is there a light to
curl my fingers
                    around
and pretend the red glow
betrays their fire?

you mean to stay?
incapable of letting out, midnight
walks and warmed benches, windows
whispering open at the touch of a lip

early openings in an otherwise beautiful
block of noise
                     I was so sure so sure can we hear more than
                     the others?

or else that thumping is my own
heart sending a message in spurts and
suction, congealed promises from my understandings
to yours

How long will it be  
until the vast majority of
breathing beings on this little
spinning globe of ours recognizes
such undeniable similarities?

how racism and hatred, anger as
well as war leech the truth from our
eyes, (no world is black and white)

have we grown so distant to not
know somewhere between ourselves and
others lies the answer, never buried within or
too far out of reach, silly excuses

come, children
we may very well never make it
to those stars you reach towards so
you'd best get acquainted with the
right here and now

Good evening, lettuce.

You are not long
for this world.

hold up the sky with rain-kissed
fingertips, I'd never dare to ask whether
you find solace in cotton clouds or cool blue
atmosphere, dare to
risk a return to wherever it was I
existed before

the weather knows nothing will
change
              how could anything?

perpetual dreaming is
a nice way to live, provided
one is secretly awake

One hand in two, three
minutes stretching out endlessly
keeping time while the world spins
around and around my heart

I am in awe of that moment.

opened a fortune cookie in
September to find "something
good will happen on March
3rd" and here it is, a long time
coming and right around the corner

what's next?

and if I think about it will it
still find me?

the past moments blur
together in a rush of colorful
awareness, no more words to describe
conversation permeating the dark, sometimes
walking quickly and then ever so slowly

something holding the two to a bit of nature, as if
it were a magnifying glass to free them from anything
else, only breathing only freedom ever closer and
there's nowhere but here there's
nothing but now

keep it up keep it
up for as long as you can
the beauty the simplicity

all I write could be meaningless
and I would remain as I am
and no one has to know
how could anyone?

tonight it is clear
and no one else has to know

did you
see the flash? gone
off like a bulb to record
this company in wooden memory

don't tell me what you
don't have the words for
I understand

dreaming is only
one way

I want you to see yourself
through my eyes and through
my heart
for you to know
tonight
how you are
to me

unfamiliar rooms will you say
when I've gone away?
and all the up-tempo living
will you say when I've
gone away? Ten steps
to the waterfront ten
steps to raw beauty will you
say will you stay when
I've gone away?

while you were sleeping
a child learned how to fly
quietly slipping away behind
blue paper curtains

to preserve forever in
a bubble of memory
rising to the surface of
your mind's Great Lake

and grow skyward like
ankles to men before the
sun sets on this adventure

before we realize the everlasting
nature of the day and follow our
own thoughts to the heart
of the matter

nothing to say kind-
ness full of getting better and
hidden out among going nowhere for
lack of a better desert to waste early pills in

feeling requisite and searing updraft setting
weaker weaker dear quiet desert dear
freedom downed glass of freedom

fitting room water room dear
don't wait for anyone to go

away early desert
better pills full
of getting quiet

It's as easy as life, this
chronic rebuttal and no
matter how right you are
you're always wrong placing
bets with your own ******

It's as easy as life, but
who's to say life is easy?
certainly not those who have left
and gone on to bigger things; they'd
like to believe in all this in retrospect
but things should be simpler.

It's as easy
as easy as life


guessing is not easy.

I'd like to paint
you in an atrium of colorful
echoes zinging past your
face like hummingbirds

add in a touch of forest green, the
murky-gray lake water, white triangles
sketched for carefree sails

burnished by unusually honest conversation,
only sky blue and gold for the looks thrown
in each direction and inexplicable smiles

a rainbow,
         a myriad for the future,

but you stand alongside me
      as breathtaking landscape

and no art could do that justice

Sock-less in the winter turned
spring for fear of
                  freezing over

      every inch of
          things you treasured and
  couldn't wait to leave behind

              just months to go and
still
no snow-white to
build upon blazes
that come with new faces
and
kindle friendships as
roads are
dubbed exceedingly dangerous

time is a friend to those who
tri-p-let their way to the flatness of
it all, world and walls waiting
for a




break in the traffic


waiting for a sunspot in the year's
star mural,
                    wandering in parking
                    lots where people hint at that
mysterious intersection of dreams
and the sensory

falling
  falling
        failing to remember
    amidst the joy of early mornings and
waking skies' company
                                             it's really good
    to have some freedom while
the world is sleeping except two
             who bring light with them
       and coax the sun from his downsized bed

let's do it again

eleven eleven perpetually
they should dub this
our well

                                                            four holds in the
                                                            holster for this happi-
                                                            ness

