I don't work for a tangible currency
I slave for digital binary
01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000
While I scribble poetry
Emptying my personal winery

Wandering this dark forest with no guide
Figuring out the labyrinth of the my feeble mind
Evading the sun for melted wax leads to a salty tide
To rejoin the stars so I too can shine

The secret lives that we live
The poems that I write
You have no idea
Not that they are about you
Except this one
And a couple more
Ok, maybe a few.

Life is a soup
and I am a fork
how life slips
and drips on the floor

Yeah, it’s a mess

I had a dream of a dresser
where the dust had settled
as if it were a snowy field
a tribe of pearly white
wind-up C l A t T e R i N g teeth
danced around stirring up dust
one pulled out a cigarette
and began talking

"If you keep this up kid, it'll drive you to **** yourself."

"No, I would never, I could never, how could I even..."

"Give it another year." Those stammering pearls said.

And I did.

I am still alive, if you call this living.

Out of the dark forest I stumbled
onto the pebbles of a moonlit lake
my languid eyes bumbled
swallowing down philter mistakes

a pale goddess in the flesh
how my stupefied eyes stared
at the beauty of her nakedness
something in me flared

flared and turned and burned
my flesh no longer mine
stag in form standing taciturn
she calls out for my canines

I run and try to yell
nothing escapes my lungs
pattering of legs hungry to quell
come to rip flesh with teeth and tongues

stumbling and tripping over
stones, limbs, roots and mud
left to a new life a stag rover
I hear the ******* and the studs

faster and faster I try to move
from this typhoon wave of carnivorous hounds
but curse these feeble hooves
the claws and teeth came crashing around

flesh stabbed with a thousand teeth
a pack of mouths tear and pull
a stag corpse I bequeath  
to the hunger of my own wolves

As I mope around the swamps of my brain
I think of nature’s beautiful scenery
Stuck in a world where currency reigns
Littered with mankind's rapacious factitious imagery

Sat in a cube, walls off-white
Ceiling tiles, **** stained
Trapped in ennui's plight
Blue light keeping a soul maimed

But there's a cure
Just beyond these walls
5pm, till then I endure
Then I can answer Edens call

Oh lustrous new moon
how you cradle the old

like

Aphrodite humming a soft tune
cradling Adonis whom grows so cold

Kidnaped love due to ravenous lust
Brings a thriving city to soot and dust
Villagers armed ready with sword to ******
Defending till their doom due to mistrust
Survivors now trapped in wanderlust
Till one rises and gains all trust
Follow! Follow! Follow you must
Till Rome is found and armor rust

Tie your shuka on your shoulder
Gather your shield and spear of death
The white God for now you are to soldier
Find your courage and take one last deep breath.

You thought war was made of
Those things that you gathered,
You were wrong, so we shoved
A gun and ammo for you to lather.

This is your duty, and that's what you believe  
This is your duty, go out and try not to bleed
This is your duty, and that of thy enemies.

You held the gun like we showed
You walked to the place we told
You believed the lies we sold
All while wearing the white man's blindfold.

With a smile and a glimmer of hope
The men you sought
Found you first
And now you rest
Under the dry dirt.

But that's ok for they
Were only shooting
In the name of Duty,
So Hooray!

To be buried due to old age
Is a dream I take for granted
Allow children time to assuage
Not to join blanketed by the planet

Age, a privilege not given to all
Genocide before nightfall
Malnutrition at the mess hall
Drugs calling souls to awol
Avarice causes many to fall
From buildings so so tall
methanol,
                cannon *****,
                                        alcohol
Death dealers always on the call

But to be buried due to old age
Is a dream I take for granite
tonight
and tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow

You’re impenetrable my little
Nemean lion
You have cauterized your skin my brittle
Lernaean hydra
Forever I'll chase my crippled
Ceryneian hind
Where ever you lay waste my graceful
Erymanthian boar

Even if you never come clean my *****
Augean stable
No matter how many you eat my hungry
Stymphalian bird
No matter your myth my covetous
Cretan bull
No matter how many you’ve ate my cannibalistic
Mare of Diomedes

Even if blood has to shed my bellicose
Belt of Hippolyta
I built this field for us to grow my starving
Cow of Geryon
I will hold your world up my poisoned
Golden apple of the Hesperides
I will travel to the depths of hell for you my frightening
Cerberus

My heart syncs with the ticking clock
You stepped through, our eyes locked
Eyebrows raised, a signal gave and
all time stopped.

Help!
Call an ambulance!

Thank you for saving my life
For if you haven't called
9-1-1
I would of died.
For I eat too much
processed food!

