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

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

wait for it and it doesn't come

caught off guard 

incredulous singing



squawking pigeons

six in the morning

kings of the ready

dead finch



cats eat feathers

in the house of cards

down stairs ready

house of carnivores



company functions

canvass paints numbers

paints horses riding
steady in mind--

through


windy
 ozark meadows

six in the morning

while the finch
sleeps in

I love the brilliant frenzied
        stillness
Earth rotating, an opaque of
        beaded matters
The buckling transfixiated
           openings of bleeding
     ground.
Blue green brown blood
    teeming with movement
disconnecting features
    rapt in water
      and other lives
  repeating, inserting
    maelstroms of
thought.

Somehow lost through
Wrong words, mixed
Symbol conversations
Faced with nothing
To understand
Forgot how to rap
To rhyme, to shop
To hop
To intertwine
My mind
To unwind.

Mushrooms

And our lives really are
nicely shaped
primitive blunders
filtered and fashioned
out of that dream sense
you always speak of

And the world
still holds tight
we sit still staring
motionless at the ground
layered twirling and
shifting beneath us

Until the dust
this golden speechless dust
its ghostness enough
to rise up cloudy into my red skin
Your red skin getting finer
even more crystallized
than those bright blue veins

We are worlds turned upside down
newer than this
world of psychedelic rocks
Ancient trees
stare at us
chess pieces
the tumbling ground
filling now with infinite prairies
and valleys and dancing sand dunes

Does it hurt sometimes?
losing to the thoughts of turning back
comes close to blindness
sometimes this fading clarity
breathing and sighing
I close my eyes enough
now to feel the throbbing sun
absorb me
I'm awake
I remember

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

I roll through these scenes
with impulsive magnificence.
Sometimes its rolling,
sometimes I flip.
Sometimes I find myself
extenuating the struggle
horseback
through catapulted
decades of
fur-
trapped
ozark
witchcraft
dirt

the cave makes a show
of all its rocks
that sat in the water
forever with all the rich
minerals of the earth
where all the colors are
down there in the dark
with no sun to burn
out the identity
with any air of
dignity,
lost in the domeless
sky of regret.

I’m driving laps around
Urique’s unpaved streets
with Arnulfo, the world’s fastest
ultra-runner up front
Chugging tesguino disregarding
Young son, Mateas in the back
Handing us the 2 liter Coca-
Cola bottles, full of the mashy
corn brew.
The cholos are drinking
Tecate, mumbling under the palms
stalking the river, watching us
break down at ever lap.
Arnuflo heaves the truck
from behind, alone,
screaming and pushing.

I snap it into second gear
Mateas trembling,
and off we go. Arnulfo hopping in
smoking more cigarettes
passing the tesguino around shouting
Rapido! Poco a poco! Andale!

Rancherra bumps full blast, the
Eternal bumping,
beem, boom, up and down
Beem, boom, beem, boom
Tubas and brass echoing through all the adobe walls
meandering all the way
down the arroyo
to God know’s where.

The cholos challenge Arnulfo
to a race in their harsh stares
under flashy hats and shiny mustaches,
Ed Hardy models with sharp pointed
snake-skinned boots
Ayyeee, Arnulfo says, He won’t race
gainst Oscarine who they say
is the fastest young Chabochi
better than the elders
who used to chase down deer,
gently twisting their necks
after  tracking them to
an ending exhaustion.

Arnulfo tells them I can win
as Oscarine snorts more from the bag
they pass around from his pocket

Off we go twenty yards
Around the farthest tree
And I win because of
Arnulfo's ancient
assurance

in the trees lies a dream
in the breeze
of a melody.

i wait in the chair
stare off the balcony

rhythm of a
different kin

****** to the floor
a boat. with blues
my toes float,
not to listen,
this is a joke.

sideways death throne
cousins eats scones
floats in methadone --

I can dream in a mumble,
I’m holy in the jungle
but won't jump off

the angry totem scheme,
til the sound goes soft.
i can’t
hear her
scream.

