Crows, bluejays and pigeons
talk this morning. Closest we come
to wilderness here. Autos screech
and sirens scream. Only 7 a.m.
My fat belly and possible cancer
worry me. With a few months
to live, I'd search the wilderness
for some wisdom I missed. Or
plain beauty of natural randomness.
Knowing that, why do I remain
in health? I must devote my
present to my future existence.

The bluejays complain long after
everyone else is silent.
Love and friendship need the body
and society. You belong, you want
to belong, three days in wilderness
and you gladly return to
lovers' arms and plumbing.
But one day you die. And this
is the ideal independence you sought.
This death is the pristine aloneness,
the untouched wilderness and
freedom from necessity! And
it is certain. You do not save
for it. You do not worry that
you may miss your opportunity.

when the sun turned purple
our secrets fell out of our lips
by 7, our bedsheets became forts
my fears came like rain, dissolving into your fingertips

at 8, the bluejays sang outside your kitchen window
“are they mocking miles davis?”
speak like velvet
“if you listen hard enough.”
feelings of linen

by 10, we are alone
you speak of heaven
while i watch heaven speaking to me

it was a sunday when you asked me to live outside the city
“the only thing that would exist would be me, you, and time.”
those words convinced me
“do you think time becomes slower out there?”
“out there, time can stand still. you just need to stop for a second, and look.”

when 12 arrives, the trees become louder
autumn winds crackle
window panes shutter
“do you think wind would be scarier if we could see it?”
“it would only make it easier to hide from.” i say
“i hope the bluejays are okay.”

at 2, we see the moon
spilt upon a September sky, waning
your father died when it was full
“remember that poster that used to hang in your school wall?
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
i hope he landed on a star.”

the clouds flood above our heads at 3,
we are between bedsheets
the moon curtained by cloves of gray
“we should have let the bluejays in.”

when it turned 4, we conspire shadows of animals on our wall
rabbits dogs and wolves danced amongst framed stills
“what if we’re just shadows of God’s hands?” i ask
“if i’m a shadow, then you’re the light.”

we count thunderclaps until we forget what time it is
until it stops
they become echoes
clouds break apart
we stay close

you walk out to the porch
“poor thing”
“it’s like a piece of the sky fell out.”
its wings lay at attention
“do you think we could have saved it?”
“we can’t destroy ourselves for the things we could have saved.”
“we could have let him in.”
“yeah, we could have.”

at 6, the sky turned orange
the clouds pallet mixtures of purple and violet
i like to think there was no space for blue in the sky for the bluejay
i search for any trace of cerulean or aqua
the only blue i could find was lifeless on the ground

“what do you think happened?”
“maybe it was trying to shoot for the moon.”

you ask if there was a way we could bury it in the sky
it’s unfair to bury something so brightly blue in the dirt
we spend the rest of the sunset searching above us for blue
we watched orange dissolve into the violent violet night sky
we stay outside looking at the stars

perhaps the rest of the bluejays managed to make it to the moon
some may have landed on the stars
i want to believe that this still-blue on the ground is just a shadow
i have never felt more shaded
we were all shadows
shadows of something much bigger.

Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn,
To see night fall from the goose wings, and to hear
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying.
Cries are required from those who wake disturbed at dawn.

Adam was called in to name the Red-Winged
Blackbirds, the Diamond Rattlers, and the Ring-Tailed
Raccoons washing God in the streams at dawn.

Centuries later, the Mesopotamian gods,
All curls and ears, showed up; behind them the Generals
With their blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.

Those grasshopper-eating hermits were so good
To stay all day in the cave; but it is also sweet
To see the fenceposts gradually appear at dawn.

People in love with the setting stars are right
To adore the baby who smells of the stable, but we know
That even the setting stars will disappear at dawn.

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than ****;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
****** interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
******* it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and ****** a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd **** you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
******* your ******* little
ah ah   no no   maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

Ah, I remember her well.