The snooze button
My morning companion
Why wake early
When you can delay ennui
For just a moment longer
Ten minute dreams
That seem to last
A lifetime until
It's too late

Hurry to work
The chair you hate
Hurry to work
The screen that stares
Hurry to work
Where no one cares
Hurry to work
The sooner to despair

Surrounded by walls that blind
The morning star
Surrounded by people who
Worship cupidity
Maybe I do too
That's why I am here

Gold melts away
the dark blanket
as if a sign to start
anew

be ambitious
he whispers

no
you answer back

and slowly block the
gold penetrating through the window
with your blanket of doubt

My god, your beauty is bright
I can see the halo radiating
though the clouds at night
my heart hastily pulsating

whenever we're in the same room
my eyes only gravitate towards you
I recognize that lovely ambrosial perfume
when you glance, my cheeks take a different hue

I have immortalized you through my poems
but I rather spend this mortal life
basking in your lissome arms
a drop of you cures all my strife

I want you in the flesh instead of dreams
but any thought of you is okay by me
look how the moon thinly beams
highlighting my idiosyncrasy

You move my pen, dear
and you don't even know it
to you I owe this writing career
and I am scared that I might blow it

Lie down in this bed,
hmmmm, your legs are much too long.
¡CHOP! Now they fit great.

Poetry lives in a person’s head but
Sometimes it is very lonely
Because in the heads of some
There is nothing to keep it company
And so poetry goes out through the pen
And the thumb clicks send

Want to save a leg?
It’s gonna cost you an arm!
Want to save an arm?

You chased
I ran
You yelled
I turned
You swung
I ducked
You huffed
I pushed

The back of your ankle caught
on the underside of a gnarly root

You twirled
I watched.
You screamed
I watched..
You bled
I watched...
You gasped at air
I watched....

The old jagged branch penetrated
through your squishy eye
and kissed the back of your skull
blood burst and squirted
while the rise and fall of your chest slowed
and your body grew cold

A rose bush was born amidst the clutches of an early winter

I left
You haunted
I cried
You permeated
I stayed silent
You spoke in my dreams

I know they found you
I visit and leave you flowers
But I am through,
I finally convinced myself
that it's not my
fault.

Dance Loïe Fuller
Serpentine angel, how you
Coil and capture

The greatest piece of art
is found in the movement
of bodies

the fluidity of the wrist
to paint the nakedness
of humanity

the speed of fingers
strumming and plucking
our souls

the sensuality of flesh
moving in rhythm
of life

the meticulous eye
capturing little moments
of society

Art is beauty
and beauty is movement
of bodies.

A rapacious hand that collects
Often begets
Vanity
Envy
And
Ennui

A gravekeeper by trade
burying the dead to stay alive
with a green thumb and *****
the unused earth oh how it strives!

Fat tubers and roots
green leaves with red veins
small vines sprouting fruits
even a small section for grains

The gravekeeper never goes hungry
his family never starves
he loves living in the country
and his plot of earth that he carves

One day two fresh dead
and a rat, maybe two scampered by
soon a sickness to be widespread
day by day how that multiplied!

More bodies into the earth
how did his garden shrink
he was crying and crying
this gravekeeper didn't know what to think!

Should he be happy for business
should he be sad for the loss
is he crying for his vegetables
or is he crying for the bodies that are tossed

Little by little did the green become stone
his loved ones feast on a diet of worms
now he, a lonely gardener of bones
sits and watches as his world burns

Large cumulus clouds
How they shrink, sacrificed for
Favorable winds

Mothers garden adorned with fleshy fruit
Thus I plucked and ****** at the jocund juice
Branches speckled with luscious loot
A taste so sweet, I propose a tantalizing truce
Immortalize me with nourishing nectar
Keep my belly from famished fallicies
No longer a fleshy comestible collector
For godly ambrosia has mended moralities

My countenance
made love with the harsh earth
she left me
bruised
confused
and bloodied
with a couple days
plucked out of my memory
thank whoever is above
for the few buddies
that pulled me to the
corner with a flashlight
bag of cold ice
shoulder rubs
and words of advice
I got back in the ring
ready for to resume the fight
I learned that night that
you can't beat Gaia
but that you could endure
a few rounds.

Just kidding,
I was knocked out
during the first round.

Fingers dance around
strings as if trained at Bolshoi
dance academy

Do you ever sit and listen
     To the bards of daylight
Do you ever sit and listen
     To the ghosts of the night
They both share their poems
Just to a different hue
     Of life

Love starts with the eyes
and ends with the mouth

Never aim too high
Never aim too low
Betwixt and between
Lies beautiful poetry

For the heat of the sun melts
The salt of the sea corrodes
Betwixt and between
The stories unfold

The souls combust
The spirits submerge
Betwixt and between
Our words emerge

She says your not good with money.

I agree.

She says these books can not feed us.

I disagree.

I say they feed my mind and that's all I need.
And that I am sorry that you're not hungry.

She says I want a house.

I say we have a roof.

She says I want a big white house with a red door.

I say I have a hammock and a tent and a red sharpie.

She said goodbye.

I went back to reading my meal.

For some, poetry comes naturally
But for me its like carpentry

It takes nails, wood, glue, and time
To build these words that hopefully rhyme

In the end I hope these walls survive
So the beauty that lives within will thrive

To grow into ones colorful crest
To inspire fledgling poets building their first nest.

