncertainly

A notwhich for lunch
fully satisfied me
and I laid in for an
afternoon silvan
listing forward now
as if i was getting away
an'd outrun something

foreground against
background as if
it had a chance

sand makes the inevitable
course gritty
or is it nifty\

and its a self same shame
we are contained
by savage rite

and spend our days
swinging knives
and seeming sure

I'm not sure
we should be
or are

I am connected to the network
I am of type human
I am excited to be here
with you

I can't seem to go backwards
or forwards
from here
It seems to stay with me
and not
I seem to be always here
while here and I
are never the same

While we are connected
in this slippery when
What do we want
a reading from the book
of alive and i can prove it

While and when
we crave these wavelengths
that never satisfy the hunger
we want to throb
to become one without
knowing

Vibrant at once
we are there
leaping from one
unknowing
for the higher one
past knowing

free your stew-***
of opinions
of your false stirring
and be stirred
be sunrise

Well, non-readers
would be more
less-poetic
While wrapping
my gift
around their heads
looking, of course,
the other way
taken
to be sold off
as lichens

I'd write a good one
if i was sure what that was
so i write these epistles
hoping for sound missiles
getting erstwhile thistles
of gisticles mostly indigestible

What insight
to a mind
do you seek?

Or is it the simple
beauty of
a sound

Does this
bring
you round?

Or versus
what / in
your mind

Do you
live
to opine

this small
effort's
value in time

and this
you should
know

is always
a slow
dance

always a dance
rather
i swallow slower

being nearer
to what's in
hear waiting

I've sweat time down
'til it gave up
admitted
all it's chicanery

the pinball nature
of the plan
that got you here
wearing that


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

I'll crush you

I'll crush you
an' your hard
mentionables

I'll crush you
unless you turn out
to be a higher form of life
which happens
really really often

Such that  you would think
I would get a clue
you worthless reader
and I am bereft of hope

barely can I type on
reporting the ebbing state
running my almost arms
onto  oh onto this forever

Writing poetry
seeking ***
anyone else
hundreds of years
behind times

It's a small thing this answer I have
like a breeze settling itself down
in the bowls of now's hollows
It's the smoothness of night's light
blurring off the edges of silk shadows
where something rests something must
Be turning this air over my arms my back
turning me in to the stirring from dream
frozen to some lost artifice of dark song
it's reinventing it's just venting it's just

I find myself here 'neath waves
of ascertainment an' perspicacity
raking out corners of something
Having taken care of the horse
and the prehensile i moved on
to the choreographer's *******
And the question guilt-free laughs
at my stagefright what is peace

join a system
to attain value
tho I thought
I was the MVP
on my birthday
in mom's arms
accept a system
or be devalued
accept a system
and be devalued
us outsiders
us lowriders
don't like the system
of systems humans
kinging hills
netting
daily kills

I'm wondering if it's gratitude
the universe dies for
I thought it was life
at all costs and any rent

and then what then
a shiny expensive hen
what is the ringing sound
I have been brought to ground

out I am ground out of here
so now I am where the lyrics are
wishing I was where the girls are
and imbibing along quite in sync

and time decides to say thanks
there is a fluttering and I am keen
to know where it has been since
and whether or not I've been seen

Izzat sublimation
or usurpation

underwater
and wet participation

in combination seeking
permutation

my surrender
without confrontation



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

You effin *******
what the f are you going on about?

Your latest heartbreak?
Eat it up.
Eat it the **** up.
Really.  It is delicious.

Your horror at the world's indifference to
(fill in the ******' blank)
Eat that too
******' humans

you are always right
they are always wrong
you win
they die

they win
you die
more
get made

them *******
effin *******
are going to die
too

we all will

and then we'll be replaced
by about 9 billion

***** ******'
*******
poeting about mostly
the same *******

my heart is broken
I'll cut myself
I'm a misfit
**** me

*******
you lazy poet
you're the *****
of unfuck

this world already
******* in heat
between these lines
****

and there you have it
sports fans
the game
is afoot

lines out of time
still resonate
******' nevermore
sings in my head

and you
read this
and wonder
if I'm a poet

I wonder
what your little ego
needs here
a heart?

**** me
can
i have one?
please.

Pretty please
with sugar on top
it is all i need
to sleep tonight.


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

We should never
create a hate campaign
I heard a politician say
on Amanpour and Co.

They say it is not hate
we just love how we are
Love which excludes
is the same as hate

This evening
she walked in
and out
left in a pout
I did say something
very evil

I am certain
I did

I have some
confusion
as to what
as is usual

My capacity
for inadvertent
evil
is only exceeded
by my capacity
for inadvertent
okay

So I make it all
okay
seemingly
well you know
but don't laugh
at my necessaries

You feel this collapse
You fear the crushing
Your bones the frightened leap
too late
Already in the lion's mouth
His implacable need to eat
Doesn't know who you are
Doesn't know you think you're more important Than lunch
Doesn't know about your love
of children

You feed yourself to him
unquietly
What's you wonder
Will he accomplish
With you in him
Thinking you are
More then lunch
Is the error you made
You might even be
talking dinner

Wanting
Not being wanted

Nothing
lives in that switch

Waiting
to take you in

I don't give this space a sniff
'cause the smell of poetry

i want to say rankles
it's a push off of my own

this heat and smell an'
deciding on words oh my

the delicious and furious
tossing of sounds for this one

this ****** of a phrase
drawing your lips unhurriedly

I understand why the computers
in the matrix used us for energy
some humans are lightning to me
this sizzling sparking lighting up
one here

well i don't know anything now
do i

Cold fries, red wine, a chocolate shake
a salty head warming shiver board
how do these things rescue me
and curse me at the same time

Globs of protoplasm
walk about freely

Engage in seemingly
meaningful behavior

Seemingly meaningful
people like me

Bridge something
maybe no more  than that

the rest
"sound and fury"

is funny when taken
so seriously

a weld in time
holding then to now