And I will make sure that if anything were to happen,
It would do little to affect you.

It's not everyday
You find a goose that lays eggs
With speckled jewels and golden flakes

The world is full of incongruity
And there's no doubt about the certainty
That something bad may happen,
And we don't want that, do we?

So listen carefully.


The world is a giant carboniferous spicule
Hanging in a nest of hydroxic gas and particulae
Spinning within the gaps of a blackened dome
Of limitless space and out of control
There is no telling what way it will go
There is no prediction that has fortold
Any number of moments in this tumbling slumber
Between the darkest hell and the further horizon

I so deftly advise you with all certification
To please place your bets and fly by echolocation
Your eyes will mislead, your ears will displease
And there is no way we can refund divine warranties

This machinery
has a half life of quarks
And energies that vibrate into other orbits
Trajectories
Retaining the spin and informative piece
Of that golden goose let loose amongst the canopy
Of dark,
off into neverland, straight on
Till new morning,
Beyond the stars

So please good sir don't migrate away from me
I have so much to give and such pain I have seen

Those that fatten their goose with **** till it quacks,
Those ravenous souls who ate their gift for a snack,
And when life finally cuts them down to their last,
They will howl and yowl and pray that goose back.

This is a game,
Have a good little laugh
Don't waste your time or your money
On a daffy Aflack

Policy that keeps you policed to the earth,
No way to fly,
Stuck in the dirt.
That is no way to live in the dream,
That is no way to let death trickle in

So please, pretty please, make sure you have coverages
And a couple extra dollars in the pocket of those jeans
Wander freely, you great big atomic bomb, you.
Do catastrophic damages and I'll pay your dues.

Ride the road coast to coast,
Fly a bird 'round the world,
Take a truck till you're home,
Find a love you can trust.
Find a place where your egg
And your legs seek nowhere else
Lay down those roots,
It's Eden or bust.

I'm a lonely sailor, down four pitchers,
I'm high and low, how often I don't know.
I'm to take commands, I'm not on my own,
Days with bacchanals, nights with dark.
A deserted sailor, with a salient dream.
Whom I'm to speak with? The sea?
I've lost my tongue, I've lost me.

A pure path leading to the moon,
I hear the echolocation of whales,
It's the only company I can think of.
Threats passing within miles, with sharp red lines,
A twisted fate, I dream dancing on my grave.
I get old, I'm ranked high, my pockets are full.
My heart is dry, and smiles are wry.
Whom I'm to speak with? The sea?
I've lost my tongue, I've lost me.

Dusk!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,

These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*

Fibrous wings furred like a moth,

Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.

Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,

Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.

Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.

No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.

Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;

Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.

Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;

Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.

They live in darkness, centipedes do too,

Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.

Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,

Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.

Wind turbines endanger bats,

Like fans endanger lightning bugs.

Only one percent of bats are vampiric,

Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.

Dawn!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Bats are bugs, aren’t they?

Spinning around, trying to find myself through echolocation

Bouncing my sounds off of everyone else

To find where I am.

Stopping to breathe, heart racing

I realize what feels normal and needed

Is keeping me from the truth of me.

Standing still, emanating sounds

Not for validation

But for gift.

Because I stand in the place of something stronger

Than your feedback.

It is a place of bedrock and identity.

It is where He created me to be.

we were driving down the freeway
the air was humid in the 70s
and the cars in the opposite lane
looked like eyes trying
to tell me something
and if you were to swerve
i don't think I would stop you.

So we trudged through a field
of midnight grass
and the purple sky was
starless, the moon
barely had anything
to say
Neither did I
smoke billowing from the
slow suicide in my hand
I watched as it danced inside itself
casting a shadow over
the concrete ground
I want to
dance with you
tenderly as the
cancer danced with
the air.

And the wish flowers
populating the ground
were ghost memories
from my childhood so I
kicked them down and
watched as the burs
whisked away, telling
stories to their kin about how
they lived a worthy life
full of unfulfilled wishes

pool lights from your headlights
onto the white flowers
from the bush you almost ran over
I am so sorry
that you choose to throw away
love after love
I would know, you threw me away
just like
that time we
went to the poetry reading
you wrote in your
journal that you were happy I was here
I was happy too
you crumbled that page
and threw it in the
wastebasket.
So I crumbled my body
and threw myself
down the stairs.