im runnin away
im holdin this canyon
in my hand,

one more tonight

hop over the
fire,

escape
plan

speak easies and sunsets
the rip roaring tide
of each season
plucked from
a particular
map of heart
a wilted plant
brought to
fruition
through
journies posted
reconciled and branded
out of their
terrain of gloom
with terrain too soon
the hardy way
of blues
‘infidel rider
of the box car
whiskey sunrise
alarm clock for BBC
snowy icy white lot
sky feasting
on schizoids
orchestrating
the busses
the pistols
silenced
and silent
the train

outer banks #1


down to the outer banks
where the water
and the dunes
reflect the wild east coast

we had to drive
to where its not commercialized
where the sand is actually
really occupied

ya gotta a dig a hole burn some coal
just to even eat a fish
grab a spear for a crab where the
shallow waters clear

ya gotta go, you gotta roll where
the old wind blow
ya gotta go, you gotta roll where
the old wind blow

watch your back girl
butter flies flyin outta your skirt
fly off the waves like dirt

were hidden out in the sand dune land
protected from patrol
by mountain sand

while the elders passed a joint
laughin, not carin and
so i soak it in
soak soak soak it in

cause you gotta roll, you gotta go
where the old wind blow

crabbin and a surfin
unknown land
im just campin out
and followin my dad

and camper dave
he's my other dad
we got the seafood
the surfers wish they had

so you gotta roll, you gotta go with the flow
where the ocean is remote
dont need no boat

its the best **** feeling
id ever had

cause ran around
the old wind blow


u gotta go where the old wind blow
so you gotta roll, you gotta go where
the old wind blow


you gotta gooo oh
where the old wind blow

Ed’s Speak-Easy hides behind its windows
draped and shielded from the sunset west-

-on into morning their unaware eyes
time-glossed in the sun rise east.

I sat in my studio above them,
over nine seasons in solace
never sights, just sounds of
girls dancing in lacy fluffed skirts

trampling glasses and hollow cans
sharp moving heels in heavy shadows
creaking toxins aged and seaped
into hardwood misery

Whiskey shouts and poker faced insults
high-toned energy, rising and fading
explosive bursts of high money
high life, high scheme delight.

I could see their sounds and feel their rhymes,
my blood feeding off their nicotine from
the smoke rise, a cascading surprise
to the carpet fibers rising up the walls
into my webbed lines of breath

One eyed Doug is dead,
Mario told Trey
at the foot of the trail
where they caught each other
sneaking up to the old civil war fort.

they walked up together
where the trees made it
seem later in the day,

catching the stride
through the deep shadows to the top.
They heard the fire
cracking and voices stirring the embers,
stirring all the Coyote and Deer
to the outskirts, away from
Justin and Nick, resting at home,
Sitting with newly lit eyes
Glazed against the giant logs
Lava-tinged
Gargoyle’s roasting
slowly in the fire

Mario lifts the log
where Doug always sat, that somehow
never got burned.
He lifts it high,
like a ghost
they see in the slant
of the train bridge walls.
Shoves it hard
breaking open new fires
breaking apart
the civil war owl
rising up from the ashes

I'm telling you
I rotated through a world
of symbols smacking me
straight in the jaw with
with their static persuasion
clear
mindedness is a notion
easily lost under the
bridges and over
grown in the river banks
with nasty roots
soaked up in the
grime and grit
of this town


keep following that
windy path
that winds over itself
like holographic
anti-dimensional
shapes and viking
rocks that float
through you
I rotated through a world
I'm telling you

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

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.

patterned brilliance.

losing touch with a setting sun
trance-like
in the lilac sky.
familiar, inopportune
words fill my wounds
like people flocking towards
dramatic settings.
They make a hum,
A chatter of awaiting smiles
stifled by the sound denied
by their silence

too far deep
a lack of care

Intense realization
that I’m steady
in the sky

Opening 6 am eyes
To squealing leaf blower,
time-squinching
******* tightening siren,
a drone for your eyes to
float inside,
A sudden soundtrack
to text  Message suicides,
, bitterbombs ,
from New York

The words pop up wobbly,
glossy, bobbling around
to the beat of their sender’s
notions
Distressed as he wakes to the sting in his eyes
And envisions your eyes
opening after,
succeeding,
Not alarmed yet.
still separate from the void
where his thoughts
haven’t occurred yet.

