The breeze and pastel sundown remind of life
Door slam to same car, in same spot, in same lot
Strange hand drops modified food in squeaky
Cart, and they won't taste like anything
Same faces, same line
Grumpy man makes same cashier cry
We catch eye
And she doesn't remind
Of anything
Same turns, same drive
Lids open, same home
Answer phone, fine, same old
Voice on line doesn't
Sound like anything
Strange hands touch trinkets on dusty shelf
But there are no memories
Chipped edges, ridged wrinkles, don't feel like anything
Strange hands open shades
Trees are bare, scattered warm
Stuffed in bags, piled high
Hadn't noticed anything
Body moves, mouth lies, passion friend and hobby fade
Mind set, decision made
And yet
And yet

The wood floors screeched and scraped
As she yanked her bed aside
In a crazed hunt, sweeping for
Scraps; anything would do
A pinch, a taste, a crumb
She plucked the dirt and dust from chemical gems
Pooling the fragments in mounds
Sweat poured down her wrinkled brow
The room steamy from summer and glowing screen
Full of jobs she would not get, and friends she could not call
And music that had lost its mystery
A world she could not follow
Drawn shades and stinking clothes

Stash spots scoured, links to lenders soured
Pocket and purse empty funded
She collected her meager treasure
And consumed
Mush minded marsh of good and guilt

It wasn’t
Enough, it was never enough
Unsteady and emaciated bag of lone bones
Dials never-call-Paul, desperate
Hey baby, trade you a
Hit for a hit
Modded whip picked her up with mechanical lion roar
Of engine souped
Drag king down to explore

He handed her a zip, and a piece
Do your thing
She choked it down water eyed
His hand, a scorpion on her thigh

What is this, she asked
Lights divided; kaleidosynchro swimmers and dancer faces
Sounds sludge oozing and brain train no conductor
She faded in and out
Half aware that he was
Taking his turn to the same rhythm
Car behind a dumpster

Paul gyrated brutally, from every angle
Raw skinned and full of disease
It’s ok, it’s just me
You wanted this, he panted
In the ear of a tangled pile of limbs
Whose name escaped him

Pants hiked and belt buckled, they moved
She was sore, and hit more
By the time they stopped again, cold napping

The racer rolled into his chop shop
And the swarm huddled
Mechanics, painters, draggers, part lifters, negotiators
Muscled, scarred, tattooed, and greedy eyed
He let the mob have their turn
And they plowed her on the hood
One, another, another, two
Stretched and wrecked and broken
Across the street, a neighbor puffed a camel
And watched

Who is she, anyways?
I don’t know, just
Some
*****

He carried her to her room, left her
Half alive but wide eyed
The rest is in your pocket, I gave you extra
Because I’m a nice guy

She crawled into the shower, where she leaked pink drops
And her tears were invisible
Sobbing, and rocking, and scrubbing
Exhaled her high from an empty bag
I can’t go on

When I die
Don’t be sad
It won’t change a thing
And I’m not coming back
If you care so much
Lets be happy now
Together

When I go, don’t pick pretty things
Sweet petaled flora
Piling the dying on the dead
Instead, plant me something colorful
Make sure it gets water, and sun

When I leave
Don’t whisper angry should-haves
Or wish you’d let me know
Start writing
I would love to hear from you

Read more
Help a stranger, or someone you hate
Commit yourself to something
Quit a self-destructive habit

When I’m gone
Talk to me
I’ll listen

Think about things that make you cry
And be braver than you are numb
Pray, even when you've stopped
Believing or think it’s dumb

When I’m done
Don’t march in black, or be scared to use my name
Celebrate your own vitality
Tell stories and remember
I hope I made you laugh
Drink and hug and live
And say to that creeping specter
That ever looming doom
To *******
Not today

Don’t hold grudges
All love comes from forgiveness
Of self
Challenge your ideas
It’s alright to be wrong

After me
Keep living

When you are empty
When you are down
When your winter soul is a frigid void
Feel my mitts on your tense shoulders
And the warmth of my arm’s cocoon
Swim in my eyes
Let me heal you, let me soothe

When you doubt it most
When there is only sting and ache
I will be with you
I will love you

You will never be alone

He liked to travel after the
War, he said
His father had explored Japan
With a friend and two local lady guides
Happily snapping culture shock
Soaking in the landscape
Partaking in practices exotic and strange
They went to a sushi restaurant, and
This is before they had that stuff in the cafeteria
Calamari alarmed the two
Polite tasters but face contort and twister
His father a dab, his friend: a bite
The girls laughed and finished the squid, raw alright
And they left, owner eyeing as they go
New tourist destinations but
Their stomachs start to plummet
The girls drop sick and writhe and twitch
And kick
As he gets all three to the
Hospital, where he is suspected

