Restless wandering through the voidless night.
Time is spent watching my dreams go down.
The morning trifles the mirage of normalcy.
I sip coffee with chamomile crumbs floating at the top.
Herbs upon herbs, accidents and orphanages.
Out the window the high school sits cold and waiting for the not awake yet.
The busses rumble the emptines.
It doesn't scare the birds.

I quit singing my sad bluebird blues today.
  Tears that skipped in broken grooves
   dried up on the filth of the sun.
   Sickness, that waded in dissipated
   like the dust of snakes in dreams.
Now the sun rises.
     I watch the visually striking images
     blend with the stillness of skin.
   There's no battle for love anymore.
    Only daylight and darkness
    flickering in the background
    of your words. I watch them.
    They fuse together
    like moon light
    bleeding out of
    the night of the river.
Your face, it screams all the lies
we've been told. The subconscious
sparks of the cords in the television
Makes the square bubble burst.
It blows up, Colors spilling
uncontrollably.
climbing up the vines
through the holes
in the wall you pull
me up to the skyline.
It radiates in the distance,
pulling at the wind before me.
and my heart
it grows with the
Setting sun.

The hidden world.
Raised over a life of Bus stops
and flying cars.
Where trees ascending
Show their shapes at their rounded
Symbolic tops.
All of us breathing under
the wandering,
The unbroken-
Void.
One green chair,
reclined
towards a wired skyline sunset
Watching the show of
The sweeps, swooping
Everywhere with velocity
The sky filling with determined
Black figures. Purple and red.
Shadows on a canvas
of the darkest of blues
A daily ritual
Moon broad and solid
Two angels on the shoulders
Of the world.
Birds now whispering
and cradled
by bricks.

We wake up together 
Sniffing and staring 
At our thoughts 
Floating together
In this square bubble
With sunlight in it.
Last night we held each other.
Could only watch the
Visuallystriking images,
Battling each other
For love in the dark.

Now I hate you with such a
Familiar closeness
That I forget the word entirely.
It doesn't exist.
And your face, is a beautiful
Perfect flame,
That burns with every color in it
That just showed up,
That I needed .
And it's this love. 
This love of never caring at all,
This love of just thinking about this love
That makes your love leave.
It's gone and then I love you 
without you.

Bobo's kitchen

in the kitchen
icebergs rampage from the freezer
burying pizzas and waffles
in a glacier jungle
Bobo swings forks and knives
at the ice until the maintenance man
cusses in Polish
gallons of water
dripping downstairs
sizzling Bertalina's soul
the fiery bilingual single mom
living in fear
below his fear
of noise complaints
she sends tape recordings
to the landlord in her
cute red faced anger
loud people! and bongos!
guitars! stomping! laughter!
nightmares for her boys
who think they hear ghosts
her tight black spandex
drives Bobo mad when she runs
drifted scents of her food
sift in through his windows
knocking him out
in hungry frustration!
¿Como estás? he asks her
I speak ******* English! she barks back
back up the stairs Bobo goes
to his own kitchen where
the mice crawl out the stove tops
and potatoes grow tree roots
clear through the window
toward another life

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

Resilient

I settle with settling.
My thoughts, overlapping,
are details shrouded in clouds.
Images awaken and stir in themselves
the old and aging thoughts
raised like veins.
I pray for insolence, usually,
but sometimes I pray for
the weak to be free,
for strength in numbers.
I pray for the art of mind
over matter
over death.
I'll be free when
the rhythm is running again,
when I'm riding inside the rushes,
when the other worldly colors
let me fold them and squeeze.

I'm looking up but I'm looking down.
I drop.
I lose my sense of everything
but the friction
the fiction sustains the glides.

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey