Cigarettes and pheromones
Calloused tips
and olive skin.
Coffee stains
on aching palms
One wrapped around a neck,
The other conducting tendons
tugging at rhythms
******* theory.

Others’ are raised
crying hallelujah—
Yours stuck
Stiff like soldiers’
or unsure anchors—
Lost like subjugated natives—
The Stolen Generation of yourself.
Just follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, John—
hide inside hollowed boabs.

I ask you if you’d like some tea—
you look like you’d drifted off.

You said:
“Now why’d you have to go say a thing like that?
Why are you always assimilating me to your context?”

If this poem can be
called stream of
consciousness, then this
awkward pause…
is not ellipse but fish.

Lately our poets loiter'd in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro' which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My sluber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears a thorn.

I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn't looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet they were my best friends once.
When I was small, I knew them well.
I counted on them up to ten
And put them in my mouth to tell
The larger from the lesser. Then
I loved them better than my ears,
My elbows, adenoids, and heart.
But with the swelling of the years
We drifted, toes and I, apart.
Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j'accuse!--
I hid them quickly in my shoes.

woke up today
smoked breakfast through
my lungs
words flowed from my
pen, unbidden in the end
blues guitar in my head
lyrics written in my soul
the buzz brought on
by this drug in my veins
the rat - tat of the snare
a ghost note on these shelves
books of the mind
opened to the masses
i spent my afternoon in
my classes
with thoughts of the moon
daydreaming loops
round like a record
skipping flipping
and ripping this
poetic veil

This is the worst time of year.
The sun peaks it's rays through
Cotton candy clouds.
Tulips and sun-drenched daffodils
That raise their weary heads
Do nothing but stir up old memories.

This is the best time of year.
Rain falls in heavy droves
That soaks the skin and seeps into the bone.
We creak and click,
Dead bodies returned to life
Revived by steaming cups of coffee
Finding comfort in loneliness.

This is the saddest time of year.
Lovers lay in gently swinging hammocks
Slowly sipping life from one another.
Children imagine leaping into crystalline pools
By turning on the television
Seeking solace in air conditioned tombs.

This is the happiest time of year
Students cling to each other
Caps and gowns waving in the wind.
Office drones seek air conditioned prisons
And with every taste of freedom
They lay their wintry bones on
Scented grass
And hope to sink into the sun-warmed earth.

I took my lyre and said:
Come now, my heavenly
tortoise shell: become
a speaking instrument

an orange guitar
and a bottle
of cheap Merlot
is a Saturday night

a mistle-toe scented candle
burns:
its flame
moves, jives
to the vibrations
of
Stevie Ray Vaughn.

quiet fall
creeps in
through the
cracked window--
the smell of fields,
of north carolina
air

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb—
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.