Projected comics
play out in both minds,
saracastic kids,
bouncing around like
blotter acid making
escstatic pangs of
it all.
While the world drives on
A steaming freight train
heading straight through Kansas
To Alberquerque
To beyond
Until were back again going to sleep
In love with our pillows.

static transience
breeds paranoia
and guilt
standing there witness
to your  own
subconscious,
like a sneaking
reporter
with a tape
recorder, water gate
style
tapping for
your soul’s
ubiquitous
campaign
party
launched
and revealed
to transparent
realms

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.

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.

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.

In a sense,
I died right there with you
on the road going south
to my own grandpa’s funeral.

You two didn’t know each other
but you decided to go out at the same time.

The news kept me driving hysterical
for six hours, gripping the wheel constantly
cursing the stars for stinging my eyes.

I thought about climbing
up out of the sun roof,
riding the van like a wave
somehow steering the thing
with my own nervous intensity

Imagined my teeth
gritting away in the night,
as if on *******,
eyes expanding
trance like in fear
of sadness

For three nights I felt that
fear. Felt those piercing bullets
ripping clear through
your clean white tee
leaving you cold,
and breathless
on some ****** covington street.

When the WWII veterans
fired out the shots of salute
for my Grandpa,
I somehow didn't flinch
and thought of you
denying those dudes
any joy of ripping you off.

You didn’t understand death
and neither did my Grandma,
for that matter.
just one look at her
trembling eyes exposed
life's distant rawness.
no grounds
for the wonderment of death.
Then as the trumpet
rang out, it echoed
across those mountains
like a legend itself.
Streaks of reality and
Color all unearthed
at once. Heavy
silence.

george washington had false ivory
teeth, and false dreams
of ivory fields
with the ghostly
asphodel flowers
lingering in the
gloom eternal
where not even
the poets could afloat
from their river of Lethe
and there our nation lays
its fate passing
SLEEP and DEATH
BROTHERS at the gates
of fake dreams where not even
Faunus can talk them out of it

one moment, one fluke
trying to breathe in
trying not to breathe,
speed momentum
with a crew, all alone,
faded now, the loop
all day driving
all day braking, and shoes
are what i think,
while the sky falls
to questions, to the lessons
learned, instant lights,
instant disaster,
lights and ruin,
instant imprisoned
mind, the battle
with the head.

the Jack Daniel man
Cowboy Hat Jackie Chan
in concrete land,
the funk man.

jungle of parrots
on the street with the
emotions mixed and yeeha
theres the bus and giddy up goes
the man, smokin crack
on the corner and he salutes.

cowboy floatin down the
aisle stride, picks his side
like a glide. like a guitar
like the sun. hittin those
melodies and the window
smacks the glare.

The world was our leisure
and somehow we escaped
the starvation of
losing ourselves
in boxes.
  Riding through the risings
and fallings of hills.
Blue Skies where we floated
with our heads held up
by strings.
Your eyes stealing glances
at my eyes as you lit your pipe
and drove with your feet,
and thin white clouds
streamed across your ears.
Myriads
of deep colors
and multi-talented
maneuvers.

You were an Angel.
Earth toned,
through the sun roof
and the blue grass
that your eyes danced over.
It was brilliance--
and it burnt my mind
and spilt my soul,
as you churned it
through these
lifeless windows.
I wanted to stay here,
out in these rolling hills
forever, where we rolled
with dispersing waves
of radiance, and
cadences  of new moons.
Sometimes,
I'd walk along the dirt
flowing streets into town
stopping to tell all the farmers
how you were out there
making time stop.

