Father Time grounds his Sun's dial
by an ocean of hot sand,
his world inside an hour glass galaxy
spiraling downward
like a blue feather from a jay in a baobab
the mirage a lake, an eerie oasis throbs,
fuzzed by heat's blurriness.

Einstein peers through invisible specs
his peers skeptical of what he suspects
questions answered by questions
matter no longer matters
in accordance to my flannel pattern,
an arid desert spreads our earth,
Whitman's witnesses,
your songs causes gasps
in every plant's lungs
not just the grasses.

My bones are rusted,
leaky pipes
in that back alley
on Howard street
where my windows eye
twenty-somethings
shootin' the breeze
over whatever issue glides
through their mind at the time,
cutting their own kite strings
with scissor-sharp fingernails
they unwind,
conjoining over joints,
the fun times.

Where'd my friends go?

I feel heavy-headed,
elbows sore from resting
my cinder block chin
on them for hours,
watching these hooligans
in tye-dye rags
flutter down
the gutters of King street
like circus clowns.
And cirrus clouds
wander through
and over Boone
while I hunker,
disregarding the news,
the **** protesters
arrested by the blues
and I can't help
but hum along
with a gold finch
perched on a rhododendron
growing by my side
wall where some
graffiti artist
sprays the word
“Exist.”

I came to a canyon
one autumn evening,
parched.

I was deserted
on one side,
distant from you in
sienna barrenness,
amongst bubbling grey boulders.
I felt desperate, like a beetle
being squished between rattler jaws,
fangs of fate chewing out chances to grow,
to fully bud above the rest,
to push past the heat
like cacti greeting the purple sunset sky.

You were on the other side
making the grass wave in your wind,
painting hills with dainty dandelions
and dancing mushrooms,
to cover up the reeking decay
of your last relationship,
the decomposition
of dear flesh,
of rotten opportunity,
the true will of degeneration
still not stopping your junipers and ferns.

And in the middle,
below the drama,
time’s rushing river
worms it’s way through rock,
forcing chasm, yet
somehow encourages flourishing,
and quenches our thirst.

I made you an origami crane at noon
It didn't flap right away but I knew
it would only take time then grace
because that night we laughed
at its silhouette in the moon.

Liars taught him the truth
barely funded,
rarely fun did happen
In a school for public use.

We're just used
to being misinformed.

He can't tell
An adult from a tadpole
A saint from a slave
A *** from an *******
A bowel from a colon
or a Powell from a Castro
A drug from a neuron
or a genius from a *****.