This poem is dedicated to Steve Yocum,
author, poet, and soldier
farmer, father, grandfather,
man exemplar,
whom I honor
and honors me,
with the noblest title in all humankind,
friend.

But above all,
I honor him most,
as a tireless, truthful, harpooner
of the examined and the unexamined life

~~~

"Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into
crinkly eye-lined smilers."

~~~

these mine words writ many years past,
dusted off phrasings,
on dusty shelf long lain,
mined from notes,
decades steadily collected by steadily diminishing ears and eyes,
gathered most from self-taught lectures
and self-deceiving dances,
garbed and wearily grabbed
by the addict-strong
 observational need,
persistent and perpetual,
to pay off fresh debits,
renewables owed
to the lovely,
to the loopy,
inhabitants who excite and inspire
my so far, rebirthing, youthful,
yearling heart
who provide the special crazy that
justifies existence

just men,
connected by a bond of sonship,
kinship crowning kingship,
blood types as different as an
A is to B

both shall weep in one blood,
I, as I do now,
while midst the nascent commencement of this sonnet,
He, at its commencement,
for a good friendship has no
beginning or end,
but is a circular track,
a loop,
familial by repeated runnings,
yet never, coursed in the exact
same manner or speed

this thought,
this knowledge,
bring a smile to this crinkly eyed composer,
that the metaphysical
will always surpass the binding physics of mortal physical,

that two man,
who have
never met,
race side by side,
not in competition,
but in the mutuality of composition,
each a candle holder,
both writers,
observing the dark illusions,
re-making each into a carrier,
a shedder of light,
each a debt giver and a
debt holder to each other,
hosts to all the loopy,
comfort caressers,
to each other
and to all
who too,
are light-bathed by being in possession
of the title
*friend

I am the key to the lock in your house

You burned a hole in my heart
Where the arteries flow.
And the veins are
blocked
like gutter drains,
No one can pass -
through the Red Sea,
A no go area.
A hairline fracture into a million capillaries,
Split arteries to take each feeling individual to the tips of my skin.
Still covered beautiful
but a nails cuticles,
Impaled on a cross resembling a torso.
Hollow bones that play like xylophones
In the tombs of hidden organs that echo
&
resonate through the decay of a necrophiliacs playground.
Dislocated limbs swing round a rib cage,
Splinters shatter the skin revealing the droplets of blood that pour like rain and tears combined.
Twist past as they gloop through a cutlets spine.
Always on my mind,
always on my mind.
Cobwebs of memories,
Embedded in a decayed gut,
Dug up like skeletons in cemeteries to find the remedy or medicine to plug the bullet shaped holes you made in my heart.

Dark hair, milky thighs

We are all such broken things

Deep in the Nothing.