Listless dove
Stretched for miles
Like the land of America from the
East to West coast
Americans screaming inside their bellies
Pushing for
One
More
Dollar before
The final
Push

Atop this plastic and glass with
Plastic keys,
Images of ruby red dots with yellow eyes
Pinned to thin tree branches
Come to mind.
Rather than thinking, I listen
To the droning spray of a man
Watering his already dead garden.
Hope that life will again
Spring forth.

An old woman with a crooked neck
And a crumpled piece of scratch paper face
Waddles down the hot grey sidewalk.
Her clothes are in rags where her destination is
Unknown to me and to her.
Sometimes it is best just to go
Letting the unconscious mind take reins
Shifting one's body into a wild horse
Where soon the eyes enflame in hot red,
The hooves split into four toes instead of two,
Its tail turns rigid like an icicle, like a spike,
And it is off - whatever it is this beast transformed into -
Leaving only dust behind where it once stood.

All the drugs have been done and some friends made it,
Others didn't.
Where there is shame there is also guilt experimenting with
Experience.
A full whirl apocalyptic nightmare pressing against
The panes of clear Nordstrom glass and typewriter keys.
Bleeding ink and screaming obscenities up at the sky
As if the harsh words would bring down morbid rain.
Type all day and eventually, you'll end up in tears.
Read all day and eventually, you'll end up in the insane asylum.
Do what you hate all day and you'll end up
Like more then half of the country, starving spiritually
Anxious about the lotto numbers and the next big game.
The final score is the death bed, cold and stale, with a flat screen
Color TV you didn't even ask for.
The foods bad and nobody will talk to you except the nurses.
You see the scythe hanging out of the closet door.
Mr. Death was never too good at hide-and-seek.
There's a button to press when your bladder starts to hurt, but
You can't find it, so you *** anyway, thinking,
"This is what every great hero who died before their time
Got to miss. Lucky *******."

A lime green letter from a friend from someplace far away
Tells me I was somebody else before what I am now
When things change they get better or they get worse or everything's
Just different...how vague that word is...things are just different
What weight has changed? What colors are different? What parts
Of the body hurt more than before? Can you love or trust or **** or
Cry or moan or fear or hurt or betray the same?

Are there are things in this world that take you by the tail and whirl
You around like a boomerang, channeling all thought into a Mexican
Firecracker shooting for a pink lemonade moon reflecting Aristotle's
Worst nightmares - our nightmares! - so the dead podium where all
Who read their thoughts and share their thoughts are there too, listening,
Wondering if this is the next Kerouac or do they have the right stuff
Or Whitman or Bukowski or Plath or Woolf or Jones or or or the next
Something because every generation needs its messiah.
Every generation needs somebody to lead the way but maybe this time
We are leading the way and don't need anyone to take the lead, for we'll
All take the lead! All lead the way! All innovate and press on for a world
Without war and clean water in every faucet and guns that shoot
Flowers instead of bullets and a world where the streets of Mexico are
No longer running red with blood but with the sound of music echoing
Off the walls as if the whole city were in a grand cave filled with light,
Light of a million grandmother's kissing their grandchild's cheeks before
Their final breath. My grandmother, smiling so every wrinkle on her face
Curls like a chirping blue jay or a purring kitten; smiling so her eyes
Begin to water and she chokes by a sob of joy and sadness and knowing
Release...inevitable release! All that is living will one day die and she
Sees that in the mirror and in my eyes and her son's eyes and every
Pair of eyes in stranger's that she passes in the supermarket or on the
Street or within her dog's eyes, her precious dogs, her rocks, her life,
Her love, the only companions that die with you when you do.

Pastels upon paper mixed with water colors
The sun rises presenting a new land with an old soul
Born again, rise again, see it all again
Spilled out on the ground like water
Laying there, soaking into the ground, becoming one with the ground
An order from the general - the general germ of authority
I turn my back and walk in the opposite direction
Hearing gunfire meant for me I smile and lean my head back

Taking the weight of all of me off of me.