"break glass in
emergency"

                            but no matter how
                            vigorously I break the
                            water's skin, it laughs
                            and sends me home

for the first time
I can't wait
until the morning
comes around
to
pluck me
from my idleness

I die a little bit inside each time
you offer an explanation for my
self,
   stubbed heart [popped out of sync]
   dips toward the ground and
   flutters to a silence

a still, empty blue presiding over
the world at large tonight, permeated
by plumes of white
(from the scrambled heads of dreamers)

nothing to hold against your
fiery facade, flaming formidable
fits of brilliance blazing before
my flustered eyes

and why do we cease to
contract, left ventricle?

to start up again and enjoy
it that much more (the second
time around)

Blood-red, wine
royal against midnight

Lackluster habit
this day envisioned in green
framed between pedals
expulsion, extrication, ex
trials and f
reedoms

explode, expulge
entrance

enter

literally sick of a
dizzy world
            spin
ning spinn
ing spinnin
g sp
in ni
ng

out of it and
not quite sure what it was
in the first place

fade on down the road
spotty recognition

flaccid intellect

nights like this are
born for dancing to senti-
mental music

won't you join me?

tapping out a
beat

kept under wraps like
an under-water welcome
bubbled up like kerosene from an
O-shaped mouth is
this hope

this hope that
someday truth should
transcend better judgment and
stipulations

that someday
you will listen

When the lights go down
all I hear is this moment
   and the soft reflection of
   lamplight on our faces is
                           all I see

fight
   as it seems we both do

we're so alike it's
scary

how can I tell if you won't
show me?

         which runs are for exercise
         and which to tame a wild heart
  
    sometimes
there's nothing in a glance
             but our eyes meet far too
             often for mere circumstantial
             evidence to stand

        if only I could climb within your head
        read what plasters those pages

so as to decipher
a course of attention
          founded action
                foundation
                                               and determine
                                          why your unwavering gaze
                                             graces mine

over hills and heads
sometimes it seems as
though it's us against
                                the world
or is it only me?

dwindled like a sputtering of fire
less bright against a dying sky
than it should be

alone
is impossible
but I don't want
to be in your world

caught in-between the old
and the budding like a fish flapping
its last few breaths in a dwindling puddle

dwell on the eclectic, as I do but not to this
extent, see more experience has come my way
and the world through my eyes is
hazy but at least I can see now

never told you what happened before
never going to, never told me anything
never never

keep my ties to all avenues but
pave my own road with morals I've
build from sorrow, love, and broken

in retrospect, I'm
an acquired taste

tough love

scrawled in tall black blocks
on smooth limestone

writers block with
all you beautiful people

knowing what to say
and not wanting to say it

knowing is the worst

like bending an idea around my
head and getting hopelessly stuck

move along now

life is only ever going
to be what we rely on it to
produce

the other night
   after you were kidnapped
              I ran
lost behind in the shadow of taxi
                    cabs parked at green lights
jumping statues and sleeping smiles
               until my heart's wheezing kept time with
cellophane yellows, reds and
                                   popped like a bubble, still
not suppressing any bit of you, only
                        anxious to learn more about what
lights your fires and soaks your skin
                  desperate to discover whether
jumping into rain-showers curls your lips upward
           in half-melted lazy warmth that
I might drown in you and
     be happy

At the end of the day
all that's been is fire
and what ever was joins
hands in a cool drink against
distaste, kerosene
have you seen the fires
in my stomach? burning
in hope, drowning out the
silence of oppression, stuttered
freedom clears its throat

The night is frantic
begging morning to
end its miserable existence
if only for a day

how have you been?
we never talk anymore
god knows I was stupid enough that
afternoon to give up on frisbee and
throw it all away in a few words plopped at your
feet in the grass and sun

and I do regret it, but
there's nothing to be done
to remedy the situation now

I just remember the texting marathons at
two in the morning with phones
plugged into walls because our
batteries couldn't keep pace with our
excitement

I remember Bo and Jenny, your matching dogs
Bo was always the chill one, probably still is
and I remember convincing you, making sure
you knew drugs were never the answer to loneliness

and now it has all
been thrown away for so long
and you've embraced what you will

I only wish I could take it back

Quirky is one way to
  say it
  without bringing to mind all
these insects, teleporting wings
      you bring for me
    
fireflies wavering in
           dreamland river silence
         ladybugs to fuel fires
    violent light and diminish
               to reality in the morning

this hall feels solid, but I see you
   and it starts all over again
         the most wonderful feeling
      I wish you could
                             you do?
                  brilliant.