She used to roam the woods brandishing her scepter of sticks
Commanding the creatures of the forest
The blue jays loved her, all the animals loved her, but, especially those blue jays
They brought her gifts.
And accompanied her on all her adventures
And watched her from the branches
In return
She gave offerings of bread and warm milk
And wore their feathers in her hair
Oh my,
her hair was a wild mess
Sticks
Pebbles
Feathers
And Braids
And somehow
That wild tangled mess
Made me smile
She made everyone smile

She took a particular liking to me
I watched over her
but
in reality
she watched over me
Imagine that
a little girl
pep in her step
and sparkle in her eye
taking care of a scarred man like me

We had a trade
a weekly occurrence
A story for a story
A tale for a tale
She would whisper a story filled to the brim with
fairies and trolls
and trees with purple blossoms
and golden roots
I would hand her knowledge about the world

She saw the truth in people
called them flavors
said mine was a cup of hot chocolate
spiked
with peppermint
I once asked her what her truth is
asked her about her flavor
Frosting and moondust
she said
with a smile

Now don't look at me like that,
She had her flaws
Even the most magnificent paintings faded with time.
What happened you ask?
She grew up

And everything changed
The winds didn't carry the scent of honeysuckle
And the crickets never sang.

She cut her hair.
And her smile was guarded
Weighted down by a heavy stone.

The Bluejays observed solemnly from the dead tree branches
As she withered away

The forest no longer hummed
And the town never felt so lonely
Even I lost a piece of me
When she got on that train
Without a wave goodbye

Maybe one day
The creek will chuckle again
And she will come back and
Finish that story
About the king and his butterflies
And I will tell the tale
About the origin of the moon.

But, perhaps that is just an old man's wishful thinking.
~

Let me tell you a story about a busy steet in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world.

Somewhere near the end of this busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world, there was a flowershop.

It was a lovely old place; an elegant building surrounded by beautiful gardens with daisies and daffodils and roses. It had bird baths where the cheery cardinals and bluejays stopped by for an afternoon splash, and even a sprinkler for the young children to run around in while their mommy's and daddy's were picking out pretty flowers.

Now, inside this flowershop, there were rows upon rows of pots filled with any type of plant you could imagine: dragonsnaps, lilies, zinnias, tulips, the whole lot. Baskets of flowers hung from the ceiling, overflowing with bright colours. Every once in a while, petals would rain down and the entire shop would look magical.

Everyday, people of all ages would dash into this flowershop. Men in suits, looking to find the perfect gift for their dates. Ladies in dresses, picking out just a little something to look nice in a vase on their dinner table. And of course, the gardeners, with their overalls and ***** fingers.

So, as I said, busy people on a busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world would dash into this busy flowershop, then dash back out and get on with their busy lives. Always looking for the most ravishing type of flower, the ones that could catch your eye as soon as you entered the shop. Never focusing on anything else.

What no one realized was that there was a small flower placed near the back wall of the shop. It was never moved; always been in the same exact place ever since it arrived at the flowershop years and years ago. The owners had stopped watering it, so the flower was beginning to shrivel up. Most of the petals had fallen off and were now laying in a sad little pile on the ground, and the few that remained had turned the colour of black.

The little flower got sicker and sicker every day, but it never lost hope. Every time the suited man stopped in, or the lady with the dress, or the ***** gardener; the flower would use its last bit of strength to make itself noticed. It stood on its tippy toes, perking up and spreading its wilted petals and frail stem as much as it could.

No one saw.

Then, one day, when the owner was sweeping the floor of the flowershop, he saw something near the back wall. Something broken. Crumpled. Blackened. Ugly. Dead. Something that once was beautiful until it stopped being noticed; stopped being loved.

You see, in a busy flowershop on a busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world, no one's ever going to notice a wallflower until it wilts.

Nothing is more chilled
than slanted sunrays through pines
trembling with want

Nor nothing worse than
the young cardi’nals trilling
out to the white trees

Voices unfalt’ring
answered only by echoes
of forgotten spring

Cold, thick powder snow
blithely reminds us of the
small, white spring hen eggs

that, forever lost,
cracked among the ****-strewn straw,
oozing into earth—

and I think of you,
whispering back to the birds,
just as lost as they

waiting for pre-spring
dew to unfreeze from the grass
that you may lap it

with painful blue eyes
like black-stripped and impish jays,
looking down on all.