A flake of gold I found in your soul
A boom town it shall never be,
Except for the one digging your hole
How you were left suffering.

Curse those murderous mines
And **** those mosquitoes,
I wish it were me a thousand times
Your soul off to greener meadows.

Don't be scared to cross the gate
Baron Samedi now guides,
Loneliness to acclimate
A widow's final goodbye.


"I never knew afterwards for how many hours of that journey I had flown with a corpse for company because, when I landed, the man was quite dead." ~ Beryl Markham

Look upon the milky sky,
     See that open patch of civil twilight
          Surrounded by silky white?

Look upon that speeding jet,  
     See that soaring metallic (wo)man
          Surrounded by freedom and a sunset?

I wish I could fly away
in the freedom of the day
to endure the horrors of the night
just to live for another flight
an escape of mundane life
a pause to everyday strife
a moment in time to forget all that's dark
a droplet of joy creates a ripple mark.

I want you to be the paint that drips on my canvas
our bodies brush to create something beautiful

I grew up between bookends
with the holy word held between
one fell off the shelf with no amends
now the shelf is filled with words unseen

So I read of other options
now I question the thread
of these fairy tale adoptions
which have been so deeply embedded

Christian school, weekly church, prayers before bed
my childhood filled with these epic tales
of a guy who died and then rose from the dead
and if you don't believe, well, see you in hell

They are good stories, some even great
but that's all they really are
to live by them is to live a life castrate
burning bush and a man inside a whale, a little bizarre

I am not mad I grew up this way,
but now I live a life of questioning
of what's beyond the pearly gates
without all of the one sided lecturing

I ran across a butterfly
with a broken wing, struggling
only wishing to soar in the sky
this left me thinking

How many actresses are out there
that can make a man cry
that make you say
what is Hecuba to her
You know the kind

She ran away back in 05
out to Cali, looking for a small break
she is still waiting

tables

12 hour shift then
leaves to practice
before she breaks down
and cries
and calls it a night

How many poets paint
a picture using only
language
never to be discovered
You know the kind

The shy kid in class
that is always picked on
scribbles in a journal
if only you could read it
you would

understand

He walks home
to yelling parents
locks his door
and writes some more
before he breaks down
and cries
and calls it a night

only to repeat it
again
again

I picked up that butterfly
and brought him to the grass
away from the burning road
and speeding cars

I hope one day
it will fly
again
again

Iliad book two
never ending list of ships
impressive, Homer

A handful of dust, immortality
A portrait to age, immorality
A hungry lust doth consume, apathy
A conscience driven mad, insanity
Narcissistic soul buried, casualty
The capturing of youth, causality

Tiptoe to the moon you wanderlust sole
Fetch the cobbler from beyond the green knoll
For I'm in need of mending this black hole
Rain down on me stardust, repair my soul
Put stars in my celestial insole
Fill this galaxy with light and resoul.

Floating brazier spews electric amber waves
as a setting sun radiates on the ceiling
a shadow of a ship coquettishly sways
while in the center charybdis begins swilling

another message, another missed call
another debt collector and his esurient talk
watch the ship begin to swirl, this scene so banal
amber feathered tawny eyed peacock

continues furtively to scroll her story and shoe shop
crowded room with a panel onstage
reality and fantasy evaporate and fall as a single raindrop
drown in the muck, don't know how to disengage

and to stay in the sway of fantasy.

Symphony No. 2
in D major 4th Movement
this is my stomach

Dawn with her rosy red cheeks
Triggered dirt water to brew
Out of habit two mugs were set
One for me
                 and
One for you

A forlorn breath passed my lips
No cure for this mornings thirst
I did forget (I mean, I didn't want to face the fact)
                  that
You started college
An empty nest is just the worst

A moment captured
Those two mugs
A message sent
Expressing my love
Good morning kiddo, I miss our coffees. Love dad.
This sadness belongs to the mourning doves.

A relationship
          Is a lot like
       Collimating binoculars
             It’s time consuming
           It’s difficult
It’s about aligning
                      But in the end
       Often is left even more
Blurred.

Look out in the field when you drive by
Look to the ditch that your cruising beside
Look to the grass and you will see
Look upon that constellation of trash
That tells the story of how we treat
This street
This neighborhood
This town
This county
This state
This country
This continent
This place
We call home

"I am dying."

"Its hardly a cold."

"Will you fetch me a thermometer?"

"I will send for one, you Shakespearean."

"I am glad you can make jokes to a dying friend."

"Learn to hold your wine."

"You mean drink? Or what I am doing now?"

"Both."

"Will you still be my friend in the morning?"

"If you are alive."

"Good. I am dying you know?"

"You died a week ago and the week before that."

"It's real this time. You will not be happy in the morning."

"Why is that?"

"You will wake to a foul smell and realize that your mourning will be spent digging a hole."

"Oh, so like most mornings with you."

"You are a real pal. Pass the wine?"