You on the outside looking inward
at the outward glance of Mike, your youngest.
Bovine hands on bovine meal cutting the table
practically in half if the strength would return to him.
He's only 40, but looks 53
ZZZZZ's hurling out, nodding comatose, veins percolating tangled mess in December.
Chardonnay outlet, and there is as much as you can handle.
We are flowing in generous and dire fashion this evening a florescent turnpike of the county.
Lucky the generators kept the convalescent hospital convulsing and very much awake.
He's nearly dead and for a moment, after leaving your apartment, I could've swore I saw his ghost wandering the B-Side hallway, no shoes on his feet.

Year’s end.
Shades collapsed a spell
Amidst nocturne Hex.
Thought wandering back to Diet Coke infusion caffeine memory, goldfish sized. The days where it ends.
Loathing, topspin grim.

Time sprout.
Shades up a touch
Among daybreak incandescence, rooibos serenade, shutting the irrationality switch off.
The days where it begins. Where I learn.
Perhaps I am myself again.

How many mistakes am I allowed today?
It’s how we start.
Virtue tallying with dense hands all around so LIT by halogen lamps.
Discovering red hair strands.
Was it that long ago? It wasn’t and you know it. You want to stretch time thin. Arrest your memories and place a giant ink blot over the canvas of your ******* “woe is me” think piece. Clementineian.
In that moment it’s not so interesting, and you find other things to talk about and words offered allow you to take the pulse of the situation.
Written on a whim, forged with adamantium ya ya ya.
Catapulting your empathy on the fly, playing catch-up with a thorn in my foot.

I thought I saw Raymond Carver
the left cheek was uncanny in comparison.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he harbored weak emotions, and smelled of gin.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he told me he was new in town and lived just up the road.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he asked me for a ride to escape the cold.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he told me he was finishing a book.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
and no, he wasnt an illusion, or a crook.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
clad in a pallid white blazer.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he offered me his hand; I asked him to count his fingers.

I thought I saw Raymond Carver
he told me he just wasn't feeling golden today.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
I asked when his aspirations ran astray.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver and said:
" 'Why don't you dance?' is really fantastic".
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
like myself, he feels adept at being pathetic.
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
we are more alike than we are different
I thought I saw Raymond Carver
but when I left the storefront window he was gone in an instant.

Stout. A dynamo of opinions about men and about people's cooking, and their habits, of food service, of the dryness of red wine, of kittens and fish, of whether or not we are to forgive atrocities of war or rejoice in ****** splendor.
"Give em' a cup of coffee and make them face the wall. Blam! right in the ******* cerebellum and taken out like swine"
Never a writer like Kesey, or Cosgrove.
But everyone's outlet first goes unrecognized.

In an attempt to attain the creative sphere of somnambulance upon myself
a momentary fluctuation occurs in a weather god of rain.
March.
All we ask is for a kinder treatment (you don't have to like it)
I will sit and listen to the spells you whisper in my ear, coating drums in sweet disturbance, as long as it offers me a chance at a breathing pattern that will help keep me in touch and understood.

*****,
or something in between
left in humming office space limbo.
You're no fun at all when the USB is USE'd up with ease.
White mouse tail rendered down the pilot of my palm and left me with
paranoia disease.
Natural glow, vanished visage
unnaturally slow, famished instance
ebb and flow, iambic finish
fail to show the lavish grimace.

Mostly these days I enter a room, polka dot populated by folks with too much perfume, or none at all and presuppositions and a cold drink lingering near them.
I carry a shadowy painting with me, but it’s unfinished. It’s meticulously cared for and not yet ready to receive merit, let alone garner attention or criticism of ubiquity.

Mostly these days I find myself troubled walking into these galleries laden with baby boomer critical gazes, though some understand in a competent comparative fashion and look forward to seeing the end result. The saturation, and the color spectrum.

Mostly these days I wander into a tavern with a short story in my arms. It’s falsehood glaring, but with truth inside the lie. It is also unfinished. And yes it’s five years in the making, and everyone gawks, and watches carefully over glassware beaded with condensation, fury during October, the lights come down a bit, and I feel better. Mostly.

Onyx in your ears, I thought I heard hell speak climbing out of your vocal chords.
Impish muttering while your caregiver delivers silver accented colloquialisms.
If only they could see you now.
If only you could impart some kinder wisdom
Instead feeling rushed, victimized. Not allowed caffeine anymore, not allowed fresh greens anymore, not allowed to be in the company of other residents as long as you are coughing: letting tiny Incubi voices flutter in your words.

My best work may be behind me
clouded in midnight dust, bottles, and empathic Sha-la-la
That bird is gone now
in the valley astray, gliding through Dream 1, and Dream 2
not an utterance in the ethereal space.
At the brink of Vernal Equinox I am re-imagined:
That valley bird, gone indeed, yet a Phoenix emerges hemorrhaging growth.

The imagination Stampede, the deafening glory cry
It is lovely to have similar feathers, and to talk freely with companions.
I know what this means now.

The furnace won’t kick on and my heart is sick. There is no purring or growling from its mechanical insides. The heater, not the heart. Poetry is the cupboard that won’t stay closed, it wants to show you what is behind its shanty stubborn door. The cupboard is heart sick too; with less romantic implications involved. Poetry is the robot that wants to be A.I.
That wants to out perform its human counterparts, and yet empathizes too much with warmly lit LED eyeballs.
Yeah. Sometimes that’s what I think poetry is.