Hands pressed against the cold glass window,
strange, I can feel the drops of rain
falling on the other side.

what would it feel like to always see in yellow?

dancing in tumultuous pigment…
yellow to green
green to
blue
blue into

black.

I have sunk into the darkness
just as canvas soaks up paint
to touch the stygian world  
with hollyhock eyes and dusty fingers.

A tunnel of black, and I can’t seem to find a flashlight.
(How can you possibly persist when you cannot see?)

blinking violet pearls that dance beneath my eyelids,

I tumble
to swim in yellow.

Such a pleasant daffodil lens.

While driving the backroads last night, I cranked up my stereo
and let the music take me where it wanted to go.
I'd heard the songs before, but I began hearing a different tune.
Must've had earplugs in before. I drove on, and the music played me.
When I'd driven as far as I could, and lost myself completely down those roads,
I pulled over at some strange station I'd never seen before.  
I thought I'd sit a while there and rest, do a little reading from
the book I've been writing. **** my eyes for seeing words there I'd never
read before.  My book was writing me, I had never said a word.  

I thought for a while about how you can wake up one day, hear the same song,
read the same words, and they tell you something you've never known before.
I realized then, I'd been driving with my eyes half closed.  
Then, as the sun came up, I saw with my naked eyes a strange landscape I had never seen before.

Road signs were everywhere.  One showed I was on I-9, another read, 'Welcome to Idaho'.
I heard gentle clouds roll on by, and felt alone in my wanderings.
I saw paint blistering off the walls of some hotel, and wondered who would save me.
I thought about wicked games,and felt accused. I saw crossroads, up ahead,
with a ***** tonk on one side, wanted to go inside and order a case of finest wine.
I felt so alone, sitting in my rudderless boat (you know how dreams can go).  

Then I looked up, saw a man standing at the crossroads
with a golden hammer in his hand.  I wondered if i knew this man,
and wanted him in my boat with me, to sail on the uncharted seas.
I wanted to drown in a deep blue bottomless pool with him.  Then I wanted to
accuse him, for walking into my dream, for standing in the middle of my aloneness.

I looked up at the sky (it was night again, as dreams go) and saw the
stars in the sky.  I wondered if the stars were real, or painted on
some false ceiling.  I wanted to climb a ladder and break through,
to find true.  I wanted to tear down the veils that kept me from
knowing all the secrets of the universe, to burn up the clouds
that hid the sun.  Then I wondered again if the sun was already
shining, if my rudderless boat was being guided by the soothsayer
of dreams.  And I wanted to know if this dream was a nightmare, just a picture
show, or some prophetic vision.  

I felt pushed and pulled, with winds blowing a strong gale, and wanted to know if they blew from
the east or the west, but I could not tell, I'd dropped my compass miles back.
I wondered what the man was thinking, if he saw the same strange landscape.
I wondered if he had driven me here, or if we had sailed here together, our backs to one another.
I turned my radio on again, but only heard static, and wished that I could find the perfect song,
to express exactly the strangeness of this tale, to sing the truth.

I wondered again if I was dreaming or awake, if my ears
were hearing the real music in songs, if my eyes were reading
lines as they were written, or if I was still asleep, only dreaming.


Sometimes, when you wake up, you just
want to go back to sleep, and dream a little longer.  And sometimes
you think you've woken up, but you are still dreaming.  How do
you know the difference?  How can you ever tell? And where is
a good soothsayer when you need one?  

I'm still wondering.

CALL OUT to the Eagle

The eagle spots

chains mourning

a whisper

a path, driven by

weak exchange

dragons perched

to devour the precious

a will 

stuck in a callous cage

on exhibit 

the trophy for the dragon

remembering there

is always light

in an unknown place

giving faith in the non-seeing

prison only illusion

faith solution

black vinyl
dusty in crumbling cardboard
but dressed up with flowers
and candy cane towers
records much of history:
a war that divided a country
riots that demanded equality
journeys to the center of the mind
and words like "for (all) mankind"

black vinyl
electric poetry of a bejeweled age
exhorting us to unlock our cage
and soar blindly in blissful flight
before the soundless eternity of night

black vinyl,
now replaced by the "CD"
in a silicon world of even more "me"
and reluctant as I am to revere what once was
I suspect that is what everyone does
when the day slowly turns to night
and we truly contemplate our plight
on this revolving orb that spins only one way
whether it is vinyl or CD we had to play

A raging inner surf,
I blame it on the moon.

The wind moves over understanding,
enjoying its time away
from tears,
feels whole again.
Sleep, I am sure, sets sail
with a stranger,
breaks the mold
enveloping your pillow,
takes away pain.

Colors give you a taste of brightness
that eternity goes through
when it blushes
at its own progress.
While forever struggles
with patience
and touches upon fruit,
thought of undressed.

Cold water comes near,
turns round and round
graciousness,
extending the  waves
of grace’s touch.
Walking the halls
pressed against a smile
that says I am sorry,
no one notices
quite so much.

Long, long after our experiences
caress the light
we have given time,
they are unfolded,
carried away.
Insistence shatters
the mirror to nowhere,
sends winds of understanding,
my way.

When things were good, they were
weightless.
We could stumble down the streets
at four in the morning,
wearing hickeys like tattoos
we'd be ashamed of at dawn.
Sneaking wristbands from friends
with fake IDs,
or faker ****.
And if we were low on cash,
we might take turns
lifting our shirts, shifting our bras,
until a flash of something sacred
earned a free drink.
I could have been
ashamed
if gravity were working.
But we were all
weightless.
Mistakes just floated away.

Our dresses were too short, and
our dresses were too tight, and
the boys wore shirts
that were good at hiding stains.
Sometimes we didn't even need words;
we could walk into
a smokey, sticky bar
and fall in love with a boy's arms
while he fell in love
with a too-short dress
and the chance to see underneath it.
And we knew
we'd be waking up
with those hickey-tattoos.
But we didn't care, because
we were all
weightless.
The boys just floated away.

Maybe we wouldn't find any
dance-floor-love,
but that was always okay, because
we were in love
with ourselves.
Our hazy heads
whispered pretty words,
and as we burned our throats
with shots of pure love,
pretty words began to slur
into a pretty song, but we could
never remember the melody
when we awoke.
So the next night
we'd shimmy into our too-tight dresses
and start ******* down
more liquid love
until we began hearing
that pretty song again.
We half-knew our sober hearts
would never be able to recall
the tune,
but it never mattered.
We were all
weightless.
Notes just floated away.

These nights, things are
heavier.
I'll pour myself some love,
but it burns like regret now.
I don't wear any too-tight dresses
because I don't much miss
the dance floor.
I don't miss the hickeys
or the four A.M. walks.
I don't miss the shirts
being lifted and pulled.
I don't miss the smoke
flooding the bars.
But I do miss the song
that I'll never quite know.
For though I am grounded,
that tune is forever
weightless,
and the notes will just float away.