Here’s something to melt the snows
so you may bloom your compass rose-
Go far away without delay,
how dare you ever think to stay!
Just let me take some Kate to keep
in Michigan and weep
with joy as you grow
West without a doubt-
though I keep here, I'll figure out
just where to go-
maybe somewhere that doesn't snow!
If you can do it so can I,
So go! And I might also try!

"Holy Quambats!",
bellows low-orbit sports announcer 33e, a.k.a. Rick,
"The Zargoball's been switched! With a hopping Ugaroo!",

(An Ugaroo is an adorable jumping rodent from Vulky II, and a Quambat is the ten foot titanium pole typically used to hit a Zargoball across any particular preset playing perimeter- this for any listeners at home who are new to the sport.)

"Not to worry! It seems that Team Lime Green has gotten the Ugaroo caught in a snare- placed here in the ancient past for JUST such an occasion! Uh-oh! Here come the Iron Knights to try and steal their capture!"

(There are over 70,302 teams [exactly 70,303 teams] currently competing for possession of the Zargoball on planet Zargoz, partaking in the galaxies favorite interstellar pastime- a popular sport known also as Zargoz.  The current round began at an unknown date in the planets ancient history, and all that remain of its origins are a plethora of wildly conflicting and confusing myths. It seems here that Team Lime Green has passed down knowledge of their hidden snare for hundreds of generations through word of mouth before this incident today. Miraculously, their bizarre efforts appear to have payed off.)

"Oh, what a blast! The Zorodan Order has just dropped a neutron bomb over the site of the capture, eradicating all life within a fifty mile radius! All referees are currently contacting their lawyers! And now... The word is in! The new Zargoball has been placed in the Temple City, just outside the Zorodan Temple! Power move!"

(...)

"The timing however couldn't have been worse! It is now 29:29am of the third day of Rayah on the Zorodan Calendar! All Zorodan on Zargoz must now drop all clothing and physical possessions, sit on the ground, and spend the next 3 days in holy naked meditation! The Council of Crystals has now moved in and captured the temple, decapitating all naked Zorodan on sight! After burning down the temple, the Council will be transporting the Zargoball via Air Carrier to ninety-third base, where hoards of treasures await the recipient of this hard-earned point! It's a long journey though! Before they arrive, someone had better discover the secret location of ninety-third base! And quick!"

(The secret location of ninety-third base actually, out of sheer coincidence, is also inside the Zorodan Temple- however it will now likely be well over a hundred years before this is discovered, as the only living contestants with knowledge of its location have been recently decapitated and burned.)

"Folks, I'd like to take this minute to promote our sponsor, Fizzwerz! A bubbly drink, sweeter than theropian glass-grass and recently determined to be more highly addictive than human crack, now cost you only 13.1 Gobi credits! These are- HOLY GOD!! Attention folks, I'd like to interrupt this interruption to announce a spectator of honor here in the low-orbit VIP section! Actually God himself! What a serious honor! And now we return to our broadcast! Oh here we go! Oh dear! It seems that the pilot of the Crystal Council Air Carrier was a Swamper spy all along! The carriers passengers have all been knocked unconscious by his thick perfume! What a show!"

Fields stretch, of paper white
And grey as day is losing light
Alone I rally muscles fight
So I be home before the night
Wind will chill me gill to gill
As ice will render muscles still
Sheltered not from cruel chill
So I will make my journey still
Long I jog, through howling clatter
Jaw wont move, unless to chatter
Hearing sweat drops frozen, shatter
Movement warms my sleepy matter
Locomotive losing speed
Juggernaut has lost the need
Lifeless muscles need to feed
Yet still i beg them, "forward heed!"
In the distance- lights are lit!
I call, but silenced in a fit
My throat is scratched by icy spit
As I collapse in snow,
that's it.

In our fall we were wild and wise
And reason was worn to our childish eyes
But that season has quickly come to pass
And a bitter wind now shakes the grass.
I have a blanket to wrap you in
Let the sun sleep, and the world not spin
Place your heart now on my pillow
Wrapped in the roots of this weathered willow
Wonder up into its rustling leaves
And rest your head on times simpler than these.