Manages to get authorities
To the restaurant, where owner
Sees two ghosts walk before his
Face, and random ****** cyanide
Lies waiting

The girls went violently
His friend had a piece removed
His father, still going strong
Though he’d always been
A little gassy

Tonight I saw the fullest
Moon, there were no
Shadows or pock marks on her
Face, beauty lune
Streaming silvery ribbons
Through the clumpy clouds
Through the night
Through my path, and me
And I was
In that moment
Fleeting and electric
Lucid and apologetic
Empty lunged and
Satisfied
In that Pompeii moment
I was not dead, or dying, but
Preserved
In that mercury, I felt tomorrow
In that quicksilver, I told
God my plans, and
Together, we
Wept

I found a little broken bird
Feather light, sweet and disturbed
Chirping loud offensive bursts
Flapping wild dance on curb

I wouldn’t dare cage her so
She roamed free
Regained her wings at home with me
Caught off guard the way
She handled hits
Violent when she sings

Shouldn’t stop, but golden made
Path strayed and dropped busy day
Comfort melted by my blue
So full of charity

Flew away one night, new tree
After all did not need me

Speed up, said Angel
Don’t pump it, smooth
These people cruise, I drive

Over six, wide and heavy tatted
Bald head cold eyes

Pay attention, stupid
He tapped log ash into
Cigarette box trash
Hands rugged and rough
Great deserts full of highways
Barren, arid, brutal

He held Lane’s finger in a vice
Casually, without effort as he
Squirmed and wormed and begged, full
Body efforts failing
H-drained skeleton unable to muster muscle

Angel loosened his grip, to allow
Some circulation mercy (stay on that positive ****)
We dodged Victoria crowns and
Made smoke monsters with our lips and
Tongues, watched our sins cloud-crafted
And float fade privately

Want a clam strip? Said Lane
Want a granola bar, want a cookie?
Want a strawberry?

Ya, no, sure, maybe later
We stopped for some disgusting sidegrub
And pressed on into the mountains

Talented feline peaks I peep, winding
Green tree ever-stretch left-right-wise
Central concrete snake swirls higher
Our cabins line the rocky river trail
We joke about fighting bears

The thugs bunch and separate
Breakfast with Chewbacca
The wooks sit in sun, tangled
Wool clump hair strands smell

Angel had complained about taxes
Uncle Sam taking perks
The hippie wooks against
Government and Blue Law
From behind cigarettes (**** jar [stuffed])
Injured on the job, collecting
Unemployed, collecting
Tripping, bumming, badly strumming,
Hustling, collecting

Lisa is a toothpick and she has the blowsy jitters
Moon pupils grind tooth, sniff nose hard ball hitter
Saw no shame in her strip pay
I would vouch for her when they tore apart her room

Hipsters half trying and
Lumberjack draft drinkers
No place for thinkers or clean
Shady music belly festival
Drone guards drain cancer
From lit sticks for nic fix
Ritual, and bored means

Twelve hour rain sessions
Can I see your pass?
At my gate

A questioning look
I’m Warren Haynes, he said(?)
Nice to meet you, said sheep
Oh, and Les may come
Walking in here

Terry stood with me through the torrential
The first crowd name I learned
Revisit on the daily
Easy spotted in the thousands
I made stupid jokes
And she
Laughed
At them

The final night of jam
There was sun, there were stars
In my new backstage post I heard Phil and his friends
I made every bus, some
Friends, shot ****
The time type where nothing’s wrong
Volunteers brought water
Marshal’s girl, a chicken kebab
No sitting on the job!
From crowd Terry jester
A stranger gave a moonshine gift
Another, a hug and said well worked

A tie blue dye hippie dippie
Looked at a beautiful woman in a dress
I would totally **** that
*******
Disgusted

Even he can’t damper
At night I hear a sweet beat
A boots and cats boxer master Rob
The Mortar Mouth
And DJ Caesar
Laid back tracks collaborated
As the Tree narrated
We three held the jam
Classic, dream fulfilled
(Dead ***)

Chris shows me nerve ache
In a once stabbed high cheek bone
We guard the stage against
Ghost town robbers trudging sticky fingered

Mister Chicken sips from his confederate
Mug and sloppily asks to sneak, surprising kind
He brings me water and a meal
I pretend to check his wrist and
He hops the wrong fence

