The road drops
The driver stops
Fantasies full
Frantic false memories
Uncertain panic
Fills my fingers
Frail digits
Pale skin fidgets
Scared
Is this the path
I was on
Or have I stumbled
Swerving into
Another lane
Someone else’s brain
The furious fog of reality
Frightens me
Uncertainty heightens
Does not enlighten
I do not know
Why I am here
Half way up the hill
The city spills
All light and wonder
Flowing majesty
A hopeful future
For all that live to see
For all that drive
On through the night
With a few rest stops
Almost to that horizon
Where the pillow
Will hold my head
Where hope finds truth
Instead
Of dark and violent memories
My fingers touch
The dust of that mirage
Partially behind
And half in front
Because it haunts
My sub-consciousness
The road rides me
More than I ride it
Fitting this thing
This human being
That is me
In a metal and plastic box
With no locks
Just doors that fling open
Seatbelts that are broken
And I fly high
Out into the night life
Before I ever touch
Those city lights

My secret place began with a big bang, expanding as space divided and multiplied.
Intersections and dark lines forming strange corridors
Watching each mass in flux become its own synaptic map.
Gloomy ghosts of the past intersecting with visions of the present.
Energy always pushing forward constantly rerouting old wiring.
My secret place is a radiating pool reflecting infinity within a cave of glowing moss.
Shallow puddles paint theses surfaces but beneath their glimmering façade
There are endless depths funneling to dimensions beyond my own comprehension
Worlds of what if and why not places where loved ones are never lost just locked away
Saved in an astral plane to be remembered any day I choose.
Emotions are evident through the rocks as they cycle through cliché colors
Red for rage, blue for despair, green for calm, and purple for passion.
Siren songs of yester everything echo through the wet walls
Sounding lamentation and celebrations of every degree
From overjoyed and apathetic to all the shades of agony.
Angels and demons manifest in varying degrees of desire.
Ego and id sipping slime from the pulsing membrane of the cave walls.
Red rocks thumping like an African drums beating to the rhythm of my heart.
For some their sacred secret place is a safe zone but my home is fraught with danger.
There is always ying and yang *** for tat.
Abstract things born to balances great happiness with deep sadness,
So I can appreciate the beauty and irony because security is an illusion and stability is for fools.
My secret place is fluid always adapting to me, a changing sea unencumbered by destiny.
Better than Wonderland worse than Neverland, and almost as sweet as OZ.
I won’t lose my head but I may lose my heart while flying far to slow to start.
All dreams and fantasies rise and fall from within these corridors.
Prison cells of DNA forms certain passageways flaring with neurotransmitters.
My secret place will fall one day receding into the dark shadows of collapsing stars
Be ****** up into the grand void of space and spit out a wasted mass of molecules.
No matter how hard I try to describe this, you will never really know my world.
As I will never live in yours, so I wonder what is your secret space like?

These soft and hard hands
Beautiful and strong
Small and large
The same hands that held babies
Herded sheep
Softly stroked the heads of pets
Carried crops from the field
Wove cloth from wool
Formed pots from earth
Drenched the dry fires
Held spears, swords, and shields
In defense and for war
Hunted for food
Tickled newborn babes
Carefully cradling their heads
Against their bare breast
So it may suckle
Hugged a crying child
Reprimanded wrong doings
Raised a family
Folded cloths
Cut coupons
Drove kids to school
Wiped tears from strangers eyes
Massaged stress from a body
Satisfied ****** desires
Carried all she had to safer ground
Miles away from her home
Wrote poems, painted pictures
Snapped photos, posted prose
Clenched in outrage
Fought to protect her loved ones
Held high signs of resistance
These hands have shaped the world

I saw war machines between the clouds
and while the sky was burning
people on the ground were living carelessly,
ignoring the Apocalypse above.

I saw a madman hysterically laughing and dancing
amongst  people with bleeding smiles
and I, as one of them,
was wandering by the river,
watching, listening,
not knowing if anything was real.

(A stranger took a picture of me
and I felt pretty.)

Then finding myself in the middle of nowhere
I saw demons burning everything I owned
—a poem, a dress, and your picture—
My legs frightened running and running and running
until my body touched the ground.
Breathless, suffocating,
I knew then
that it was the end.