There is a room as old as war
without a window or a door.
In here is none but the smoky den
of too many torn and immortal men.

Through Brazen Bull they'd stay unslain
though men are strongly swayed by pain,
thus here are the most unholy tales-
for hidden within was a Cat O' Nine Tails.

The fiend who found it holds it still,
whose morphing face appears at will
to mimic a president, parent, or pastor,
though his name is always, "Master".

Most men fall to Master's feet
and swear, declaring their defeat.
From his wrath they shall be saved
so long as they remain enslaved.

A few will wrestle and risk the knot-
most will fall, but some will not.
Just give the clock a little spin,
and Master's changed his face again.

In blackest day, or brightest night,
of longest vision but shortest sight;
in a single step on an endless road
of mindless thought or breathless ode,
I stumbled over the shadow cast
by ancient present and modern past.
Here I discovered a light that shone
on wonders wandering, all alone,
and onto that faceless, nameless ghost
who whispered this to a wooden post:
“If all who judge were to be blamed,
as all who boast were to be shamed,
and all who hate were to be healed,
so all who hide could be revealed,
and stones forgot how sand had sinned,
then spirits which they call the wind
would carry them off as a faithful friend-
and only then would this road end.”

The ugly boy
saw the beautiful girl,
fell under her spell
and was lost in her swirl.
In whirling wind,
he fell into the sky-
but she was a storm,
and in passing, would die.
So then he would fall
and get caught in the trees,
to go back on loving
like the rats and the fleas.

So valiantly did he die upon a little hill
Of greenest grass and under sweetest air,
And he died grinning for his unfailing will,
And for what eternal glory met him there-

And his courageous heroism will be told
In song by each new coming generation
Who still sing those fighting songs of old
Within our proud and glorious nation-

What true sacrifice and supreme nobility
Lies in he who serves our shining vision
Where everyone else can grow up to be
Just like him, perhaps be on television-

Because he believed in his bleeding heart
What it means to die for where you live,
If he had one regret, and was let to restart-
It'd be that he hadn't another life to give.

Of all the woods I've wandered through,
the most exotic was of bamboo-
from photographs I'd seen a few,
and so assumed them a greener hue-
but this, it turned out, was highly untrue.
Bamboo, I have found, is a shade of blue,
with maybe some splashes of yellow too.

Shooting stars fell in a line and danced across my eyes in quick succession
though the sun outshone them all
and who ever worshiped the stars anyway?

Then like fireflies flew north before broke,
and from the south I saw the great Diamond City
reach out above a jungle of metal concrete plastic plastic with lights
Oh! lights

Pinprick window TV stream style smiles selling streets projecting the moon for
advertising space; the population rises

Factory stormclouds only irritate umbrella stand footsteps who pretend
to hate the rain
and outshines dim sunlight baptizing all in electric glory

Candleflame prisons of light that honk through haze through
rainy Monday 6:30AM’s
choke on each others breath until we have nothing left but CO2;
dandelions inherit the earth.

we want nothing to do
with nothing to do
grow up with me
and ill grow up with you.

my dear sweet childhood love
who loves me
left me
here.

by no fault of ours
it just
happened
one day

the fulcrum slipped
the world swayed
and slipped
away
from him

in opaque rage
and eyes wide open
and paranoid venom
and piercing humiliation
and hallucination

his ghost lingers
in thick cannabis fog
now
and i'm a buddhist, by god by god
god who
left me
here

