I've got serious poetic issuses
The rhyme in my mind never quits
I've seen countless shrinks over the years
That asure me this is it
When  along comes another snag
Here yet comes  another riff

It starts off all sweet and subtle
The way purring kittens do
Soon enough to a roaring lion
Salivating over poetic stew
I'm at the point where I now realize
There's not a lot that I can do

So it's back to pen and paper
Pounding out the daily poems
Like a mess of party favors
Take your favorite flavor home
Guess with me and the insanity of poetry
I'm destined to never be alone

My melodious bulbs,
that spring in Mother Nature's melody,
your petals, indifferent to the next one over,
as if you were the phalanx working against the Persians,
at the Battle of Marathon.

The way the leaves always sprout,
from my tree I had always referred to as "Hank,"
as he bleeds out glistening vermilion buds,
to only release emerald plains, to expose to the world, to become a source,
of both food, and shelter.

My shelter of the world,
how the branches curl themselves around the sunlight,
as forming a dome over my head,
keeping me safe from all that is
crime
blood
offense
war
sickness
death
complexities
torture

I­ enjoy to watch the animals live,
as the birds soar into the sky,
singing their songs in unison.

The rabbits in the field, feeding upon the lilies and grass,
oh look, there resides a wild ferret,
and a non-domestic fox,
and soon the scene becomes bleak,
covered in flies and vulture shadows,
as the children lash out in the scene,
remaining fighters brawl for the corpses.

mother nature is happy.

Sometimes I wish I had the voice to speak out to the people,
the will to let my actions flow from me,
to let my actions take me to new world,
but I only paradox my thoughts.

To think of the song "Somewhere Over The Rainbow,"
once I become the being some will love,
instead of leaving me behind as an abandoned phantasm,
repressing my feeling of desertification of the creativity,
fooling it to think it is purification,
when in reality I am nothing,
when I sometimes think I can succeed I just fall when things become an obstacle,
a brick wall my mallet can not collapse.

I like to wear the masks,
to hide my failure from everyone else tricking them into,
thinking I am just being foolish as I really make them to show my,
horrendous persona,
the monster you have all repressed for so long I am.

You scrunch your nose at my masks smile compared to the cannibal,
that lives in the alleyway waiting to jump at the prey as he prays,
to be the predator he once was.
My mask can relate to him,
as I watch the "Happy little bluebirds fly, over the rainbow,"
when I am naught.

that summer, Born to Be Wild
and Mrs. Robinson were on AM,
A & W Drive Inns served frosted mugs    
and Tet’s blood had not long dried black
on Saigon streets

my thumb took me from the green tipped tongue
of western Kentucky across the wide world
to a café in Santa Rosa, where I spent my last
eighty-five cents, on a tuna sandwich
and chips

a bus bench was waiting for me  
when the cafe closed its doors
at 12:10, the old waitress giving me
a generous extra dime of time,
knowing I had to face the night  
and the bench, or the New Mexico road
I chose the latter and headed south  
under coal dark skies    

only eighteen wheelers passed, their screaming lights
robbing me of what quiet vision night’s monotony had granted  
they saw my thumb, but not one stopped; they did not know I had walked
a dozen dark dead miles, and had not closed my eyes in 60 hours  
nor did they care, about me, or my shadow on Highway 54  

I talked to pinyons,  cedars that dotted the mesas
and moved about like mournful buffalo, stirred to life
by a sound or a scent, perhaps my own foul road bouquet,
though they were mute, even when I asked them
if I was seeing god in their measured marching
across my desert dream  

long before
the dawn I begged to come
I saw him, dead center on my highway
so black he was blue, his eyes like two emeralds
hanging in some ethereal space, staring at me, the rest
of the absent world unaware he was there, growling
the rumble so low I tasted it, as he might taste me,
I felt our nostrils flair, as his would when
he devoured me,  I saw the blood feast
through our eyes, the last morsel of me,
a pale art form on an asphalt palette  

as he swallowed the last of his meal
the eighteen wheeler came, its high beams bouncing off him
only long enough for me to see his mouth was dry
and his belly empty, before he vanished
into the blue night

She hides her smile
behind black lipstick.
Her voice is low
and in between.
She smells of loneliness
and cigarettes.
She sings for me
when she is high.

She gets me higher
than I can go.
She takes me low
and in between.
Her heart's on fire
when she sings.
Her voice is smokey,
full of pain.

She sings of loneliness
and broken dreams.
Her dance is low
and in between.
She gets me high
and lets me down.
She kisses me
with black lipstick.

r ~ 4/29/14

imagine: there are two bodies floating
at the top of the lake, and you know them
by name-  one is the girl who has always
loved you, and the other is the girl you
have always loved, even though she tells you
she could never love you back. both are
drowning, do you save one, or do you
drown too?

From always have my story books ever spoke,
urging me to live life with one phrase;
Memento Mori, a simple Latin phrase I had known,
from the beginning of my universe that I posses,
to the society I once slept upon, have I ever known,
that the sky is always sapphire,
the grass is always emerald,
and the blood is ONLY but ruby.

Whereas my storybooks told me, Memento Mori,
I will eventually whither away like the plants I was reluctant to plant,
to watch them die away,
so I could grasp it's corpse, and crush it's ashy substance.
I grin at that notion,
the concept of me having power, to crush,
my homicidal grin, illuminating malicious vibes,
only to feel guilty for I am enjoy their pain.

Although my storybooks, had always said Memento Mori,
they were books of a hero to zero, a man of a demon,
they had always spoken to me, their lustful eyes,
entrancing me from an angel's call, and telling me the phrase;
tu fui ego eris
"As you are, I was; as I am, so you shall also be"
They were right, for I had sinned like the killers in my book,
just like them, and they were just like me,
and we both could not avoid death, just as out gravestones had said.

I had refused to accept Memento Mori,
I refused to acknowledge the emerald that I had stood on, what it was I could never,
the sapphire I had not known, in the heavens only my piping plover knew,
and the ruby, has I always felt, warm, as it was around my feet,
only to be purified, and realize no one else was different.

We all murdered our complexities.

Home Depot does not sell azure paint.
No. They do have Morning Sky,
Tropical Lagoon, Morning Breeze,
Ocean Cruise, Cozumel, Empress Teal,
Almost Aqua, and Navy.  But no azure.  
No cyan, either. No plain ol' blue.
I will take my verdant money elsewhere.
Home Depot should be more poet friendly.

r ~ 4/29/14