sandra, darling.
you're a vacant house
you're a purring creaky floor, quivering
under my searching foot
this flimsy flashlight leading me
as i charge further into
the lowly lit caverns
and further down
to the shivering warmth
in the back of these
smoke filled
hotel rooms

sandra, darling.
you're a midnight meadow
you're a great escaping sound, flickering
under the persuasion of the wind
sinking silver shears
cut gleams into eyes
but this has never been explained.
why are we holding hands
if just to keep me grounded?

i was just visiting
you and this town
sandra, darling.
its morning
and i am leaving now.

sandra, darling.
you're a unique and special snowflake
but i dont fear these
southern blizzards
or the flurry of rhetorical sound
enough to stay for breakfast
enough to stick around.

"Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."* Genesis 3:14-15

oh my dear eve
to be young and stupid with you
to be stillborn naked into a cold world
mouth full of rotten fruit
the taste of broken promises and half-truths
what I wouldn’t give to sleep naive
next to you and under a tree
to see God and myself hidden shyly behind fig leafs
to name animals and constellations
to experience lust and love
all at once
and without a whimper, concede to those foolish temptations
but you speak softly to brother snake
and every morning before I wake up
you slither away
it must be that fiend, that belly-down devil
who took you from me
oh, if only i or God were so convincing
but politely wincing,
a gentleman retreating
i press knowledge to my lips
and follow you, head down
out of heaven
And into a neverending
eternal
Hell.

previously
i would of said
love was the purpose
there was a heart to this universe
and it circulated
meaning
to every extremity

but now i wake
to toil
silver and gold pockets
finally a son to profit

my father was right
we're all just a number
and we cant add up to
lofty goals
or life plans
you're not a doctor.
i'm not a police man.

dream
no more my sweet
those are shores
we'll never meet

ithaca
is no more
and never was
and i'm not the kind of king to be waiting on
a prince, a pauper, a peon
i'm only a man in an argument with God
but its a problem
that is often
never solved

life is getting
what you dont want
and making the best of disappointment

oh penelope
it may be 10 years
or twenty
but i'll make it back!
i swear i'm coming back!

with money in bags
and cloudy eyes

'how're you?'

'oh, you know me
i'm making
it by
and by'

'but you're not you
you're not you anymore'

and we'll both get by
not really happy
but, hey, thats life

maybe one day
i'll wreck upon your shore
and your suitors will meet me
and my sword

i can string a bow
and keep my word

all at once

oh penelope
wont you wait for me?

wont you unweave
this burial shroud?

because
i am not
no no no
i am not
dead
yet.

I think you revel in my fear
I think you bathe in it
Like you were Elizabeth
And it was blood
And by some ******* of logic
It kept you young

I think you want me
Like a fish in a bowl
Swimming circles
In the space you rent to me
I am the tenant of your uncertainty
Forever taxed, and begging for the scraps
You’d leave

I think you smile
When I fall for your snares
With lustful eyes that raises both suspicion
And hairs
As I gnaw my leg, through bone and vanity
To run away, to be free

As you yell from behind,
“you’ll be mine for eternity
I am the entrance and the exit
You will see, oh, you will see”

I think every word you’d speak
Was just to show the point
of your teeth
and tongue
still sharp enough
to puncture my bagpipe lungs

mournfully humming along
“let me be, oh, let me be”

my body
was buried beneath sand
grain by grain
i carried the weight of the earth

i heard the ocean
sigh,
my tongue became the desert
too dry to call out to you

i was
claustrophobic and hesitant
unruly in my sediments,
stubborn, like the rooted ****

i was
quite the public nuisance
but still you loved me
pulled me up,
and dressed me in a kings garb

now i make the
roses weep
and all the lilies lament
their endless jealousies

just as you promised.

you do not know art, like i know Art.
though you paraded your passings in public
it was i who, Art, trusted with his secrets
it was my window, that Art, tapped when the arguing began
yes, you may have enjoyed a dinner or engaged in conversation with him
but he never trusted you with paintings of the english language
or pictures worth a thousand songs
you didnt get 6 stitches, with Art, when you tried to climb the tallest tree
to reach out and touch heaven but still fear the fall
you didnt find Art trembling in a bathroom from what he saw
that day. You didnt find Art in broad daylight dancing
to some invisible meter, some transparent beat
you didnt see the patterns left in the steps of his feet
and while you may have gone to the cinema with Art
it was i he forwarded the scripts
to reenact a lifetime of moments
because we, Art and i, wanted a silver lining
something vague, something inspiring
to keep this momentum going
and while you claim to know this being, Art
you have not participated in a drunken brawl
with Art, involving a few rotten Connecticut men
and things not in our control
you haven't discussed eternity and death
with Art, or any of his close friends
and though, i'm sure you may have wish you did
you do not know art, like i do.

i would like to play the trumpet for you
i feel i could breathe
the wailing of my soul into it.

i could play myself through this instrument
into consciousness
from this sleeping dream
into smoke from this flame

i could wisp and dissipate
like clouds in your eyes
can you see the clouds in mine?
or the dew, in the morning left?
i cant remember the rain
though i am drenched, i am dripping
every bit falling, drop by drop,
into a lake never quenched

before words, before television
you have always preceded
the breath standing at the crest of my lips
but turned, scared, naked
retreating, from the beach
back to the sea

where you close curtains
to my whale song
pounding at the door
unintelligible frequencies
on top of waves and across the sandy floor

i sink so low, shaking
chains shackled to the earth
i'd barter for the key
but the guards
they ask the trumpet from me
summoning vultures to my stomach
my burning coal punishment

for swimming so reckless
for weeping on the shoreline
because you and the rainwater receded
back into the depth of chambered winds
slipping like the valves from my fingertips
before the hushed tones of my non harmonics
my soul blossoming out of it
my song on every radio, every wax and needle
in the air wisping out

when you are not the sun
and not listening.

clouds in the back of eyes,
and sleepless nights.