.          Design is flawless of the diamond city,
an organic stone equation spattered messy
green according to plan
and yes then red and then white and dead,
but would a single cloud churn the heavenly blue abyss
had it sparked against the steel will of mankind?
          So maybe the stars do play us for puppets
on threads of gentle gravity,
          And maybe the mountains move us
more than we ever wished to move them anyways,
          And maybe Gods thorny love spat you out
at exactly where you're just about to be.
          But what were the chances that still recovering our vision from the blinding eyes on the day of judgement, we couldn't yet see
that we had already made it to paradise.
          What better world have I to explore than this one
where every traffic light signals the endless passing
of the rhythmic energy of living,
and every passing soul reveals yet another bridge to cross or street to follow
behind their wild eyes where America was never short of lands uncharted; In the Diamond City I spoke to the warrior ****** masks
and recognized the voices of the restless spirits of the west.
          Their feet pitter patter between
colossal walls of natural and carnivorous symmetry and ponder the pillars of ancient Greece so everything feels so modern, as if its own existence were somehow premature, and it was.
          Young, in their claw
towards a concrete cocoon they sleep past these cement giants
who channel rivers of breath through hands and hairs
and endless leaves and lungs that rustle around above them awake,
all of them oblivious
of the showering accomplishment of now.

As all those planets passed me by,
I ever wondered- was it them or I
holding the earth in this position?
I've called it a stupid superstition,
yet must point out how odd I feel
assuming that this eternal wheel
would pick just any empty fools
to mold into the vacuum's tools
before pulling the world away.
I know to them I couldn't say,
but if I did, I would explain
I’m more than just a brain-
I too am all the universe,
undivided in a hearse.

One million and one tiny houses span this city
where one million unsatisfied lovers sleep.
Does Romeos childish grin see more
than these unlit brick roads reveal?
In darkness lovers die alone.
Oh Romeo,
          what did you find in her eyes tonight?

A number of years ago when I was learning to drive
My dad would make me drive down to Ionia Michigan
because it could **** a full hour of driving practice
And because it was some other place to go.

Just recently I had to go back there and pay off a speeding ticket.
There are worse things than paying off a speeding ticket.

This town has gotten tired.
I walk by the city hall and eye the crumbling brick beside the road
and I think they must not be trying very hard to attract any visitors here.
But there I was-
suddenly insulted.

The city lights have gone out decades ago but they never died. They left their posts- abandoned. Now all that remains are the the dim and flickering street lamps that stand on sidewalks and bide their time watching or waiting for the final walls to crumble.

The city has a sleepy aura that one would feel seeing somebody's 70's childhood toy, like a jack in the box or a colorful plastic record player left outside. A lost innocence, and the smell of marijuana seeping from every upstairs window downtown or of a girl once beautiful who now waits alone and used to take off her clothes and reveal her tongue and love the universe as it appeared to love her.

I walk inside another second hand store and see nobody attending the counter. Stiff- funereal clothes and grey dresses. There is one rack of men's clothing, I accidentally take a whiff of the stale dusty air and it suddenly holds me from touching them. I quietly stare at my sobering realization that I am in the cities ashtray. They sell here what they can't burn but probably should, and every ten shirts in a row indicates one more rock in a row at one of the many churches of necessity and I decide to get out.
This place gives me the creeps.

You are the love of my life, my dear,
a love that grows with each new year,
so please do be truly willing to hear
me confess: my love has left your rear.

I knew you'd find this news alarming,
and regret I couldn't be more disarming!
I know that I am no Prince Charming
but who in here is your health harming?

We used to dance beneath a burning sun,
and then when we felt like it, we'd run.
Remember how often the day was fun-
please don't tell me those days are done.

If you love me the way you say you do,
you'd love the song of the summer too.
You'd love what I love, the way I grew,
and more so still, you would love you.

Such a noble little poet,
who thinks the future is in your hands
when it's in your head; poetry is dead.
But age does bring wisdom (after the fall),
so what good is it screaming at the wall
with still some good numbers to call?
What good is it screaming at the wall
when my door is never locked?
Come to me instead,
and don't say I never knocked.

I see it in the bathroom mirror,
and on the horizon, coming nearer.
It’s dripping from a dollar bill-
I sell it off but touch some still.
I hear it dripping from my car,
I hear it comes from wells afar,
I see it seeping from a stone
(that monolith we call a phone),
and spilling from our eyes at night
while sirens dance in rays of light.
Now as I shower for an hour,
I feel it filling up a tower
all the way up to the moon.
This tower will come crashing soon.
It is the milk of death and strife,
yet some would say it's the stuff of life.
Some say that it will set you free-
in blood they tried to baptize me.

