it would be nice to
be French - no one would expect
you to be friendly

The mad hatter tips his hat
to the teller of ticking time -
the caterpillar catches tunes and
turns them into rhyme.
The daisies dally, the tulips tarry and
the roses only rise in the morn.
The trees they sing in haunting hollows
in moonlight full adorned.
The barn owl "hoos", the coyote calls,
the wolf howls by a silk thread stream -
and fireflies dance in clouds on the ground -
in my slumber, in my dreams

Dumpsters are cold
Shelter grow mold
and slim is the spanging

Whiskey is warm
Dreads are the norm
and our sanity is estranging

Food out of cans
Roadtrip plans
The highways are always changing

Flying deceiving signs
Waiting in foodstamp lines
Sympathies constantly rearranging

Constellations are the roof
Provides strangeness aloof
Capitalism's fat ca-ching

Dirt inbetween toes
Where to? nobody knows
Life on the edge of healing

Most people look like they wouldn’t survive a storm.
They are flimsy,
Full of half-truths and half-meanings,
Half-substance that will surely wash away in a good downpour.

I am always spilling raindrops,
Thus I am dangerous to the masses.

It was snowing the night I felt myself
Slipping
And looking at you truly for the first time—
Not a blizzard,
Just a gentle dusting,
Flakes drifting lazily in the excitable wind—
And I assumed that you,
Like everyone else,
Were just dazzled by dreamlike sparkle,
But would flee when the real storm came.
Your presence was a comfort,
So for weeks I played weatherman,
Tried to hold back inclement weather
Lest I wake to find you gone.

But Nature is inevitable,
So I found hurricanes for days.

I’d been painting
Love
On my lips since pre-school,
But you were the first to press it there
And make it stick.
You were the first to see the storm gathering
And stay until the clouds cleared,
Though my ears were mad with thunder
And my limbs were sparking lightning
And all my world was dark and cloud and sheets of pouring rain.

Slick with raindrops,
You pushed the bangs out of my eyes
And said that all was well.