The Celtic tattoo on
Mike’s neck reads
My brothers mean everything to me
Latin ink, he tells me of the
Shapely thing in loose skirt
Up the stairs, not a thread
He stands all day on a
Broken back, brightens
Gloomy shifts with smiles

Andy loves his family
And promises to sing his
Grandmother’s favorite
Song when she dies
Every note he practices
Is a jagged pill to swallow
His voice haunts like
Newspaper faces
Or last words whispered

I watch the sun rise as
Magenta melts the mountain mist
And drift off counting constellations

They beat my friends’
Faces in the woods
Pinned them down
And slug, slug, slug, SLUG!
A phone call poorly thought, retaliation
Car rolling heavy pulls by, cuts me off in
A gas station as I walk
Home, hey do you know your way
To the hospital, said thugs?
Then
I walked by the hospital several later and
Another auto threat
You got out, and approached
Intimidated,
Bullied
Now, hearing how you
Crawled home with
Soon-to-be-fatal knife plunges
Desperate for family, at the end
I mourn you
Conflicted
I hope you
Found
Peace

If you write,
You will realize monstrous things about
Yourself and instead of disappearing they
Will become more eloquent and delicately
Marble carved with years
If you write,
You will hear voices, so many voices
Hypothetical and begging with pain in their
Breath to be made real and feel and **** and die
Only you will see their funeral, know their laugh
If you write,
You will cry oil spills, ***** fruit salad
**** rainbows and beg for grey, murky, bland
The depths pressure crushing; gasping through the highs
The concept mood stretched, you are alive, alive, alive
If you write,
Your shutter flashes double photoed through the day
Will capture the minutia, have your living stuck in past
Endless film rolls overstimulated, document and shelve
Closing eyes, retroactive architect works back
You should write because
To create is to love is to master the manifest
Ink your livelihood eternal, ivory-flesh crumbles and decays
There are those that love the idea of you
You left footprints in the sand
Because
When the silver screaming godgasm hits
You serendipitously and a moment
Feels worth writing down
Things can be right for a while
You will fall in love
Everywhere you go and
Nothing will seem real
You will taste redemption in the
Crunch of an apple or smell wisdom
At the zoo

So sad to find a logic late
A natural path overgrown
No one cleared this for me-
Yet it should have been my own

So sad to love a life of late
And ***** at a mirage
To curse a certain sentence
Ever present ‘spite the cause

To have the capability to contemplate an alternate
And thus run the torture film, inner tunes in; tormented
To self-realize levels of dangerous strength
Like wise fruit fermented
Are
The
Memories
Cemented?

So sad to find a passion late
To negate chemical downs and all-round soul frowns
Art could free him from the dungeon depths
But he broke his hands wiggling in chains

So sad to watch a life-loss chosen, growth frozen
A body left behind as our balloon leaves child hand
If only there had been a way to know, I watch me go
I would have liked to be an older man (but can’t swim back to act)

So sad to wake in sweat and fear much more what lies in wait
The paranorm in fullest form flank forces at my gate
Dynamic choices turn to question voices, I enigma
Long to heal and feel as steel despite the fight and stigma

It's over, she smashed
Overhead frame doublethrown shatter sequence
Jagged pane slid under my door
No, stop!
I heard her crunch, bleed, crunch,
Bleed
Spiteful footsteps painting
Sad smiles across the boards
Red-you-never-enough streaks of a disturbed, lead licked artist

I opened the door to
Investigate and saw the picture torn
The floor well-worn with post-love stomping, great glass gashes
On feet and elsewhere

She had carved the distress, the
Abandonment, the
Rage with which she became
The animal
Made him a masterpiece shrine of her torture
Made him watch from his throne
Made him feel his control
Made him ache with consequences

I’m free, she thought
Walking through hell
He’s gone

In his baggy sweaters, he looked
Like a dress-up child or hexed shrunk in swimcloth
He scratched a ticket with the
Vending slug he found on the ground
A grand!
But none did he share to Sam
Who drove his ***
And bought it nonetheless!

He had taken to sticking himself
Draining hot spoons, a fiend for G-I-between beans

In the back of a heavy whip, fading and yolk faced
I'm so glad to
Have you around, guys
Nod (always hit hard for such a noodle) and nausea

They carried him newbridewise inside
Cracked his head on the door frame as
They passed his invisible
Father and mightuzz wellbe mumdrunk
Left him on his pillow where he
Spun into Z world, final dream

Sam collapsed when we
Got the call and I could see in his
Raw face and ****** dog-vision hair the loss
He would sacrifice much more
Than that ticket to
Reverse
A friend

Another beauty down in mill town

The fish does not understand
Water
But the stray-nine
Understands home

Sometimes it takes an absence
A negativity, a darkness

From the dust dream rises
Like stars from the void
Someone rides an elevator up
Your spine and
Bridge
The direction is born

Soul tendrils extend and
Embrace tender lock of we
Season together

The fat men starve before the
Peasant because they
Have never really
Ached
In their stomachs
In their bones

When you live in famine
Scraps can sustain

And yet

Will you still notice the
Seven shade cycle rainbow-nectaring
From the street lanterns?
Or the

Diamonds
In ivory fro-banks glittering sparks?