Look at all those people going,
flowing down the street.
Like a river of corrosive mud,
they ***** whoever they meet.
So they never touch, never say hello-
just flow together down the hill
and collect at some new low.
Sleepy living in a ghost ship
sailing just above,
I'm leaning out my window-
dreaming about love.
This iridescent hull is hollow
save for you and I myself-
we remain a sticky dry,
and wallow on their bottom shelf.
I dreamt I jumped into this sea where
spotted splashing
someone saved me.
When I cried out loud enough
my tears would soak the sand
so reaching down to pull me out
I washed their ***** hands.

What some called faith was only fear-
distraction was all that they held dear.
I tell you the truth will be hard to hear
if you've still got something in your ear.

I've got nothing, and nothing is mine.
I've got no god who gives me no sign.
I've got no church, which suits me fine-
at least I'm allowed to enjoy the wine.

At night I can sleep on solid ground,
and listen as nothing makes a sound.
In the daylight I can look all around-
finding delight where nothing is found.

I too have witnessed the ethereal glow,
not from above, nor from below,
but from moonlit footprints in the snow-
from nothing I came, so to nothing I'll go.

A man stood up to pass me by,
and heading briskly for the door,
let loose an almost inaudible sigh-
what could he have been sighing for?

Could it have been for all the friends
who never call him anymore?
Or was it in woe of all of the ends
of happy times gone long before?

Or are his motives less self centered,
and he sighs for the human race?
Was he so solemn when he entered,
and did he walk at such a pace?

I wonder just how many sighs
contribute to our atmosphere-
if bottled up, how much it buys,
and does one ever disappear?

Could I have answered to this sigh
and brought a castaway to shore?
Could it have been a silent cry,
or just a sigh and nothing more?

“Does one who has gone mad know he has gone mad?”
asks aloud the old man,

"If one does know, then surely I am not mad for I do not know;
If one does not know, then surely I am mad for I too do not know."

The man ponders naked, a bathrobe turbaned around his wet hair and sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor. He faces directly away from the wall mirror and trips his handsome head off his bitter tongue.

Putting his chin up he resigns his thoughts, declaring
"If a sane man knows that he is sane than I surely must know too."

On this howling nightmare night,
wake together into darkness,
voodoo puppets pinned to pillows-
voices cancel out vibrations,
silence loses way in rattle,
village loses way in war,
metropolis shatters in the window,
Nightmare, I'm awake once more.

Australia they say is filled
with all the things that get you killed:
snakes and spiders, birds and bats,
venomous dogs, and dog-sized rats.
But none in counting could ever forget
the continent’s infamous national pet,
by which you bet I mean the fly.

Like rocks with wings, or drops of dry;
like drones of death, the scouts of hell,
the souls of all the men who fell
to thirst along this twisted track,
or like some angry god’s attack
they swarm in shapeless, shifting form!

A black mass like a violent storm
is aiming for our ears and eyes!
Swatting is hopeless, but still one tries
to ****- just one! To no avail-
it’s easier to **** a whale.

Dizzying sweeping, swoop and swirl,
they’ll never sleep- just loop and whirl,
cry like a hammer who’s driving a Hummer,
then clothe us like four coats in summer.
Here paradise waits with a wave and a cuss,
and we found it after the flies got us.

Standing with friends on a nameless shore,
I feel somehow so grateful to be so unsure
what wonders and horrors destiny has in store.

I go in, and sit where the waves are breaking.
Repeating, rolling over my head, overtaking
all of the spirits- now shivering and awaking.

They did not sleep, yet also they did not stir-
for the land they loved was occupied by her.
Now she's gone, but they're not as they were.

The light is low; the day is coming to fiery end-
but there are certain things Apollo can't defend
and why should I not call the night my friend?

