fingers of light
one by one reaching out
gently caressing the sky
with dawn

birdsong
note by note soaring up
softly filling the air
with song

this Sunday morning
last Sunday morning

the death of night
bringing the birth of day
in the cycle of life
where time waits for no one

Weary hobbling men,
of stature far from social statutory,
embody brief hypotheses of me.

Weary hobbling men,
managed by bronzed and tall
strong handsome men,
embody sick hypocrisy.

Blind old beggars,
who sit on broken concrete
and breathe through broken lungs,
speak clearly of what resides in not what eyes speak,
but of what love and trust sing.

They see more than we,
for they, both blind and whis’pring,
are contented just to breathe.

I didn't go searching for them, I fell into your lovely lips
I want to drink up your beauty, in ten thousand tiny sips
I need to taste the thrilled confusion of a fleet of sinking ships
I do what I must to steal what I can of it, your beauty's not for sale.
I double over with the pleasure of it. This neverending bliss cannot fail.
I never had a chance after that first serendipitous kiss, you blessed me with.
You always make magnets of my eyes, and graceful dancers of my fingertips.
You are all I need to survive, I could thrive in any climate, nothing else matters, except
You there, beside me, your beauty always with me,
sparing sweet sips from your serendipitous lips.
This is the only thing that can quench my thirst.
Loveliness like yours, only comes along once in a long while.
To me you are the closest thing, to perfection I know.
Then again...what do I know?



A Burns, 2012

She is the ocean

               when I can't swim. The truth is

                                                     I'm fine with drowning

Nothing about it
makes any sense,
the way she puts me
on the fence.


Arbitrary grading

masquerading beneath
the facade of a rubric,

it's *******
and I'll prove it.

We are brutally beautiful
We are
The soft red glow of a nuclear sunset
Pooling like blood
From wounds
Like that one time I cut my forearms open

Oh so that’s what a heartbeat looks like

It is sign language after a fist fight
When I’m so angry I can’t speak
So with my hands I tell you
No one should talk to you that way

It is the assbackwards way we allow ourselves to heal

For instance
When I had cancer
My parents took me to church when they could
Asked people to pray for me
And I thought drinking holy water might help me

It only made me sick
And I spent three days in the hospital

This life is *****
It is ugly

We are ugly
Like
Crime scene photos of bathtub suicides
Shortcutting life
And still getting into heaven

How after so many years
Just to make things interesting
Peter takes bribes now

And we are beautiful
Brutally beautiful
Endearing in our passion
Because it’s just a little too conscious to be animal
But we try

It is shotgunning a dove
And the rain of feathers
Even when damp with blood they are still soft

I wanna hold you tightly
You coarse cut angel
Your jagged edges rub
But neither of us wants to fall asleep alone

We will never be perfect
But we were supposed to be

Remember that
When your ugly rears its head
Like a mental mirror showing you only the things you notice about yourself
Know
nobody sees you the way you see yourself

Just remember
To smile more
And laugh when things are funny
Make love when you can

These things are good for you
Balance out the brutal
Because you

Are brutally beautiful

He is red
Flakes of skin breaking away from his arms and face
He smiles stretching the cigarette stain on his white mustache

You young people have got it all wrong

Let me tell you a story
Don’t worry it’s a funny story

He looks behind him to make sure he can soak up my time
I tell the cashier to stay and check if anybody comes

One time there was this really dumb bird
Had a nice beard like yours
Real busy guy
And he waited til winter to fly south

If this story is about me I’m not sure

Some of us work real hard
And still manage to justify that we have nothing

I wonder if he knows I can see the boogers in his nose

The bird finally took off for home
But it began to rain
He kept flying
Then it started to hail
The hail beat his wings
It was getting hard to flap
His body began to shiver

He smiles again
It makes his lips crack and bleed a little
Underneath the stretch of yellow
He exhales and his breath smells sweetly of beer

It began to snow
Lightly at first
Though it was cold it was easier to fly
But the snow fell thicker
It coated his body
His heart slowed
He began to feel really tired
He started to descend
He was dying

He places a hand on mine for a moment
His is comfortably rough
Shovel callous rough
Cinderblock stack rough

If that touch was for me or him
I’m not sure

All these stories are just ways we beg people to stay
This poetry is just a way to keep you here
Touch you with my rough and tremble
So you can look at my cracked broken and ******
A little longer

The bird kept falling
Until he hit the earth
And you know where he landed?
Right in a big cow patty
But the warmth of the fresh ****
Melted the snow
Gave him his life back
So he rolled around in it and began to sing
He sang and sang and sang
And a hawk heard the singing
It was winter
The hawk was hungry
And he ate that bird with the nice beard

He slaps the counter separating us
Eyes widen to mounds of earth
Two big fat piles of cow **** staring at me and smiling

I don’t feel like laughing

And the moral of that story young man
Is if you’re covered in **** and somehow happy
Keep your mouth shut

These stories are just reasons
And I don’t feel like laughing

I laugh anyway

I heard silence in the cobwebs
of your soul
while everything else walked
as if lost
inside of the belief
that all you see is black and white.  
Then, I watched you crawl in search of truth
among faces with eyes
that held the illusion of everything
you think you want in life.

Your fingertips seem to know more
about your emotions
than your tears do
because you touch each hurt
your heart mentions
until they bleed.
I watch you pause,
and look over your shoulder
for yesterday
almost as if you wish
it would never leave.

I wonder if you will ever learn
how simple
the feel of your own skin
could be
if you would just not let anger write its name
on your walls carelessly.  
Perhaps then, you could see the sunlight
of a brand new day
and accept the shades of gray
that color me.