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For every single time I stumbled on loose sidewalk brickwork
I have allowed a so what? smile to cross my face
this is no roadmap
flat as the earth was all those years ago
this path is uneven
and littered with fragments of the lives of others
others who at one point may have walked down this same sidewalk
only to stumble on loose brickwork
so what?
and each parked car
that I may have kissed while backing up
has its own life
maybe the owner spends hours in discussion
how the hell did I get that scratch?
well you are welcome -
so what?

and just maybe
if you call that number
stenciled and fading in the weathered concrete beneath the bridge
you will have a good time
so what?
the homeless man I saw one morning
taking the cans out of my recycling bin
and putting them in a duffel bag
was once a ten year old boy
who did things that every ten year old boy does
so what?
and maybe every single dumb poem I pen
makes its way into the heart
of just one person
and maybe they just fly upwards
into the atmosphere
where they dissolve into wind
*so what?
 Feb 2017 Joe Cottonwood
AFJ
You can sense the sincerity in my breathe when i speak of my tragedies..
i wonder how life would be if i was born living lavishly?..
born with riches, and jewels, a chandelier and marble floor...
curtains, and high ceilings and a kitchen with French decor..

human race;
some of us start off with torn sneakers.
others born with nutritionist, and fitness teachers,
no i'm no preacher..
and no i'm not bashing the privileged..
but why pillage the fallen village, ?
so let me finish.

the human experience.
go to school for 20 years, work for another Thirty.
at best you'll retire at 65 and thats early..
Barely paid your house, finally own your vehicle...
only to enjoy it for a couple years and you see it go??

*** then you get sick, and your dead at Seventy..
who can uncover lifes secrets who has the remedy?
I think its out there somewhere but nobody is telling me..
till then, ill stay humming this silly melody.



-afj.
Stretch me out and count me like clouds
Say she is vapour
Venom, velvet and vermouth
With hair of hazelnut rapture
Clutch the moments, clutch the moonbeams
Clutch the stretched out skies of cloud and mustard gas sunset
Sing she is a child of trauma
Supressed in the name of breathing
Violence in the name of skin
And she is venom, velvet and vermouth
She was born to pink salt lakes in the low country
With ruby pomegranate eyes
And hair of hazelnut rapture
Girl with the soul of a thousand pilgrim journeys
Girl with the soul of a blackberry bush
Girl with the soul of olive trees and sheep meat and oven bread in the fire country
Human smiles
And other dark things of value
She lies like velvet
She lies in the name of supressing traumas
In the name of breathing
She bleeds like a billion stars bleed vapour
She is venom and vermouth
With hair of hazelnut rapture
She is the sum of a thousand pilgrim journeys
The prayer of holy rivers in the canyon country
The smoke of incense burned by sages
The scars of bodies burned by crusaders in mustard gas chambers
Goddess of Nuclear energies
Red-eyed like ruby pomegranates
Like the dewy cauldron of morning
When tenuous steps lead bodies down the path of executionary revolution
To boarders, frontiers, walls of white-skin scar tissue
Sing songs of Babylon in the free country
Clutch the moments
Clutch your breaths and hold them in broken palms
Clutch the tides and teach them
Breach your rib-cage, unstitch and return the borrowed bones
Melt the metaphoric thrones
Breathe backwards in the name of unsupressing traumas
In the name of truth
Stretch me out and count me like clouds
Girl of angel-breath ambition
Soul of blackberry bush and smile of splintered terracotta tile
Sing your songs
Say she is vapour
Looking for notes, criticism, anything really! Thanks **
FOLLOW THE LEADER

She is the creator
of worlds.

She, being 3
does not know how

a world
can be.

A world is only
how she makes it.

Daily she
creates it in her own

image.

Music is a thing
that dances in the blood.

A butterfly is a miracle
she is just

as yet unaccustomed to.

A flower is a piece
of living magic.

Her dolls speak to her
( in her own voice ).

Ten tulips bow to her
she bows to them.

A daddy is a somebody
who knows nothing and

who has to be taught
everything.

She knows there is nothing
that can not be.

Facts are replaced by imagination
...the art of seeing.

A purple sun shines
in a yellow yellow world.

See! She has
drawn it so.

And so
it is so.

And I, her disciple
follow the little leader

as she teaches me
how to be

the world that she
can see

( half invention
  half discovery )

as she leads
me back to

the land of childhood
I believed I had

long ago
lost forever.
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