This room was dark and loud, everything glowing a soft yet piercing
shade of pink. The ceiling was abuzz with sinful distortion
of mind and body, the floor writhing and squirming in lustful torment,
and all in between was this dark ****** exchange of dreamy madness!
December screws those tightly into that packed basement, all but a few
puffs of cigarette smokers who huddle at the steps peaking over
and yakking, and though their bodies freeze, their eyes shift about
their edges, lingering fearful and sorrowful over the doorway as
it appears in some hellish biblical portrait depicting the absolute form
of lust and desire and jealous agony, sin and *** at its highest organic peak. Like hesitant lemmings, like grounded birds, like chickens
they dare never enter because they may never enter. Unwelcome
are the fearful and the human from that dark sinister ****** presence who came here for love and then found none,
but angelic girls in heavens twisted favor may come and go as they
please!  How angelic they were too- cold and alone, drunken and
undressed they open themselves up to heat of the floor and lose their
minds and manners to the pervasive rhythm pulsating like some heart
between the swirling psychedelic patterns that adorn the walls,
whatever a heart may be they shine, and the heart sways heavily
through the flames and the devilish young men, handsome!
Charming! Their smiles bring these girls to their knees again and
again they play them like harps and the girls are played such
a silky and shrouded lullaby in which they find brief silence
hidden between waves of fashioned euphoria,
silence comparable to the silence one finds sitting in the midst
of an elephant stampede while the whole earth trembles to the horizon,
and it is a silence found only when one is sure beyond all doubt that they are completely
alone.

Let me breathe your smoke
and I'll tell you a joke:
I'll love you 'till I'm broke.
Love you 'till I croak.
Love you 'till you love me too
(but then I'll wish we never spoke).

I know how to get to hell:
by riding the crab with the pretty shell.
She's wondering how long I'll take;
I'm struggling to stay awake.
I wish the birch wouldn't fall when shook;
she gets jealous when I read a book.

Look before you bite the bait!
Don't hate because love couldn't wait.
Don't play the Game of Kings like me-
my focus fell from keeping free
and trading my queen right out the gate,
I sealed my fate for checkmate.

Its hard to see the plot
in the foreground of this fighting-
we’d understand her movie better
if it had better lighting.

But her body language sang
to me of what it's all about-
she tried disguises desperately,
but Hollywood sold out.

So she was a princess
prior to the revolution-
the soldiers saw her bow her head
over its bitter resolution.

Young wide eyes eclipsed by trust
in fiction stacked beside her bed-
reality though was a dagger ******
into youth, and disappointment slowly bled.

And we all know there's no place now
for her in their election-
she draws the curtains to hide her face
from that tired old reflection.

It wasn't what the trailers promised,
but she's free now to be honest-
Free to dream she crossed the stream,
escaped without the toll;
it's far too late to twist her fate
before the credits roll.

Every eye here is a whistle,
so keep your drugs locked up
and every seat contains a thistle
so you’ll have to sleep standing up.

Keep digging for bravery
between running from the hounds
always escaping slavery
and refraining from making sounds.

You'll soon find
that’s no way to live
the quarries here are all dug out-
So when you've got nothing left to give
and everything left to figure out
you have to pack up often
leave what you can’t keep
always take the long road
and always the most steep.

I really am just like you
except I tied myself to me
and roam around alone here
miserable and free.

What you need is what I need
but you’ll have to find me first.
I can keep you dry
and you can quench my thirst.

My muse talked again, but of course not to me-
sitting still headphoned having just listened
to the entire Foxygen discography.
Something is never made from nothing
but some things are always never made-
I watch them pass by from my shut upstairs window
content with lukewarm lemonade.

Money will march to the beat of war drums,
passing through hard hands and chewing gum gums-
it takes what it makes, it gets what it gives
and progress is a prank found on fixed perspectives.
So if not for the cash, or to lend contribution,
why ever should I even step out my door?
Is it so my genes can offend evolution,
or just that my bedroom is such a bore?

When you jump into the raging sea,
and through the gates of misery,
do not forget to get your hair wet.
Do not forget to forget your pity,
and don’t forget where they cast the net.

When you’re waiting for your train,
do not forget to become insane,
for here is where your fear is met.
I know the nature of your pain:
You will give more than what you get.

