Setting up a studio
vaulted ceilings with
scented linguistics
Glued to a group
Glass Stains on grained wood
tell me to ground my soul,
let go and propel waves
in the mountains
Glue the wind to trees
by any means necessary.

Anything is cool if it
interrupts the mind
of so called intellects
reacting with concrete questions
It's just as easy to
tug heart strings
with well crafted narrative
as it is to spread hate
with carefully constructed conspiracy
Word is bond
only broken by
water over blown bridges.

Keep strings tied to wounded rocks
Don't skip
Rippled vision
round squares and indecision
A sight to see
Don't quit
when there's always now
Find how
and walk the plank.

Night #1
Around the dinner table crickets directed a noiseless choir
It's all full of emotion
But I don't know how to
Define a face full of
earthquake expressions
When the stars play guitar
with three broken strings
it sounds like musical genius,
and the grass is waving to it.

"Dude, the moon's coming out now,"
I hear from the crowd.
The autumn brown leaf outside the window
turns green in amazement
And then it swallows the sky whole.

Night #2
I don't even feel my drunkness, I just feel the
highness and euphoria.
I wonder who sees Orion with me tonight.
The triple XXXs behind the drummer and
ringing tambourines scream with
guitar picks and microphones
and I think I know this euphoria is more
powerful than the whisky in my right hand.
I'm the king of upside down guitars that read
"DEATHBOT," and the "B" is backwards
and I don't give a ****.

Night #3
Arnold Palmer and coconut juice
A pair of glasses and a sight that's obtuse
I don't need to see straight
like a wave in the ocean that capsizes at night
And I roll up a joint that is beyond precise.

I went outside for a cigarette
Sat on the step and
I see myself down the street
forty years from now;

Burnt like an ember in an ash pile
Ground into a particle by
the street sweeper to be eaten
by the atmosphere's tangled black tongue.

Walking up and down the
battered stairs tires my weary legs
with every trip I make
Lungs crying for air like a newborn.

A tool for procrastination
A tobacco fascination can lead to
a disastrous situation. Kurt
Vonnegut once said, "Cigarettes

are a classy way to commit suicide"
He must have been stupefied making that statement.

Like taking a blade serrated 1000 times
and nudging one more notch through
his flesh with every caramel covered kiss.
But he was too scared to take it out.

Exhale and apologize to Earth
for his suffocated statement. Breathing in
snakes and rusted copper.

The man down the street probably wishes
to be my age back in his day again.
My eyes frozen in space like Walt Disney's
severed head.

He catches a  a cloud of smoke
and his lungs scream through stalagmites
that drip with unwashed tears
that never fell from Vonnegut's stone face.

You spent endless time
at your desk in the sun porch.
After your diagnosis we
turned the porch into
your own personal scrapbook room.
I could tell you didn’t
think about your disease
when you were in there crafting
because of how focused
you always looked when at work;

lips puckered out, oblivious
to the commotion of our backyard.
You were granted God’s greatest gift
to see the end of your
days as you wished.
You did just that.
The memory of you lives on
in all those whose lives you touched.

When you left we didn’t
know what to do with
the overwhelming heap
of scrapbook materials
you accumulated over the years.

They took up too much space
that could be used for other things
like furniture and storage.
Plus, they were hard to
look at without being
swarmed with empty
thoughts and sadness. But,
we didn’t want all these
valuable accessories to go to
waste, forever forgotten.  

When it came to deciding
what to do with your
leftover supplies, we knew
we couldn’t toss them out.
We wanted them to carry out
their intended purpose
just as you would have
had time permitted.

The Ronald McDonald House
in Minneapolis had an unused room
they were looking to fill—
we knew that was it.
We donated nearly all your supplies
there and now that empty room
is a scrapbook room bearing your name;
carrying on an important piece of you
so other families can
craft memories into treasures—
just as I carry a treasured
piece of you wherever I go.

I wander through the world
                to make my own math.
Maybe a kid with
ice cream will stumble
across my path one day
and venture the scene.

Brown grass and an
abundance of wheat,
mangled trees and
ice cube sun rays--maybe
something in between.

As a wayward
Purple Pincher Hermit Crab, I
float through ocean currents.
As a North coast coyote
sometimes I can't tell what I am.

Just wandering through
ice cold smoke, smoldering ash,
apple orchards, joyful torture,
dead rose gardens,       a thornyard,
a sunflower sanctuary. Serenity,

I wear no crown, no ermine cape,
I eat beetles and grasshoppers
off of a rusted plastic plate.

This court found me…

Guilty

of remaining reticent
to express my desire for her
on the counts of:

Past experiences,

Fear of what
vulnerability
would lead to,

Lack of confidence

and,

An inability to
pick up signals.

I was sentenced to life in solitude.

On a frigid night I am
the lone resident in my house.
Not a whisper sounds from
the mouth of the biting air outside.

Alone in my house I am at ease
for there is nothing around
to interrupt this time left to me.
I can see things differently,
like the face of a Picasso painting.

With a lessened tension I
have a deeper sense of recollection.
My thoughts are a ceiling fan,
constantly spinning and circulating
the sentences of these lines
like the air throughout the house.

As I listen to the warm air
rattle from the vent in the wall
I am reminded of the days
spent with my dad working
in the basement workshop.

My purple, gold and white
Pinewood Derby car for Boy Scouts
was a piece of work to be proud of.
It may not have placed, but
it had a special place on my dresser
for several years to come.

It’s memories like these I
know I’ll never forget because
even after thirteen years
I can recall it like it was yesterday.

The smell of freshly sanded wood
and sore fingers after long hours
of hard work perfecting the shape
was worth more than all the
money a rich couple could
spoil their children with.