Clean and serene or institutionally lobotomized
society reacts to the raging dope fiend, summarized
by med lines and meetings and half-hearted greetings.
They say he was convulsing and blue,
yet still if they only had a clue,
how it feels to be him when he is
clean
serene.
Experiments in convalescence
yet I am more restless
than an entire generation.
If the 20's were so roaring
and the 50's were so beat,
I can only be as restless, selfish
as this age entitles me to be.
Born into this, because of this,
old man I hear you echo from an angry bottled fist.
Raging with a deep death wish ever chasing his bliss,
he doesn't have much time left, just give him a kiss.
You yell "you are not Burroughs no comparison with Cobain,"
yet if I go off chasing them through the mist
who can you really blame?
Let the epithet boldly blaze
   Forever Young
   Born. ******. Died.
Wouldn't that be such a shame.

Like the portrait by John Singer Sargent,
of two helplessly hopelessly wedded souls.
The portrait was dim, even in 1897.
The couple grimly seeking searching reaching towards heaven,
timeless romantic.
Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps, who are you?
Starring through a century of fading oils, all my emotions become,
revoked. I sit and stare in repose.
What's left but to stoke the flame; the burning desire, love, and addiction.
Mr. Sargent did you understand my affliction?
Lest I travel back to the Rocky Mountains, those billowing rocks so beautifully captured by your contemporaries, by Albert Bierstadt.
I am a lost wandering critic, traveling through time using paint as my medium, to form these rhymes.
Ridding myself of a life that has become full of all things labeled tedium.
From the French to the Austrian to the English to the American, a new world unfurls.
All cultures aiming to capture the intrinsically fleeting moments of life, nature, and the beautiful, as they curl.
In and out, a dance of colors, a pageantry of light yet again is unfurled.
Only then does my soul feel full and bright.
The fog clears as my headlights part the mist, and I realize, as these masters before me, I do have something to offer...
Love!
Forgiveness!
Hope!
                               ...for a new tomorrow...
A new heaven.
A new Earth.
Today

watermelon rinds
and
osprey eyes
float down from a pink and blue sky

kiwi peels
and
albatross heels
surface around a pink and blue wheel

walk, run, turn, keel
the colors bleed and it's hard to see what's real

olive pits
and
garbage spit
chugging liquor in an attempt to feel

white washed
blank walls
seeing pink
seeing blue
coating the barriers down iris halls

watermelon rinds
and
osprey eyes
floating down from a pink and blue sky

*I look up and feel alive hoping these colors never run bleed or
dry

I see you at the open mic
we smile through mocha haze,
almond eyes bring the butterflies
out of the cocoon I had built for them.

We collide at the milkmen show
dead on drugs and the city,
my glasses fall off and I see you blurred
punk beats bringing the butterflies back.

I sit down we meet by the beach
drunk, for we are the liquor.
In love with the blue sky ocean bay and eyes
we grab the fish by the tail telling secrets by the sea
and here come the butterflies.

Back from the cocoon I had built for them

where did all the dreams go.
once soaring
over river sea desert arctic ocean
roots and veins
deserted glistening ringing
over yellow red and purple
poppy fields temptatious shimmering  
now I am souring
I ate the forbidden fruit
and rather than being sweet
it was sour.

where did all the dreaming go.
I recall transversing convoluted causeways
unconscious
uncontrollably wandering then falling
toothless
standing amidst the spider king
I ask if I can bring a date to the wedding
the king replies, 'No, and I hath stolen the ring!
you must sing for me, lest be spun and forever left undone.'
and rather than being sweet,
it was sour.  

where did all the dreams go.
I recall traveling charging at the one
the one was forever in my view.
I challenged the one
cross-eyed concupiscent cyclopian nightmare,  
the siren song always draws me in
and rather than being sweet.
It is sour.

*I wake up and think rather than say,
are we all not just elegant decay?