When you are full
Will you

Ponder the pulsar’s violence?

Will you
Spare the stranger and Samaritan oft?

When you are full

Don’t lose it
Sadness is
Your prism
Choose the spectrum
Transcend the neut and stag

You can be their Atlas
They
Need
It

Writhing, the screeching leviathan demands
And I cave to save the aching from tricky time slopes
Pained craving
Wavering but
Hit and
It’s all loosey goosey goodness
Sensing silent magma pulse, whoosh the tummy tingles
Droopy ears gape-face giggle no more nowadays
A stern turn in old age the silly phase of
Too bright, neon common numb tongue rambles
Secedes into introspective
Crowded walks, broken talks strung into threats clustered and
Flung like monkey **** at many-stabbed ego, Brutus?
Strangers will eat you
The professor thinks I’m funny because
I know the answers in class
The other day Dingus
And Whoseewhatsee tried to alley mug and hurt and end
And money!
No, rocked nose ran dude! Fine
Trying not to fear the outdoors, though
The arthropods and phantoms tell me ***** jokes
And not to eat my candy

Books melt into soupy mercurial elixir
I slurp them and belch
Educating myself in a barn ******* knowledge
On loud faces; empty meat
Where you can hear the jingly metal
Thing when you shake it, it’s dead no flower
They don’t always like me
But
I’ve got the jeepers creepers behind my peepers
And a million lightyears to burn
Truth is worth dying
Four **** sow
Izzeny thing these daze
Maybe it was a bust from the start but there’s
Always art
Quieting the plague that revealed
Not so good after all

Tiny thorns and all-consuming
Waves of red-get-out wrenching, gutted like a fish
Overcome, that never went away or found
A place to sit
Memories arthritic grind a grim gray whetting stone
Reduce with juice-cloud, grape teeth cough will never find a home

I said no and
Backed away he made
Advances anyway and groping
Goblin hands tried to pilfer what Venus
Owes man
“The Inheritance”
My crop shall rise
From your field I claim this
Land in the name of
Man
With his grabbing
Paws he bent her over the
Bed, to get on with it

She trembled, teary then
He lifted my skirt up, I shouldn’t have
Been wearing it
He was really messed
Up, maybe if I hadn’t looked so
Willing, so easy

I
Asked
For
It

I couldn’t believe the
Blame, even as it fell from her
Hung head and
Hidden face

It
Wasn’t
Your
Fault

Socialized to please the guys
Why?
Victims hating self, non-believers, mental health

I’m not liking college
She confessed
Where’s the safety net?

And then she walked back to
Missing friends and
Silent pain and
Ambulance calls for alcohol’s
Waterfalls and consequences
Fading details and
Stories cops won’t believe

What were you
Wearing, they asked her
Were you drunk?

It
Wasn’t
Your
Fault

You spoke to me again
I thought you were done visiting
But awoken, your form the cause to stir

Things have been different
Sometimes, just sometimes
I admit, the image
Of you disappears and I doubt
If you were real

Food tastes different
Trees grow strangely
People are boring

I think about
Where, or what
You are

When I died, my
Body seemed
So
Suffocating

I laughed more, at
Serious things
No pain in the
Hot or sharp

Do you live like exhaled cigarettes, silent and
Blending sick with winter breath?
I was adrift above the city
Same as smog, but heavy dropped and return
Forever, then
You must have kept on rising

Why continue to show self to
Me when there is nothing to be helped
On and gone accepted was a blessed dressing on stretched messy testing
Of mortal skin ripped many over?

Tap dancing the Morse message
On the sensitive ruby stillflow stream
That had loved you goodbye
Final

I love the nightwalks
With the ghouls and spirits
And giggling about what it
Is to be beyond

But the bond is a brain is a broken is a binding
Paper signing
To be a devil is a labor
When waging daily
War one wakes weary

I see why you don’t often
Come back but
“I will again”
Anticipation?