The preacher wants to send me to hell
The politician, the guards, the lobbyist and the
Industrial prison complex wants to send me to jail
See me suffering in a cell by myself
Or with another victim of this sick system

The church claims I am the property of god
The states says this inmate is the property
Of the federal corrections dark system
Prisons which now work to turn a profit
Turns prisoners into assets and still costs us
Taxes, corporate criminal practices
Give more freedom to the businesses and businessmen
While they condemn me and my impoverished friends
Tell me where does this injustice end

My dance was discordant
Animalistic, trembling persistent
All flesh and bone made to be passionate
Holding in one hand
The hopeful destruction called love
And in the other fingers ****** facts
I gasp choked by the dissonance
Holding out hope while trying to be realistic
All I could do is dance to my own madness

The narrow bed
Where marigolds
Laid their bulbous head
Where little lilies
Lit up the world
Where roses posed
Like prancing posies
Only partially exposed

Now no violets grow
The earth does not know
What to show
The lilacs
Won’t bounce back
Instead take dry dirt naps

The gardener is gone
The garden’s lover has expired
Only dead earth remains
Leaving sad flowers
To wilt
Withering like
Her old creepy
Earth planted corpse

To me it’s a dead man’s barren land
Barely functional mostly boring
Gravel road with only two solid streets

No one meets a stranger
There is no danger of the unknown

People pass away becoming
A checkmark on a checklist
Five hundred to four hundred and ninety nine
Not including me

One water sac down and then another
One by one my family becomes deceased
Till this town feels like a disease
Till my instincts scream death trap

Heavy hearted but lightly packed
The road beckons and I leave it like that
A ghost town fading with the sundown
All my past buried in innocence and memories

And even though they are still very precious to me
I do not ever intend to return their again.

My skin burns with the day’s dusty heated haze
Swirling winds catch the dry dirt and hurl it
Like a desert sandstorm
Light grey and white clouds coming rolling in
Followed by their darker grey and blue hued kin
The sounds of thunder following them
Proceeding the flashing lightening
Resounding with a furious cackling
A dark natured storm’s strange laughter
All building up to the wicked water laden wind
Washing my work wearied skin
And cooling my six to six sick shift
Tortured and tired flesh

I sat sorrow strickened
Flabby body sweat slickened
Glistening in the summer’s heated heart
Languishing in the morning’s orange haze
Wasting her final days
Unphased by the reality before me
As her glazed eyes no longer dilated
As her emaciated frame failed
Spirit sullenly waiting
While loved ones stood debating
How much longer she should be
Forced to live with age’s disease
I was wasting her last precious seconds
Just to avoid lying to or arguing with her

Dear fancy dressed dancing dragon girl
Flaming trimming burning as you twirl
Eyes glimmering as the world is consumed
By the same fire that burned your bedroom
Waves of orange expanding, demanding
Every bit of wood and air as food
Consuming and exuding only ash and sorrow
As your flesh shifts forming patches of melting skin
Changing and rearranging itself
Shedding bits of burnt hair and sanity
Screaming for peace with no relief to come
Arms flailing as you run
And when the dance is done
When the flames no longer sway
In their dangerous and wind swept ways
When the fire ends
Dear dragon girl I hope that you are dead.

The clouds curl behind shadow birds
Fleeing just in time to miss the summer rain
Leaving me to see to the softened earth
Leaving me to see all the greys
Dull earth shades of brown
Colors lose themselves
The ground is less disturbed than me
I want the rain
I beg for pneumonia
Just an excuse to quit it all
And end this long week
To never speak again
So I let the coat get soaked
I let the button up shirt
Stick moistly to my body
I let the pants wrinkle up all wet
I let everyone leave
As the rain washes
What is left of me
I just sit still as stone
On the grey monument
Till the water in my eyes
Is just tears from the sky
Till all the paper in my pocket disintegrates
Till the ground starts to swallow me
Like it swallowed her
Never fully digesting
Just weighing me down
From this side of death
Till it all stops
And trudges back
Slipping and backing into my skin
Feeling other emotions again
Heading home I start to sneeze
Smiling inside I beg please
Let this sneeze be the death of me

Children playing
Little echoes of long ago
Brothers and sisters
Chasing each other
Running around the small town
Coming home to the farm
The building breaks
The wood rots
The porch cracks
Under a creaking
Rusted door frame
Sunburnt skin flaking
In the harsh summer wind
Oily flesh now dried
Swept up
Soon turns ashen
Praying for tomorrow
Dreaming of the old days
Her child says
Hope doesn’t die
She replies
With tired eyes
But we do