clarification through all size-able tangible and real in dream like sense I can believe mass miscommunication halted in my belief for logical decree, to ask whats inside of me I think pause and dislodge to a fine dime of self stricken guilt reckoning expansive all human novelty i cry shudder and lay awake all night waiting for fingers to grow back in human experiment rotting in symbolism and art passion subjective objective supernatural focus concentration logical patient groove contemplation speak slow suspend disbelief balance electric moon rocks roots rock river pulse beat of music the  rhythm beating of remedy

conflicting emotions jim
beaming around this town
he’s got these reasons i can’t
confound. you can smile or you can
laugh with him. cause in the end
we’re steeped unsounded
in his grease

i can sing my wisdom
or my caddy songs
but i always i result
to ancient calls

i have patterns
and i have my doubts
but one things certain
is unending drought

a gift of a cup of
a life to fill
i got this sound
and spreading
out no guilt

and it goes


phone drops in the *** roast

There's the morning.
eggs coffee and rising sun
and there's the night,
the void filling
storm.
here i am on the verge
of it all,
stable and un-
menaced in an
open market, the blanket
of action, delirious
in attempts and not
half bad-
the steadiness of rocks,
the cadence
of ridges
through air

the boat is rocked
and is rocking
and is gliding
across everything
i want to not see
when im smiling
inside a glass
ball of your slanted 
perception. colors of ice
blind the style of your
words while wisdom
protrudes. I'm telling you,
the sweetness comes
from falling,
to see what 
we've spent
for this.

wake up stare up
at the shapes they make
dinosaurs, t-rexes mostly
the state of oklahoma
and jesus’s face
im awake but not hungry
smelling my stomach
tasting what i want
which is coffee
some stimulant
to exercise to jolt my mind
its utmost function
of the shapes in the water
and their shadows in the shower
within the newfound
blue sky blue cloud
awareness,
the street of awareness
and harmony, like my friend
named Burns when she ‘created a slow,
two-step harmony
in her soul’ on Louis Street,
and that other song,
when it goes,  'Lord,
take me down to me
Mexico, Rosarito’s,
Baja, California...'
a place I’ve never
been.

Another round to see who’s
got the crown now
drank from the wisdom
of the bottomless sink
empty route to now
Smoke routine crisp
cold air of the mountain
fire filled rings with the
the civil war owl
rising up from the ashes

Mud clogged stump
gets thrown to fire
burns so old a face
in the moon’s
horizon
Catching flame to ancient
places
sitting trenched
in alchemy’s graces
oh oh, dome of  trees
emerald moon
with the howl
from
trickster
Ccoyote
howls at the owls
like they’re
flying right
through me

Clarification thru all things
tangible and real,
size-able and unceasing
      

      I see the dream thru
        the senseless belief
      
     mis-matched communication
     and halt,

      crying then for a logic,
      for a decree
      for windows to open
     (the in of me)

    think then and
    pause,
  
dislodge this pause
to a fine dime
of half-stricken guilt
while
I reckon\
     the all reckoning
            all expansive
            all the way human
    novelty

of experiment shuddering awake
the night
the fingers wading
and waiting

and so on,

to grow back

thru the rot
thru all the art
of a passion
of supernatural focus
to subjection

supernatural
  objection for
concentration

for a patience
to speak slow like
in old contemplation

groove suspends
balance secedes
and the moon rocks
the roots the river

and the beats,
always the beats
the blues,,
the pulse,,,

the music in
my rhythm's remedy
pulse

all expansion
piercing
the salt of it

burning clear
and clean
always stamping the gates
of iron wounds

Sam’s on the corner
of Hormsby standin’ guard
eyes ****** cold
like the wolves icy glare
all the traffic of the world
is the streets he holds
through the thin air
the scene boils
to routine as he
stabs with fingers
flare
scoured is the body
of a fiend who shoots
at the sky
vision veers left as he
locks down freezing eyes
he ***** the pistol
in a shuffle barking
mother nature won’t  you
fall down
and die
slamming fists
crying pointing
at the cars  all
through their lines
I am sam, standing
guard and she can only
fly with my charm
holy creature in his anger
only shouting at the sidewalks
with no harm