Winding roads and one-way traffic
Heading to a poetry reading,
rounding every turn
like a metaphor
emerges from a idea.
Passing  headlights
squinted eyelids,
Ditchweed on the roadsides
lay flat and brown
on icelandic mudbeds.
Driving through a bare, tree-lit tunnel,
a library smiles off in the distance.
                            ---
Standing behind a podium
ready to send my words off
to sneak into a listener's mind
like a Trojan Horse,
let them deploy an army of sword-less warriors
ready for action.
A perpendicular sequence of events
reveal new paths on an old map.
On the road again,
back home,
the sunrise in my rearview mirror
reaches my imagination.

The rebirth of our nation
rests in motion.
In a country mounted
on revolutionary (Freedom of) Speech
fear of falling off the balance beam
permeates our culture's streets
Rock bottom is visible.

The next step in a row of stones
might require more than a skip
but the heavy heart of resiliency
                         must persist,
preserve the embers that
burn in the enduring hand
of our Statue (of Liberty).

Cope with the wilted white flowers
Look to the rising sun
every morning it emerges with
tired eyes, sleeping flames,
garden beds greeted with mist.

Listen to the music of mighty mitochondria
Let the DNA of "bend don't break"
and swords of endorphins thrive
'til their final breath.

Fight unmerited power
with a rigid, rebellious fist
and a voice armed to the teeth
from the mouth it speaks.
Fight 'til the white of bone
and then some.

This is the long anticipated
wake-up call from Mother Gaia;
it comes in the form of tears.
Don't let them drown us,
create new
streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans
so they wave with every
spun cycle
of Earth's journey
around the sun
of a

Walking on pebbles
turning them to
grains of sand
An angelic finger
points to me
from the sky
pinching my skin
with dull nails
I point back
and close my eyes
feel the shoreline
and get goosebumps.

I remember cuddling
in your arms
the whole night
my ninth birthday
my ear infected
with painful fluid
I watched the clock
with your eyes
wincing in pain
But your words,
colored with comfort,
turned my focus
"I want to stay
up past midnight
with you mommy."
"It's your birthday,
stay by me
and don't worry."

Today, I remember
that night with
flowers of vivid silence
and a diamond bouquet,
filled with nine geraniums
to be exact,
for all the birthdays
that I've spent
without an ear infection
or an angelic voice
to comfort me
But I still
feel your arms
and their warmth
around my chest
like a kangaroo
pouch in the desert.

This is your day
Pour a margarita
Let's have a toast
for your wings
of holy wisdom
that help keep
my feet afloat.

Shine, like the sunrise
greeting the mountainside.
A diamond ring, long lost
beneath beds of snowflakes,
suffocates.
Cold feet abandoned it.

I'm plagued by nimble,
yet fragile, greed;
insatiable.

I traverse and stumble
and stumble and stumble
through a dense mist.
Frozen portraits, precise, turned corpses
litter my focals.
Blurred vision excites
the hibernating nerves
in my numb fingertips.

I blow
into them.
Coarse skin grasps
my cracked pale lips.

I clear my lenses,
steal my senses
and ask for the moon
to cradle me in
its dusty gray craters
while I look for
a fool's broken vows.

Standing on a rusted
sidewalk plate, contemplating.
Let me bleed
like a slaughtered sunflower.

Let me walk away
from this wilted bar stool.
Death waits for the weary,
Knock kneed.
I trample through rotten hops.

Scotch on the rocks,
aged like the
half-lit bar sign
with three Xs
and a poisoned skull.

Chasing fear, exhausted.
Legless horsepower, monstrous.
Grinding my fingers on Grainbelts
before the crack of fall.
Stained oak pillars,
star mangled manors

Let me bleed.

The cold sun beats
on gold pinstripe pants.
Between the same fingers
that grip a pen
a physical form of smoke;
cancerous, like divisive rhetoric
dictating dialogue between
red and blue threads; white
in the middle turned
a depressed gray.

Stand, stare at
a  stale banner;
salute 50 blank stars,
the right choice
follows like a thief
with forlorn hands for feet.
Dead in the water,
Freedom drowning, shouting
in a salty blue tune.

The sun watches from
its godly golden throne.
Out, uttering among  
waves of stars,
speaking with nothing to say.
Freedom sinks to the
depths of Hell
as if but smoke
trying to make waves.

Rumbling thunder clashes
with ambient lightning
The cigarette smoke
gets in an argument about
who owns the sky tonight.

"Don't **** with me
I'll give you cancer!"
"Yeah? Well I'll light
your world up and
strike you to the ground,"
The storm replies.

And that was the
end of the argument.
The smoke conceded
and its soaked cigarette ****
followed the clouded stream
down the storm drain.

The last piece of straw
from the horses mouth
said its final words
The sky's batteries died
and there was no real winner.

No, not even Mother Nature
could hammer justice
into the broken gavel
She just sat and
chewed her fingernails
as the stars waved

goodbye to the Earth.