I'm not like
  everyone else

but neither are you

we're explosive.

If he, it
the white jumper
had waited would you
still be wandering alongside me

lost on a boat of stems
  gasping for water
                        within the
                 scream the scream the
                                 scream the SCREAM
to make all our wishes heard
            at a magic personal
                           invasion of privacy
                     or at the bottom
     of this well of gratitude?

                                                     ­                                                     exposed
    ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                
                ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                            to regain
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                                   composure fall
                                                            ­                                                                 ­                                          back into
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                               place like
                                                            ­                                                                 ­                                        splinters
                                                                ­                                                                 ­             
                                                       god knows
                                               what else goes on  
                                                           inside your
                                                      vibrations­


                                                              ­                                                                 ­                but she pretends she doesn't

There was a boy named Jack
who wanted to be an artist
but his parents wouldn't hear it
past their deluded visions of grandeur
doctors, lawyers, businessmen
it was in the cards for Jack
had been since he was born
and the cards don't change

Jack made it through each bleary day
mixing paints from eggshells he found
outside the window in the hill
only he knew about
and when a smile flickered on
his face, it wasn't staying long
at least until once he's alone and he
can be himself, as if
it was in the cards for Jack
had been since he was born
and the cards don't change

and while he grew he came to see
Jack as is would never free his
life-long dreams from in this cage
so Jack soon lost his hope to anger
within the pleasant walls because
it was in the cards for Jack
had been since he was born
and the cards don't change

then the day Jack found a gun
lying on his pillow with a note
from an angel to let him know
he's holding up the party
and six minutes later the
walls were painted red with
Jack's new-found freedom in
joyous ******* slashed
diagonally across the
flower print
it was in the cards for Jack
had been since he was born
and the cards don't change

A greeting
        twirled across blacktop

     lazy in the sun, grown
        deeper in the eyes that

     reveal cloudy soul thoughts
          billowing like smoke before a fire

It's raining and I'm cold
and I'm wondering where
you are

I'll trade my heart
for your heart

"I'm just stepping out for a bit"
           you casually mentioned
                            before a dispassionate hug
                            stole you from the warm
                            glow of your own kitchen
                          
                    and I must admit I believed you
                    where an image has remained for
                    all this time in my mind of your
                    return home

     but life continues on beneath the shadow
     left by your departure, dimmed sunlight,
     warm rain
                          and now the center ring
                          with word of the dropping
                          temperatures, the fire at
                          apartment 12D and of
                          the car that carries you
                          back to me
             wait
                                     what was that?  
a dream of mine
getting ever so
twisted up
in reality

Insufferable the
rage of a thousand
fires in eyes
embers of a day

It's a good feeling this
positive vibration of the spirit at
1 forty 8 in the dark
which
        dare I allow my fresh naive thought to venture out
              into our sleeping world
convinces me that
tomorrow is going to be
a great day

I'll catch up with
    you later
  on the road to
     somewhere

Harsh wind come
chill my bones and
lead me to birth
my own fire

You know that moment
when you are certain
beyond reasonable doubt
that nothing could possibly
get any worse?

when you're stuck with work,
the heat's broken and you
just realize the bread for
your sandwich is green?

it passes.

Today the world flipped upside down
          like a teapot out of balance or
                      a warlord out of steam
    and our structure in all of its dense
                crystalline time

              s   h   a   t   t   e   r   e   d

        to the music of clouds, gobbled up raw earth
             and breath and water and choked
                    out a little ball of us, perfect and
                productive
                                     ­   it had no place here so
                      
                            today the world flipped upside
                                 down to shake us off like
                                    the ants we are but
                                          forever drifting through
                                                      daydreams is
                                                             nice because
I enjoy your company

It must be convection
      this circulation of thought
  but I appreciate you, I
              do
                      like a fish in the desert
         wonderfully alive for no reason
                   scientists can explain but
            hey, if the fish is happy

  when this energy is
              put to paper and
         vibration
               in the near
      future, all the desert fish in the
                    world's sands will
         stop their party and
  sing out
          hallelujah