There once was a man whose name was Moonie
He was a very handsome man
His skin was sun kissed, dark like a brown bears fur, soft like a baby's curl
And oh, the way his hair curled
Moonie had hair that grew outward instead of downward
His smile was as white as the snow capped mountains
His heart as warm as the coast of Australia, all year round
He smelled like matches and Dark Horse cigarettes
Like everything warm
He dressed like a professional troublemaker
His laugh came from his stomach when he laughed real good
And I've never heard him laugh bad
He loved like a father
Protected like a brother
Teased like a sister
And worried like a mother
He cursed like a sailor
But only when he was angry
Moonie had a fuse so long that if you lit it in January, it would take a whole 365 days for him to explode
But by the time 365 days past it was a matter that didn't really matter anymore
He had a mind like a turtle
He thought thoughtfully, slow and subtle
But he spoke like he knew every wonder of the world
He kissed babies and broke bottles on the backs of ships carrying soldiers off to war
Even though he was confused about what they were fighting for
Moonie spoke of peace and of hope for future souls
He loved everything from the edges of the universe
To the coral that grows in the deepest of the oceans coves
Moonie met a girl, who brought a whole lot of sunshine to his world
She made the lips of his mouth curl
Upward, it was a beautiful sight, especially with teeth that white
Moonie met a girl, he swears by the stars that she is incredible
Magnificent
Wonderful
Beautiful
Terrific
He says she makes his heart 10 times larger, like it's flowing out so much love that it makes his nose runny,
He calls her Sunny

There once was a girl named Sunny
She was a very beautiful girl
She had curly brown hair that fell just short of her shoulders
Skin that was kissed by the angels themselves
If you believe that kind if thing exists
She dressed like an artist
The kind that like to paint masterpieces
With every curve of the brush
She smelled like summer, like home, like sunshine peaking through rain clouds
She planted roses for those she lost,
In hopes of continuous growth and beauty
She spoke with the authority of an officer
But also with the gentleness of a butterfly
Her personality was layered like a Russian doll
And as you opened up every part of her she grew so very small
But not small in the bad way,
She was wise like an owl
But she was happy like a child at play
She cared like the ocean cares for sea creatures that swim in its depths
She cried like it was always rainy season
She laughed with a sadness in her eyes that was easy to detect
But she was happy
And she loved a man named Moonie
And he made her happy
And she swears on the rings that circle Saturn
That he is the most beautiful man on the planet

Sunny and Moonie lived together in a cozy home by the ocean
Where it was never too hot or too cold
They had a beautiful garden, that sprouted all different kinds of things,
Pumpkins that grew tomatoes
Watermelon that grew on trees
Potatoes that grew above the ground
Flowers with yellow stems and baby blue leaves
Beautiful birds flew around, bluejays with mocking jay wings
Their family was the world around them and they wanted and needed for nothing
Moonie was so happy
Sunny was so lovely
The things that they did, how incredibly they lived
How wonderful life had become
When moonie and sunny both lived as one

Then one day when Moonie was down by the beach
Sunny was in their little green house, fast asleep
Moonie slipped on a snail shell and fell into the pretty sea
When it got late Sunny worried and went to see
She called and she called
Moonie was nowhere to be found
He had fallen asleep forever, in the ocean's underground
The sharks and the octopus found Moonie and buried him deep
The sea urchin said we must bring him back!
But the turtle insisted that we must let him sleep
The flounder found Sunny by the shore and they brought her the news
The look in her eyes was as if her heart had been bruised
She look to the sky as dark clouds rolled in
The raindrops dropped to the rhythm of the tears on her skin
Her Moonie was gone forever in the ocean blue
She threw herself into the ocean saying take me with you
The flounder, the turtles, the mer-people and creatures of the sea
Tried to stop her from suffering the same fate as her dear Moonie
But she would let them save her as she fell into the deep,
Whispering, I love my Moonie and my Moonie loves me
She sank and she sank
She fell and she fell
She floated right next to her love
In the oceans pink sand
The most beautiful death in all of the land
Moonie swore by the stars that his Sunny was magnificent
And Sunny swore by the rings on Saturn that Moonie was the most beautiful man on the planet
They died together but they're souls rose separately
Moonie rose for the night
His love rose for the day
Sunny became the Sun
Moonie became the light that snuffed out the darkness of that day
And as they lived in their respective spots in the sky
They saw each other from time to time
They might have been punished for loving too much
Or they might've loved so much that the universe needed them to take care of us
For the Moon now takes care of the oceans tide
And the Sun takes care of you and I
I think Sunny and Moonie had it right
Even though they no longer see each other everyday,
their love is something you don't have to look so far to find
Maybe that's why you sometimes find the Moon and the Sun in the same sky
They're so close to finding each other, but they have so little time