Tingle with the sensory tense
Of the Vanishers who
Smile in reflections half seen
And questioned
Slipping back into shadows
Of inner eyes
And thunder storms
Of the mind

Most days it is felt in the bones
Sometimes it moves to my
Soap, or my
Belt, or my
Lighter, I burn it into
****** circles in whatever page I scar
I feel it in my hands when it
Flows in peace, sweet release
I never feel it in my guitar, I thank

A harmless exoskelocreeper darts along the
Wall and the sick pit of belly says ******!
But things have been so
Transparent of late I would hate to
Move and sad statue watches crawling, powerless

These stones we lug, do they make us strong?
My back sores with
More pain than progress

I feel it when they speak
The stinking breath of some
Who have never looked up
Or did and got dizzy frailneck

I feel it in the not now

I feel it in the dreams
Where waking comes after death

I feel it in the mornings
Planting palmonn wall to balance liquid lover
I swear, I went right
Through it like
I wasn’t even
There
Becoming less of something lately
Or, more of a slim
Quantum chance (?)

It is like we walk among the
Subterrain thinking we are
Open air, I can hear the
Footprints above, everywhere
And the true sky beyond imagination
I can feel it
When they haven’t
Flown
We reach and
Reach like emerging
Gravewalkers, desperate
For something
Sun on our hands, run them through
The breeze and think we’re free

When it rains, blind grasp
Turns out not the soothsayer
We question the water no origin exposed

I feel it in the mirror
And in groups
I feel it in the hairs on the back of my neck
I feel it in everything
My beautiful virus

Something
Is not right

The never sever southbound downtown train
Everdrops and allfalls closed doors no stops
Connection to some muggy station
In the underfar race flash brights
Flickering advertisements
Even though
One wheytic kit no wheyback toob aye this

Shouldn't have stepped in;
Waited for the next
I watch slimyung guards eyeing pockets
At the door sticky nimble pickclaws

Can't switch over
Now so
Headphones on cancel all

Maybe I'll like
Where I get off but
My seat keeps feeling smaller
As I prepare not to be

No suppose, no should, is being only
Directionless
Losing all
I flow, I flow

The train screeches often
So the headphones amplify in soundrown
Commitment to a ride
I know how I will go slow

What does it feel like, they ask
To die in front of
Strangers who
Kick you?

Peacefully I soared

Allfalls are morphine, headstash rush save from poppy within
No pain is our gift of leathless dife
Disintegrate and One spread

They never believe
Me
So the Ghost
Wanders

His power and passion
Once concentrated explode forth into the vast
In the empty then condensed

Living infinite deaths

Some lives only day stretch, yet
Others the fiery sentinels
Burn a while in silence

Through cycle develops
Animism despite the ever schism
Of us and them, fluid flow of made-of-same
Takes many forms of flora fauna

Slowly, they learn
Gradually, they feel

The experience increasingly complex
Dynamic systems free the body
And mind can unleash in leisure

Wondering, what if
I am?

And with that, he is capable
Of being conscious of
Himself

Some robots sip
Coca Cola and
Send each other text messages
The fog of shadowalking on the daily
Hangs a bit heavy but the
Diamond filter for stimulation makes
Life shine, though it's a hard one

Memories have become marauders
Stashing treasure in a hidden sand they won't know
I celebrate you
Secretly

Or escape from you;
I watch the cloud of the runaway noise pain
Clotting into grim ghosts
They do not listen to the gouhways

Why do they fear life
As much as death
When they split the faces
Of an endless coin(?)
In the dark pocket jingling away
Metallic music to somewhere

Nimble digits, soft and dexterous
Ran the narrow neck of soul strings and hollow body ever-carried
Her holy harmony captivated
She sang his tortured mind to rest
Lullaby, there is some peace yet to be
For broken bones

They shared skin to save words
Dumb warm speech
Comfort of a temporary embrace

When her voice seasoned his bland
There was taste again
He loved her as
She flew away
Melody engraved

The nuns did not have much
But they valued all
And truer, fuller days filled with chores
Passed the sun-moon-suns
Some nights the mountains
Were cold, so they gave her hot coals
Their bodies thin and fragile, impossibly resilient
Winter; cup of animal fat
Thirteen years, cooking for twenty peers
In lessons learned foreign tongue
From her alien education, taught too

She passed her blue-star-blues
Painting sweetened hues
The elevation and scene in dripping sweeps of brush
Nepal became even more
Beautiful on paper
And behind thoughtful eyes

A tourist hands a wood carver
Several years salary, is this
Enough?
Masterpiece etched given free petty possessions
Empty handed back to hungry mouths
Fulfilled and satisfied

