Strolling, the clouds
Are rolling, they abound
And surely they've found
A purely new sound

But towns have found that clouds come down
In rain, to panes
Their windows are loud

With respect, they see
That without them, they'd be
Lost in the toss
Of a barren dirt sea

Ice blue, fluorite lights
Brisk and windy Autumn nights
Trees silhouetted against beautiful sights
Lights reaching fantastic UFO heights
A shiver away from icicle, frozen
Buoys float on water in space wide open
Life letting leave on those things broken
Water lapping shores like lava molten
Whispers in rocks surrounding each path
Knowing tales of days-passed and aftermath
A spindly tree feathered with its repeated bath
Moonlight washing away all that's wrath
Not trading here for a million or two gold
You could offer a mansion with no sign of sold
Each passing boat of enlivening cold
Remembers stories of today that were never told

Picking the patterns in frost-bitten lanterns
Where the light leans to bide each lost-souled phantom
Does the naked eye see
the illuminated rings of Saturn?
Slipping past airplanes, you're fodder-ridden, head-down
Where the sound of darkness echoes like bitter, angry bantam
Does each ice-cold stone of Saturn
deserve to be in its ring?
This is when you find your wing, half-broken, in a sling
Hairline fracture, ****, that stings
This is when you ask yourself, "What does this mean?"
     End.

Galactic disposition
Relentless exposition
A guided meditation
To harbor one's condition
An earwax candle mission
Removing audible visions
Internal text to bring forth next
The silent-held emissions

Have you ever left?
Streets decaying, bereft of wonder
General store hours
Posted
Trees, posted
Homes, posted
This town is a ghost town
Like Centralia, Chernobyl, Hashima Island
Complacent in its solitude
While wind rustles the dead trees' souls
And dust collects in endless potholes
One street light flickers to guide the silence
Main Street relentlessly harbors memories
Of feet crossing and ***** tossing
A newspaper stand
A truck for the postman
This town is a ghost town

Halogen lights are lining the walkway
Bright, bright, bright
Each one
Blinding, but I keep staring
Leading to this place
It's bland
Bland, bland, bland
But I keep coming
Beige filing cabinets
Contain the documents I need
I need them
A paper envelope
Two times a month
I can be relieved
There are others though
Disengaged, but we share a goal
To make it
Until we are gone
Gone, gone, gone

It's cold in here
Like a superstore with those giant freezers
How do they even keep those cold
With no doors
I guess lots of cold air circulation
Or little freezer elves
Happily blowing their icy breath
At the frozen bagels and crinkle-cut fries
But the latter is far less likely
I wonder though
What does the machine look like
The one that makes fries crinkle-cut
I think that's why they made that one show
The one that shows how everything is made
People get curious
And need a distraction
Let's see how
Leather boots
And Moon Pies
Are made today
Hand me a beer

How to become a poet?
Write
Your words will spill
Some like water droplets from a faltering faucet
Some like torrential downpour
Leading your mind to flash flood warnings
Your words are wrapped in foil
Waiting to be heated up
And eaten up
Poets are hungry

Here we are again
Humming songs
That we don’t understand
Everything in the world
In the universe
In the palms of our hands
Technologically advanced
Hop-skip-happy-dance
An industrial trance
To have seen the land
The world
The universe
Before our haphazardly
Set up idiosyncrasies
When the earth had nothing
But herself to please
What was it like?

Felled trees and failed deities
In books on shelves of libraries
Hundreds of them - thousands!
This sure is a sight to behold

Information, new and old
A rustic smell
Book mold?
Regardless, this is exhilarating

When you take a step outside
And you're hit with the force of inspiration
It makes you feel like you fell off a swing
And landed on your back
    but in a good way
Beautiful and exciting
A break in the clouds
Isn't just that - it's a turtle, or a boat, or a dragon, or a dress
You're filled with inspiration
Imagination
And you see
That elm tree growing in front of the building
Becomes alive
He speaks, he thrives
Each leaf giving the air a high-five
Happy to just be
The elm tree across the street

Leatherbound
Tannins have branded
My fingertips
But the steel still feels and heals
right
I'm at home with this
This wooden body
And slender neck of burnt mahogany
Each string a page in the next great novel
It just hasn't been written yet

Elephantine swirls
Careful, unraveling threads
Bookcase, bookcase
Zig-zag treads
Vaulted, deep, brown and steep
Held by wicker
And woods and peach
Stones uneven, pathway in
Phrases painted with
Juniper and gin

There once thrived a hive near the creek
Bees came in and out every week
But one day a bat
In the hands of some *******
Caused the hive to substantially leak

Train tracks lead to predetermined places
Different directions, different faces
Exist to the right, exit left
Fluttering in one's peripheral, leaving traces
Daylight passed, nights so moonlight bereft
Of cloud cover to be cloven, the unconcerned brace
In the sky above what is known as home
Wherefore, each break shepherds individuals
As still as a garden gnome
Stoic as a preserved throne
Phlegmatic as a slowly melting icicle
In a cave that no one knows about
Exist to the right, life is what is left
Learning and yearning for that so disconcerting
Yet the biggest and most impactful
Inspiration
To live, not only to exist

Not a bird in sight, nor insect, nor squirrel
Loud silence lacks cars and the usual whirl
These winds are like whistles
Through the fingers of trees
Closed windows are pummeled
By torrential pings

These mushroom spores and petrichor
Are easy to inhale together

Well, this mercury has broken
Each piece of glass inside my bones
For words are beautiful when spoken
And when written as a tome
I'm done with taking this for mine
Time's proven countless times before
You loaned me lights to fight this shadow
To not believe it anymore

I sit in silence
To sing the sounds of a sitar
It's hard
I can't really do that
That "pew weeeew" sound
I sound more like an alarm
I bet it could definitely wake people up
If I were loud enough
But my voice doesn't carry well
Regardless, why would I want to disturb sleep?
When it's something that people
So desperately need
I guess to be alive
Being bound in this metal cast
I bet I could program my voice to do that
To sound just like a sitar
But it would probably sound slightly
Mechanical
Methodical
And that's not what I'm going for here

The journey of opening minds to dreams
Watching life hallowed by superficial means
Instead, peace is to follow gentle streams
Harking sounds so delicate, as moonlight beams
Strive not to conduct life with expectations, as if it were a train
Following a path so perfectly laid
Using an umbrella instead of trusting the rain
Using natural existence as reason for bane
Do not fear the storms, as they have existed for far longer than we
Revere instead the intensity and power we see
The serenity of tree-form tranquility
Sometimes, the luster of nature brings one to their knees

O, my dearest and most enticing caffeine
Without you, the world would be grey
For each time you reach for my heart
It both flutters and beckons the day
So generous and giving, thou doth art
The simmering sound of your can intoxicates me
Carbonation so sweet; you give me motivation all week
To continue this molecular love story

The past, too often, intervenes
With thoughts of forward productivity
The solution is not to push it behind you
But to use it to be even better
And to learn - to be thrilled to be here
And have great joy in the fact
That sometime in the future
You will experience such happiness, and such jubilance
A small moment, or a wonderful day


It really will be okay

Sometimes, I just want to sit and write
Or read and play
My guitar all night
Sometimes, I want to run outside
Or speak and say
The words on my mind
Sometimes, I want to bathe and sing
To the beat of the flame
As it's flickering

But through everything
I want to learn
and be
in wonder of the world
as it's rotating

Paintbrushes and bulldozers
Canvas and land
Creativity and destruction
Each done with mans' hand