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ERR Jun 2012
Careful to make respectful steps, she padded lightly through
The grass a weaving wanderer
Investigating the stone garden with
The ashen faced man calling her name
He was perverted, but insightful
And he shared the roots of the stone trees
A wealthy merchant lay with
A poor laborer
Side by side and synchronized demise-wise
Death, the pale guide said, is the great equalizer
Life is not fair; Death is.

Pictures marked the grander tombs and one caught
Her searching eyes, reptile
Slither serpent slinks and eats circular self loop
Symbolizing eternal, consume-die resume
The local ghost noted vert reaching rest stones
******* competition in the inadequate hereafter

A corvidae watched, perched: “wait your turn”, then fly sky
The cold wind eavesdropped on
Her chestbeat, early cycle thumps (time) to spare
Knowing her fear
The winded skeletons of the stone garden howled like wicked tuning forks
ERR Jun 2012
You are why men build monuments
The real things
The beautiful things
They are simple; they are temporary
Will your jagged photon flash strike twice, impossible?
The sands of time spilled from the hour glass
Long to be struck on their beach, melted to window
To be transparent at last in your return

In a shipwreck near the shore men swim to
Supposed safety, and almost make it but lose
Strength, and
Die in your violence too soon
They swam but now they float, the sky lit like celebration in the tempest

The complexity of a mindseed ends in day form
Expand and react, ebb and flow the empty
Bottle captain stagnant he sails nowhere from
An observable exhibit, he goes down with the lady
And drowns in consumable liquid could spare but she quit
Drinking, the none empty bottle captain crashes
Parched on the grains
She isn't
Coming back
ERR May 2012
How do you make your writing unique
I asked, how do you create images that no one has seen?
The poet answered
The trick, he said, is not to create the unseen
It is to describe things everyone sees
In a novel fashion
Have you ever seen water?
Sure, I said, everywhere, what does that have to do
With anything?
Well, he replied, snowflakes are made entirely
Of water, which is everywhere, and yet
They are each unique
One does not need to invent a substance
He needs simply to use it in a special way
Make snowflakes from the water around you

Interesting, I thought, but where do
The ideas themselves come from? How do you capture them and write them?
The poet smiled at this; I most certainly do not capture them
Imagine catching butterflies with your bare hands
If you ****** them in flight, you will damage their wings
And you will not have the beautiful creature you wished to obtain
If you allow them to approach you, however, or approach them gently
You will maintain their level of excellence
And when they are finished they will
Float away, weightless

Wow I said, what a wonderful scene
But how do you know to believe in these things, in what you write?
The poet chuckled
Well, he said, they were apparently able to move you
And I just
Made them up
ERR May 2012
Trying to clean
With a sponge
That is just as *****
As the plate

The soap doesn't help
ERR May 2012
Maktub saw the light at the end of his tunnel
It approached him with a barbaric screech
Doppler shifting to piercing, painful pitch
On the wrong side of tracks he watched the train charge past
In his new freedom, he explored the station
Wandering through the grimy halls by
Too-busy roaches scurrying from the bright
A burpy crumple lump sat propped against the wall
Reeking of sick and
Filth and dead liver
Maktub bought him a sandwich
And left it on his lap, with a dead president
On whose face he had jotted a blotted
Don’t drink me
The *** woke to this, and
Bless you friend, jaundiced beam
Bless you back, sir
Restored faith in (chances) chances

Some teens whizzed unpaying under turnstiles
On rolling boards, lying on their backs and holding bags
Maktub found them clever and pursued
In a secluded spot they made aerosol spray mural
Mischievous hands intricately crafted as cans blasted
Through their mist emerged a mighty orb of life
And in blackness round twinkled possible worlds
He admired their vandalism; art is everywhere, he thought
At sound of step the mural makers
Dashed, leaving colors and can
Maktub raised it, unfamiliar, and finished the wall with
We are one

Returning to his platform, he saw that more had gathered
And a strumming bard, milk eyed, fluttered notes with dancer’s grace
Her voice sent shivers down his spine and lifted him in spirals
I would recognize the
Song of God, he thought (and I know where he is)
The screeching came again, and Maktub
Leaned to watch, eager for his light
His train had come to take him home
He was calm
He was ready
ERR Apr 2012
Successes plus failures
Divided by lifetime
Does not equal a man
You are more than the sum
Of the moments you cannot relive
And the moments you cannot undo
Freedom breathes in the insignificant
Recollection is not your prison
Peaks speak loud in passing
While the footprints line the level ground
When travelling the shortest distance
From B to D
Remember your straight line
Intact
ERR Apr 2012
The transparent roof covered her from sudden precipitation
Ice pellets pelting the ground around as she waited for the bus
The shufflers and grumblers huddled in the booth for cover share
Riddled with cold holes from liquid *******
Look at them, she thought
Untold stories in a crowd
Grey figures among the concrete and the puddles
Blank pages thickening unread novels
Returning home to stagnant plots and forgettable characters
On the auto she scanned the library for research-relevant titles
A fairy tale cuddled publicly, all lips and hands and smiles
An anthology with stained sections and shredded, well-worn binding
Scribbled frantically to transfer himself to more unpublished page
Give up, she wanted to scream
Paper dies and no one reads
No longer did she believe in hidden literary gems
Far too many friends had rushed their tales
Conclusions writ in sharpie slop
Conclude she had in pencil but the writing hand would never stop
Not for cramps of authoring nor material that she lacked
Not until the cover closed
From which there was no flipping back
Perhaps I am an article, she thought
Meant to be short and skimmed
A brief point to be made and greater issue slapped within

She wondered something dreadful then, a tremor in her bones
She never understood the other chapters, stories, poems
Reflecting in her epilogue, would she even know her own?
My pen was never full
I am illiterate
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