At night the unpolluted bright
Reflected off the lake; God smile
Rocky range round in isolation
The wind, for once
Whispered truth

She inhaled the honesty, and reunited art
With canvas
The Earth shook, no one else felt it
But she knew
And happy filled a forgotten face
In wise silence

We danced drunk on the bridge
You held me safe and
Liked how I smelled, arms protective

It had been years since we’d
Loved each other
We were alone, so we didn’t have to worry
About the way out

You wanted me to go with
But I felt I had already crossed the line
In head
So I said no

And then

You gave me the
Look, for the first time
The same look
You gave me when I was
In the bus, leaving
For the airport

It was the most hurtful
Gaze I have ever seen

I think it’s going
To haunt me forever

In pocket a postcard
With this bridge upon
But I cannot send

Tear to shreds and
Empty bottle stuffed, dead

The conditional form makes me sick, I don’t
Say goodbye forever, or maybe
I do

Even a bad rock
Skips with a good toss
Not everyone is born
Flat and smooth
If holding a bumpy one
You just have to
Throw harder
And meet the water
At its level
Splash
Splash
Splash
They glide too

The flashlight, we explained to the campers
Is so captivating because it brings light
To dark places
Combining the positive
And negative within, you can
Bring enlightenment to the world
One circle of clarity
At a time, illuminate your
Path, or that of another
Step by
Step

Under flickering streetlamps, tongues and soles
Slapped happy paced on concrete in retreat
All around the Shadows tore limbs from quaking cores
Panting, sweating, exhausted,
The Adam ducked by a moaning body
A blue, authority stripped as he suffered in a puddle
No one, he croaked
Is safe
The Darkness leaked from his wounds
The Adam ran again before he faded into night

Cars were totaled, stranded smashed and broken
Exhaust still polluting from dead engines
The roads in ruin littered with expensive empty things
Crunching underfoot as The Adam waded weary
Abandoned, the city crawled with ugly sin
Black creatures feeding on human remains
Plucking victims from the excess
Grinding, punishing teeth gnashing

Some ran, but the
Onyx ones caught them eventually

Junkers injected their Coal colored chaos
Until the Ebony jones snakes slithered
Into their hearts

Seeking sanctuary, The Adam heaved a rock
Through the window of a school and climbed through
Scratchy glass
The carvings in the board stole his sense of safety
****** nail art
“It starts young, the long night”
More of the Tar creatures made raging racket on the
Door then and The Adam ran again
Leaving the malleable minds in their stinking now-done coffins
Full charge down the hall, ram head collision
Teacher turned raving loon the kook grabbed
Him in a vice
The Evil ones had removed most of his face but his
Intact eye focused, and cave shouted
“The only infinity
Are space and
Mind, all else will
Meet its time”
And with that he did

Sick and alone, The Adam wished to escape the pain of
The outside world and spun run spirals to the roof
His beating chest ached and tore, he shed tears no more and
His cavity unleashed
An Obsidian dragon emerged, massive and
Violent upon the night
The stars cried themselves to sleep as
They were eclipsed by Umbra wings

The beast burned the city
Down while The Adam wept
And drifted the darkest demons
Live within, why run

Omnipotent master, not in ocean
But the raindrop
All heat shines spectrum through; illuminate fluid cohesion
Several shades of wisdom painting picturesque arc
Sky high miracle hiding in cloud fall
Pure white of light
Containing color
Water divine
The children catch them in their mouths
Drizzle bringing smiles
A message dripping down
I am with you
Wordless feeling

I stared into your universe
And watched our father
Blow the candle out
The wisps of smoke are haunting
Your warm shot intravenous for
Ever pretty picture

There is no such thing as death
Dog is love

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

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

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

Trying to clean
With a sponge
That is just as *****
As the plate

The soap doesn't help

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

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

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

We call it a casse-tête, she said
A “break head” if you prefer
We are each trying to fill in this
Jagged, fractured outlook
One piece at a time
On occasion you meet a corner
And they unlock for you new progress
(I think I have even found; a foothold in the face)
Others are peculiar, shaped like spilling liquid
Filling unique holes perhaps unknown to undone artists
Our greatest folly as we find our relative perspective
Would be to assume any kind of now-complete picture
We are dove tailed, ami
In ornate carpentry fine fitted
Angles filled with oil drops to help us burn eternal
An esprit ouvert, she said
In your tongue an open mind
The wise do not distinguish
Value forms of every kind

Chimpanzees can learn to recognize
Their own marked bodies
In mirrors
If raised in a space of social welfare and stimulation