But those poor souls
aren't as solid as mine
and although you managed
to crack me
I inserted a gold plated
filling so I can
sparkle in sunlight
but they do not
have the strength
nor the wits to
do that.

they way the brain works
if one of us can do it,
we all can.
that means we all can
echolocate.

have you seen the story?
young man born blind
learns to see
using echolocation

learn to see.
that's why perception is so valid.
why experience is so scared.
why our messages are necessary.
we can learn to see,
what we choose
and the truth.

the truth of origin
has to lay within
me
and you.
we are parts of the whole -
shattered glass pieces
will never become plastic.
that's how I see
It.

To be a simple observation…

we are only
observationally connected
here.
within the atmosphere of our beings
we speak the tongue of essence.

as I peered through the
crystal clear lens
I recognized the tiny protective hairs
and the curve of the lid.
I was amazed that this
perspective
was new.
I wondered when I would
see it again.
and I wonder and I wander.
because that's what the brain does
when its not echolocating,
or meditating.

illusionary cultural beliefs
accepted and embraced as personal
truths
have desensitized our
senses.

commonly, the senses
are rounded into five.
though echolocation would obviously be
six,
vibration communication
seven,
the list goes on…


eyesight is indescribable.
Thanks! be given to the power to see.

so many have "bad" eyes.
recent technologies like
Lasik
are changing that though.
who needs echolocation anyways?

There is a woman in Europe who drinks coffee at midnight. She has purple hair, but once upon a time, it was brown and she cut it under the table in first grade and let another girl get in trouble for it. She never said a word, let the guilt eat through her bones at night for weeks.
There is a woman in Ireland who is afraid to drive on the left side of the road, although she once ruled the California freeways in her blue pumpkin-turned-purple carriage. With a negative sense of direction and a never ending supply of menthols, she got lost so many times that she had no choice but to be found.
There is a woman in Galway whose skin is laced with ancient spiderweb scars. Years ago, they were angry, open tubes of crimson paint that children had stomped on when no one was looking. But everything fades, even acrylic paints and ancient pains.
There is a girl in Kinvara who is practically a professional at destroying nice things. She tried her hardest to make something beautiful but she was never much use at creation; better at cremation. Burning, bleeding, bruising-- these are her areas of expertise. She has learned to stop hiding from her secrets and her sins and her skin, that it is okay to be made up of matchsticks. She washes her hands too often, but that's okay, right? There are worse things a girl can do. At least, that's what they tell her…
But she's had enough of the poison they've been trying to sell her.


s.h.

My cat howls at night. I sometimes wonder why.

I don't think it's 'cause he's lonely.
The door is open a crack and he knows how to get in.

Maybe he's going deaf. I heard that can happen.
"They howl real loud, like echolocation."

Or maybe my cat is a mutant.

All I can tell you, when he starts up like that,
is when I call his name he stops.
And comes into the room.
And jumps up on the bed.
And starts to purr.

So here's what I think—
that maybe what he's doing,
when he howls like that,
is scaring away the monsters so we can sleep.

Activate prior knowledge,
like a tumor that resembles
a painting of Churchill,
circumlocution
more like an echolocution…
or is it echolocation,
perhaps electrocution?

The sigils of universal coincidences
have finally revealed themselves.
They’re aligning for you
right this very second.

A hair from your head
laying in the bathtub
that reminds
you of a letter
from a long forgotten
language.

A random pattern of a scratch
on your arm from a outstretched
coat hanger in a department store.

An odd configuration of blood
on your arm after you dispense
a pesky mosquito.

A rorschached blob of a condiment
on your favorite shirt.

It’s out there trying to tell
you something very important.

There.

In those things lies the truth.
As much as you don’t want to
believe in it…
As much as you want to
deny it.

It will not live
up to your
memory of it later
on.

If all my words were mating calls,
And all my poems merely
The slapping of the waves by
A whale's fins to garner some attention,
If the purpose of all my work
Was only echolocation,
What answer can I make
When a listener surfaces
From the deep, calm and
Implacable, a beautiful inevitability?
What can I say when the man
I dove for comes to me
And says, Here I am,
You can stop calling now,
I will not leave.
What then, when I hold
Coleridge's flower in my hands?
What can I do now - I who have
Pressed my pen to the grindstone
For the purpose of finding him -
Now when all I know to do
Never needs doing again?