Hot Coffee at the Tracks.
clickety-clack,
steam from the cups and pots,
steam from the stacks,
this whistle-stop with a cup of "Joe,"
on the way home with yet many miles to go...

____

See the painting that inspired the poem:

"Homeward Bound" by David Tutwiler
http://www.myhdwallpapers.net/wallpapers/Train-station-painting-original.jpg

Air fills with sharp shrills of jays,
the sounds
gratuitous warning
for feet adapted
to ground-
better directed
at a stray cat
that will dare limbs
in hope of his prize

dreamer's ears once heard
melodies of Verdi arias
through leaves,
their sweetness seeping
as from blue overhead
and imagination lured
to seek beauty in them

learning from too often falling,
wishes earning scars
that made skin numb and hard,
morning's music found muffled
by deaf cowardice,
its promise of safety
worn on gray,
dusty shoes

When i lay me down to sleep of late,
i hope, i hope, i never wake.

Shes always my past waiting to drag me to a time eternal.
As  nightmare's  are but my deepest desire.
When happiness was more than a word unknown to me.

As we cling to it gently knowing the reality wakes
us alone.
Togather in desperation I wish only to erase this
vision to save the pressent.

She's knows it's near the moment we can never face.
In the darknest it's in fear I regret  what we'll
remain of my heart a vacant space.

The breeze slip's over the over the dying summers breath.
A angel's last rites and this demons favorite disgrace.

As sunrise ****'s my heart of dreams im left alone.
The feeling so real.
False was that time  killing only me still
This fool yerns to embrace.
The memory that never matched the face.

I write my farwell  to  you  everynight  in the
theater  of my faded heart.
Killing me  to live   the shock has left me numb.

Tortures of a sadness  smiles sweet as the kiss
We share that only in my souls bitter reflection.
As the sunrise take's me away to my waking misery.
My days but a marker to my bittersweet end.

(HORROR & FANTASY FICTION)

On a dark, damp night beside a country campfire,
tales of The Timberman are shared near the mire,
of Sadie's Swamp, where not so long ago,
The Timberman came and the death toll rose.

No one knows from whence The Timberman came,
but that it was on an October night in the rain,
with hate in his heart and a love of fear,
a taste for fresh flesh and a thirst for tears.

He comes brandishing an axe of the sharpest steel,
fells trees in his wake whilst seeking out his meals;
then stalking his way through the brush without stopping,
he seeks out his victims for his fatal chopping.

The Timberman's axe would arise and then fall,
shattering bone, splashing blood, flaying flesh and all,
hacking and striking to the shriek of their screams,
reveling in the flow of their blood-gore in streams.

Then, alas! -before the chase would begin,
there'd be nary a sound nor sight of him,
just the ****** remains of his brutal hunt:
hacked human bodies and scarred tree trunks.

The King of the World is on his way now,
he always shows up when the chips are down.
Everyone just loves The King of the World,
he always arrives with his banners unfurled.

The King can be a loud chap,
or The King can be quite a quiet mime,
he even puts his pants on
one royal leg at a time!

The King might eat breakfast,
or The King just might not,
he is everything you are,
yet is is all that you forgot.

He's a musician of sorts,
with a very big band,
his arrival is in herald,
throughout every land
-with brass trumpets a-blare,
and snare-drums rat-a-tat,
he makes everyone aware,
that he's now where you're at!

The King marches his forces
through the cities and fields,
assure of his courses,
lying flat beneath his heel.

He revels at the sight of deterioration,
fills his belly with the joy of nations in extinction.
The King grounds everything down to things he scrapes off his boots,
he topples the governs and poisons the cultural roots.

The King's fixations are splashed with spatters of blood,
turning kingdoms into crumbles of ashes and mud.
He bulldozes the bodies into toxic pits of ****,
contaminates by obscenity, wringing his hands at the wit.
Lionized by his minions in the empty empires he wrought,
The King's elite ruling class is dictated with rot.

In the aftermath of the bile
of his genocidal, sweet plight,
The King celebrates with great style,
turning the daylight into night.

With bonfires a-blaze on the wicked, windy wasteland,
The King of the World strikes up his big band,
and once marching again will torch and ravish the land,
dropping massive, beautiful bombs for the sake of the thrill,
melting the people and villages and eroding the hills.

The time for The King
always is nigh,
for he is surrounded by
the conjurations of lies.

Some say he is evil,
(but, he's not the Devil, you see)
-He's The King of the World,
he is you, he is *me.