When you huddle in the cold,
watching your empty time unfold,
and all of your joy is rooted in regret-
don’t forget to whom your soul was sold,
and do not let them win the final bet.

When you’re buried into soil,
and let to rest from all your toil;
when your corpse is roasted on a spit-
darkness will still have the light to foil,
so long as you did not forget.

Let the earth spin
While I lie awake.
I have morals (of tin)
Still, for only deaths sake.
God will save me tomorrow
But tonight I'm alive-
Daylights shame I nightly borrow
So to sin I shallow dive.
Nightly though showing more daring, go deeper,
Lightly I feel my soul growing cheaper.

I can’t wait to be seventy-five
and single again.
Oh, to feel alive.

I’ll come home
without washing my face
and feel the space
on my right bedside.

Ill get a dog
watch time go by
and wait around to die.

I cant wait to be seventy-five
and single again
because its hard to
remember that you're alive
until half of you is dead.

For now I'm young,
and I've not found the one I'll wed,
and I do hold a good store of years before that,
but that's just the point I'm getting at:

As we're made aware of life by death
and of sorrow made aware by bliss
love isn't made without loneliness
for both lie balanced on our breath.

I think
therefore
I am
afraid
the hand
will take
what it
has made
and I
will fade
into
the snow
before
I find
a place
to grow.

Every time that you fall in love,
your soul inhabits a distant star-
so as you come down from above,
you must remember who you are.

As even the light is but a dream,
and woke you screaming in your car-
as decades now have dried the stream,
you must remember who you are.

To comfort that loathing little boy
who lives within your reckless scar-
to love; to touch and not destroy,
you must remember who you are.

Because you forgot your eternal worth,
and all the roads you’ve walked so far-
because you're the savior of the earth,
you must remember who you are.

A glorfax found a bolloro
and hid it under some snanxa-
the snanxa groughed though,
and the bolloro was no more.
Alas, the glorfax could not glorf.

Somewhere far from the stars, I slept,
and dreamt a dream where I dug a hole
in the sand, which fell as pyramids wept-
I dug too deep; Earth swallowed me whole.
I freed myself finally from that lonely prison
in which I would witness the hour or minute,
while many long years were evading my vision
and spinning a new world; no trace of me in it.
Now, I'm a spirit who sings this to every soul
that wishes to flee these waves of sorrow
by sipping some cyanide from a bowl:
Refuge which we take, we borrow
from the children of tomorrow.

Sitting by
my windowsill
my soul is still

outside
my home

are many
people
talking fast
drinking coffee
coughing smoke

living
dying slowly
and horribly.

"Wasn't that swell?",
She chirped as we surfaced.
"What a well to slip into!
All dark and deep and new!",
Wet and cold and young we sat
In the dirt which we made into mud.
Never a smile I'd had nor will have
Could make such soda of my blood.

Yesterday though is overrated
Just like everything else that's old.
Even the summertime wisdom is cold.
Now either that wisdom has made me jaded,
Or I'm just upset that the past never faded.

You are not Atlas, who holds the earth;
nor are you Hades, who hides below.
You are but mortal, and yet you choose-
therefore you must choose to go.

Go into a world of blood and bones-
this monster begging for its ****;
it’s true, there may be only death,
but you must choose to go there still.

Go into this life which may be illusion,
and build your truth there anyway-
these temples of sand will fall in time
while sand itself will surely stay.

Go into this battle every single day,
and vanquish whatever land you roam,
so when your campaign is met by night-
there will be no shame in going home.

What is this unholy place in which I have awoken?
Walls so white with light so dark; I, a body broken.
I see no sky, nor bird, nor fly; and yet I surely see-
it hardly looks like hell, and yet it’s hardly heavenly.
I am still free, so happily may find some friend or wife-
but I’ve no need now for to feed the greed of prior life.
It’s best for me to rest, for life is lost on the immortal-
for surely I’ll discover no machine behind this portal.
Maybe by day there was a way for memory to cleanse,
but in this place there’s not a trace of doubt upon my lens
that every last ambition was a fever-maddened dream;
tales we told were not so old, but rather it would seem
the measures of all men were as the shadow of the steam
rising from the heat upon some trickling desert stream.