We learn
Who we are
Through others
To be is to create
Bridge the synaptic gap and grab a fellow by the dendrites
Spew chemical transmission down their receptors
Until they are a person
If you care for another you will do this
Be the brain

The pressure rises high, my dear
To force our paths apart
Beckon you from afar I do, for current she be ******
Twas for time we children planned, we are rocks and never raft

We were static to the standard when embedded in the bottom
They said the river widens but we stayed and kept our view
Being satisfied to share a partnered spot along the bends
Some rocks require quarry, settled still we need but two

Water rises, water falls, rain retreats and drops again
Yet the levels cannot meddle in a bond so strong as stone
Our pebbles growing from our fusion will meet their river own
They will step across our backs for founding guidance in their path

Even the rocks will fade, my dear
To the lapping of the rapids
We will crumble into silt, I fear
But I want to erode with you
Turn to dust and flow along the way
From permanence to naught
Embracing nothingness until
Our sediment compressed is one

Time stood stagnant as the darkness crept in and distorted surroundings faded
He thought about his first friend, how they’d met
On a beach collecting eponymous Herman ***** by the bucket-full
Her face and name were gone, but she was born August twelfth
His first ice cream cone, the way the green mint melty soup
Ran down his hand; he hated sticky fingers
The comfort in his veins made him cloudy, the track on his inner arm throbbed
He thought about the bully who’d beaten him senseless
For spilling lunch milk on his shoes
And that girl whose clumsiness he’d claimed as his own
Who’d watched without a word and like all left him loner
He remembered his excitement at the first patch of beard
And how he’d stopped going to church when his brother
Finally left that chair and learned to fly
His eyes now drooped to poppy slits, but the flashes were ever blasting
He thought about sleep, his sweet retreat always
And what it was like to have had a family
He remembered a lecture from a physics professor
About chess and universe particles
The eternal contained in the tangible
Infinity carved from wood
The sideways eight ways in which one can be a mortal
And how everything ends the same
The branches become the seed
Can it all be so simple, he wondered
As the apartment floor grew distant
He thought of all the times he’d ****** up
And how in his rearview mirror, he wanted to
Embrace those moments, love them and
Ask them to be godparents to his unborn life
As he kissed the light goodnight, his only regret was
Having so many
He thought of everything
Then
He thought nothing

Sorry I’m late everyone
Crumpled sleeves and neck knotted non-nimbly
With slacks that droop and bag a bit
Making the rounds
The white walls naked and cold, bare floors with no sleepy feet retreat
You look good John, real good
Better without the gravity induced smile and fist full of faith rocks
I appreciate your approval from
The other night, and I plan on asking her soon
Some more faces slumping about through throngs of hushed conversation
Still miss that cooking you know
Or those curls, rasp and break shake grip
My sweet Bear, I will run with you again slinky brother
I still come-to holding not you
Not sure what to make of ya Mike, irksome island soul
Fuzzy blur or silhouette at best but angry you I’m sure
How long will the collection grow?
Another dusty shoebox locked up in the attic

The valentine sky is swept by scotomas
As swooping murders shade the overhead
They dot the broccoli tops
Because they know
Safety not in numbers, but Being is found through others
The swans flap-walk cross the loch
And air their hind to dive
Black and white share fish and space
Because they know
Worms aren’t picky, and eyes are stupid
The brave diablos plummet from the castle ramparts
Clear the cliffs and meet gusts head on
They do not slow their descent
Because they know
Life is not too short, but too long to live with fear
The mallards wade through garbage scraps
Bright male with paler mate
They never leave each other’s side
Because they know
god is in the pair, a worthy life is shared

When the back cover closes
Under a shivering hand and new perspective
The dead come back to your lucid bed body
To chat and save the haunt
Your forehead stays flat and pockets
Could be green, or not
And illness sounds pretty
Good when read aloud
Tummies fill not with pah *** owns
But better, moths
Drawn to unseen lantern looms
And blue is just a note to pass
In a cyclical path from red to
Ultra purp and back
Tomorrow might make you **** yourself
But the fear will keep you warm
Too long do we settle to **** the noxious
And ask for mistakes in body art
Why blot ink
Think
Breathe
Live
Death don’t hurt, so neither will a running start
The fall is plenty long and
Pavement tasted like spring

I must have been facing east
That afternoon, he said
The gold splashed her features
In an alchemist’s deification
Illuminating and delicate, I swam in her soft intricacy
Tumbling evermore as she turned
Lifted, but left standing to eventually
Wander west in wonder
Bitter rays choking oceanic marbles
Set to savor retrospective