"io sol uno."
-Dante, Purgatorio

There I was,
the comic-tragic star of my own motion-picture,
bold beneath the springtime Italian sun hung high
--a heavenly fixture,
illuminating the gold-leaf enframed frescoes in
kaleidoscopes of colours,
baking dry the pigeon droppings upon the flagstones
they smothered,
where I, in all my self-serving recreation,
posed proudly in a costume of my own creation,
an operatic villain clad in a billowy blouse of black,
the Campanile Tower like a sentinel behind my back,
as movie cameras panned and zoomed,
paparazzi photographers capturing me
and freezing me,
in all my wicked, medieval glory,
floating and gloating in the dank aroma of the Venetian seas,
"I'm the shining star!
--Look at me, look at me!"*
-the super-special star I always knew I'd be,
a painted parody,
a harlequin of displaced passions
for all to laugh at and see,
before slipping silently
into the ornate basilica,
dim and dark as night,
thanking Mother Mary (for nothing) as I sparked
a votive candle's light,
not really sure or caring
where my life would lead,
just as long as the Azure Queen
shed Her Grace on me,
     me,
             me,

...until I fell
and fell
to the mockery of a home
I made in Hell,
hard and forever and fast,
the only fool left alone in my solo cast,
adrift with no direction,
****** and lost,
me and my frivolous theatre,
squandered an an extravagant cost.

___
"io sol uno" means, "I, myself, alone."

This poem is a true-life story.

__
See the Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy:
http://www.carfree.com/design/pix/sqlg110venice_piazza-san-marco.jpg

My new policy
on critics and trolls
is that from here on in,
they shall be kicked in the *****.

Hard.

With steel-tipped boots.

Repeatedly, if need be...

Is this not what it's all about?
Waiting in the wings,
stretching, turning, churning,
anxious and adrenal,
living for the dream,
wishing for the dream,
being
the dream,
dancing on beams,
beneath the streams
of lights and fans,
arrayed like a bird
in tulle, crinoline, silk, satin and linen
white plumage,
acting only on command,
the music soft and flowing
their frail, slender figures
take to air,
arms and legs,
torsos tender,
slender necks,
wisps of downy hair,
melding colours,
sights and sounds,
the stage a pedestal of fate,
their beauty
captured
in gilded cages
for all to watch and see,
recaptured yet again,
by the artist on the easel'd window
of his canvas,
a maestro of sorts,
tapping his baton-brush,
coating the blankness with sweet
inspiration,
like angels heavenly
brought to earth,
serenaded by strings,
life from the blankness begins,
covers the void,
bejewels the mind's eye
and beckons the ballet
rehearsal to begin,
yet shall in oil paint now
and for all time
never cease to be...

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
Edgar Degas

____
Inspired by the painting by Impressionist artist Edgar Degas,
The Rehearsal.
--to view the painting:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/degas/ballet/degas.rehearsal.jpg

the hardest part about
writing a poem about you
is that the words tend to
get into the way
of what i really want to
say to
you

"Cash, Grass or ***-No One Rides Free!"*
reads the bumper-sticker slapped on the ratty Harley.
Its black leather seat is cracked, tattered and torn,
the headlight is busted and there's no friggin' horn;
with mismatched saddlebags strapped to each side,
the panhead leaks like a sieve, but it's still quite a ride.

The gas-tank is dented, scratched and coated with muck,
the chrome no longer shines, but who gives a flyin' ****?
Its tires are bald, the spokes are all rusted to ****,
and the frame is off-kilter from a cage-driver'*****.

The biker just puffed the last hit from his pipe,
slammed down the rest of the J.D. from the bash last night;
then he hops on his hog, kicks the monster to start,
the muffler-pipes blast flames and roar like a ****.

Together they roll down the road like old pals,'
with nowhere to go, just obnoxious and loud:
the tombstone tail-light flashes bright red on this mess,
'though Cashless, Grassless and Assless, they couldn't care less!

Hold your breath and close your eyes,
wish and dream with me, then sigh,
take my hands to your smiling face,
feel my loving fingers trace,
the very essence of your being,
those softly kisses worth repeating,
that from now on and ever after this,
we shall live our lives in loving bliss.

I wish to peer at Paris, under-dressed and ***** in all of its neoclassical splendor.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to see a prehistoric forest, verdant, overgrown and jumbled.
Before evergreen mysteries I would be ever humbled.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to see Rhodian gardens and from them, smell the flowering fig and taste succulent honey suckle.
I wish to glimpse zaftig temptresses dancing twenty thick amidst courtyards of ancient Persian palaces.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to be blessed into an inenarrable life on an unalike mysterious planet.
I wish for an Atlas resembling and proportionate soul.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I've demanded an even temperament from my unruly emotions.
I've settled for continuous disbelief at the loquacious ignobleness of humanity.

For change, there are things I would give up.

I've sequestered my innocent dreams and bloomed monetary means.
I've avoided death narrowly, my fingers gripping, fear will always transfix, while barreling down 36'.
I've inhaled profits and installed transformation.

For change, there are things I would give up.

I've burned my midnight oil, taken offensive slander, and burned bridges with gratuitous candor.
I've witnessed coal falsify a beautiful gloaming sky.
I've had gasoline dreams filled and fuming with intensity, all drowning under an ocean of oil.
I've envisioned bleached beaches to hide stained soil.

These are moments I would give up.

There are things I've realized outside my reality, outside my internal soliloquy and physical tactility.
I've come to understand my words are nothing more than symbols on a closed door.