On cold and windy, rainy night,
I sat beside the fire’s golden light
with such an intention then to write.

To tell what shadow I had seen
pass by outside my window screen-
supposing I knew what it could mean.

Wet cobblestones in alley glisten-
but would anyone out there listen?
Even one would warrant this mission.

Hearing the tired branches sway,
I wondered then how I was to say
what no prior sentence could portray.

I sat, reaching for all the things
that crying wind of cyclone brings-
but silence! Now the blue-bird sings!

How long I sat in aimless wonder
for that spell which I’d been under,
hearing now just some distant thunder,

but few words would come to me.
My pen would’ve set the world free-
but all that flowed from it was poetry.

There is neither
word nor rhyme
with passion
left to prove
my love for you,

thus then either
bird, or lime,
or fasten,
shmeck, or groove
will have to do.

You'd like to be just like anyone
who, held by wires, flew-
and you'll take anything
if they do too,
until one of you
takes a few too much.
It's always cool to play the fool
in the hot kitchen
'till the fool plays chicken.

I would not be so impressed
to hear a king had made a guest
of me in halls all lavishly dressed,
and blessed with every new feature;
I have known the smaller creature
to be the greater teacher.​

Yet nor would I be so relieved
to see that not a soul had grieved
when in the next he was conceived,
deceived as he was by mortal power;
despite our divide, we do yet cower
together from that final hour.

We go, no one sleeps
easy slow weeks
just keep coming
flying high on the float bus
to Uluru, engine drumming
living like a curious ghost
on nothing
but noodles, jellied toast,
and cheap beer.
Wake me when
we’re getting near
to where we’re going-
I fear though, here
the heat is growing.
Maybe we should steer
instead to where
the coast is clear
and glowing red
to end the day, and drive
and drive the heat away
by splashing in the tide.
Living free is easy
by the fading sea
where we may see
the decade ride.

Encased in basement shadows
where spiders hang from ceiling corners
like dead men hang upon the gallows,
stirs the ghost of a forgotten child-
his body rots in a shallow grave,
but still his eyes are glowing wild.

Sitting alone in harmless study,
I saw his eyes before me burning
for what rage still held him here
like arrows lodged inside his brain-
my stomach set to churning
in helpless wonder of his pain.

Sweating and frantic, I called out:
“What is this visitation about?
Begone, if you mean to do me harm!”
Fixed upon the air alone,
those emeralds held their bitter tone,
and from the dark there stretched an arm.

It held my shoulder, and in alarm
a scream bellowed from all around
that froze my body to the ground.
Then the eyes flew through the floor,
and the scream flew out the door-
and I never sleep anymore.

Red fish, blue fish,
I wish you were
in the sea so
you could swim
with me.

Bright star, true star,
how far you are
from where it is
you really need to be.

Sad eye, glad I
got myself to give
a smile to the air-
flying free
on seamless breezes;
caught and tangled
in her hair.

Now here we are
where we can see our
conversation flare.

Let us veer far
from who we are;
let us forsake
our stake on there.

Deep in the comfort of my darkness,
and numb enough to succumb to sleep,
I stare in silence through the shadow-
through the comfort, through the deep.

When in my still there comes a wind
that pierces through the clouds in me;
the curtains dance like shaken spirits
while my spirit aches to be shook free.

My window aligns to the city streets,
but I care not for what lights they see-
for I in my waking see their judgment
would tame the flow of my destiny.

A voice now calls me to the mountain
where I am to finally write my book-
and maybe there I'll reclaim the years
that all this darkness and comfort took.

So there’s two school’s of thought.
Invaluable could mean valuable.

Why would they be synonyms?
I don’t know. Not my school.

Invaluable could also mean not valuable
because it makes a lot more sense.

Some people prefer sticking to what sticks,
and others prefer sticking to what's stuck.

At the very least we all agree:
Those conventions are invaluable.