One is in the truest sense
Distraught
When passion
Is present
Where talent
Is not

Like
The taste of blood
First high
Hope restored
Her night terrors
Daily routes
Puppy
Scars
Mint and chocolate
Suffocating
The children’s faces
Rock bottom
Real love
Coltrane’s solo
Thirsty roots of a depression tree
Snapping bone
My worst mistake
Our conversations
Antidote is poetry
Mortality
Snow
So many strangers
Permanent pains
The color green
Choosing life instead of
Counting trains in an empty station
A million fibers in
An ugly sweater
You will never be forgotten

You asked me once, jokingly
Which one of us was the reacher
And which was the settler
Well baby, you’re a reach like luna
Before America and space sixty nined
Or Arm was strong
The Harvard to my underachiever
You’re the explorer staking a claim
I’m the protagonist
In a Lee Child novel
I reach and I love you for it because
You were Midas to my life
And if I could bottle and sell what you do to me
I would be fat and rich
Something in your gorgeous double helix
Makes me walk a little straighter
And speak a little louder
They say darkness is the
Absence, not the opposite of light
And you noon my shadow like none other
The heavens to a dreamer
You’re unattainable but that’s the point
I could reach for you
For the rest of my life
And I believe
I will

Every day, she says
I think about that happening
And I want to shoot myself in the face
Don’t you
Dare
Mention that again
She wakes from the remembering, empty
And attempts to rouse a heavy husband
Who doesn’t budge
She downs the stairs
Empties a bottle
Fills an ashtray
And moderates sensation

Some thoughts
Can’t be contained

I met a lover, once
In a diner where the mud was strong
Everyone was honey, and heart attacks were delicious
He gave her a bag filled with
Her favorites, and drizzles of lexicon
(She was the only script he ever burned)
Not a word was returned
But her chatoyant glazzies watered
And he swore for
A moment
She loved him back
Disproportionate, I thought, to the months he'd spent
Planning a tribute for her origin day
Less than I spent on his remembered name
As it trickled down a dampened page
Runny, like he hated his eggs (a shame)
I sipped my mud and wondered
Why do men love rope

Together they lamented a generation with newspaper vision
In a mesh perspective, young and old
I have a bad habit of falling
In love
Everywhere I go, said young
Is that jazz on your record player?
I do believe it is becoming my most passionate affair of all
Each
Skiddly-doo bahp, *** dum walk, deedly-dee
And keyed swung run
Are like wild spirals of fireworks, tie dyed tentacles swirling about
Hugging my weightless all-ear, a train for fractal tracks on-spot created
I hear their hoof beats, and I think zebras
He told old how he intended to learn
To morph his pain to bop
And achieve the wordless cohesion of sardine schools
Through plucked coiled steel, if it cost him all his years
He knew the notes, but now he would conjure color
And shade them through his pineal prism
Until his dancing phalanges could spill coral reefs and sunsets
Old told him how music had saved his life
And in the war he was permitted to leave his truck
To press on black and white, tamed but untrained
The Japan grand was lame, but officers smiled
Some night, he said, when you're smashed and uninhibited
Gather your tools and let your inner self become a melody
When you manage to break your gates in sobriety
You will be an artist
Listen to the wind
Beauty is improvised
He handed young his authored book, which carefully he'd signed
Never lose it friend; your greatest gift is your appetite
They sat in his office while the record spun a standard
Fuzzy magic rang out forever, it seemed
Like signals to space or whale songs through the depths
Most listeners are scared to lose control
Ashes piled as the fire died
But young knew his never would
Him and jazz had fallen in love
That night, he knew he'd lived

He was holding a book of death
Bent, with the pages torn out
Leaving only a crumpled chrome shell
And a fine lighter burn line down the spine
Groggy eyed with an absent mind
He led me to the den for music making
A second sent me untrained vibrations
Out of tune and practice, too; songs from a time now gone
A third paced with pale face and wandered naked in a robe
Shifting eyes as if the spies did roam
He jammed another negative noseblow
They all did in turn
They never learn
They nodded off
Or started to
They mentioned college
For a few
And how they weren’t going anymore but sheep find sleep in woods
And so they should
The time had come to disentangle the knot
Knead the very tissue that their issue had so tightened
To the degree that they could not stand
And head became their bed became their dead
As their chins dropped, lids drooped and bodies slumped into a pile
I forgot that I was sitting straight and had been for a while
Once his percussion became my inward melody and song
I found music in everything I met, life worthy pigment
Sometimes I dream about reading your name
And hearing that you were found a motionless ocean head
I contemplate you
And I
Fade
Away