There was once a girl named indigo //
And there was a Christmas tree she wanted to chop down
She possessed all the tools to complete this task
She received a saw for chopping the wood
She picked up the saw and got on her knees
But then something peculiar happened //
Something so ******* strange yet entrancing at the same time
// The tree
began to grow backwards into the ground
the roots became a seed
and life became counter clockwise
counter clockwise of insanity and greed
Bluejays swum while cod fish flew
Her world got kicked over by the bully from school
She wanted to shoot everything because nothing made sense any more
More than anything she just wanted to be
But the subliminal messages she couldn’t read
While supercritical people just watched her bleed
The alphabet no longer went from A to Z
/and there was no such things as vowels//
without vowels she couldn’t write poetry
and without poetry she had no oxygen
her world was no more
it was all in code
it was so ****** up it was like watching the liveliness come out of her father’s throat
Oh wait, I didn’t tell you
Indigo watched the liveliness come out of her father’s throat//
Indigo became a synonym for insanity
the tornado spit her out like a beautiful waterfall
instead of ******* her in//
all she could do is fall //
but//
she can’t breathe
and she’s being compressed
she can’t see
she’s understanding less
she’s trying to act what society classifies as normal
but it is a useless approach
she is climbing in gym class, but without a rope
yet the rope is a noose
She is over analyzing herself into a hiatus space
Where it’s not actually hiatus but filled with chaotic mace
The mace is getting sprayed in her retinas
But she can’t see anything
Regretin the
Upside down world she created
Life stuck in reverse not tolerated
Revolving in ways that make her isolated//
But maybe if she stopped//
Stopped
Separating the separated
Decided to educate the educated
And learn to not under estimate the estimated
Then she too could feel that feeling again
but
Indigo can’t feel
And
She says
Hit me
Punch me
Kick me
Shoot me
Just do whatever you can to make me feel
Feel this feelingless life so I can begin heal
She wakes up and opens her eyes and now she is blind
The chaos has turned her heart into a mind
And mind into the heart
Where brain waves pump blood instead of intellectual parts
And her car won’t stop going in reverse but she is still pushing it forward to start
But it’s stuck
She’s stuck
Help indigo she’s stuck
All I want is for indigo is to be what she is:
a deep captivating blue
and I want her to captivate the blue
like the ocean captivates the white part of the waves//
the part that crashes the hardest at mid day
and I want the wave to push her over
PUSH ME OVER WAVE
HIT ME
PUNCH ME
KICK ME
SHOOT ME
MAKE ME FEEL AGAIN
MAKE ME THE CAPTIVATING BLUE
FORCE ME-TO-CAPTIVATE-THAT-BLUE
AND MAYBE MY BRAIN WILL TURN BACK INTO MY BRAIN
AND MY HEART WILL TURN BACK INTO A HEART
WHERE IT DOES PUMP BLOOD INSTEAD OF INTELLECTUAL PARTS
AND I’LL LEARN TO READ THE SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES PEOPLE SAID TO ME
AND I’LL EVEN APPRECIATE WHEN I BLEED
EVEN IF SUPERCRITICAL PEOPLE WERE THE CAUSE OF IT AND NOT ME
And I’ll learn to breath, I’ll learn to breathe, and I’ll learn all over again because
After all, all Indigo was, was one thing:
A deep captivating blue.

just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess,
addicted to the feeling of something that could be
a distant cousin of loss,
but can’t be loss when it wasn’t there to begin with.
a cousin of loss and brother of bereavement,
a lexiconical gap
in the english maw,
a space where the definition slipped out
but the word never grew in.
a gap where a word should be,
a word meaning missing something you never had,
losing something that was never yours,
grieving for something that never looked your way
or graced you with its pain.
insomnia of the soul,
unable or unwilling to droop into the catatonic stupor
of love,
until my eyes ache with open,
and my heart aches with empty
and just beautiful aches and pains,
like stiff joints filled with sterling silver
or arthritic necklace clasps.
my tongue is tin because the argentine
is in my hands,
silver in the space between the carpals,
oozing precious metals
onto the page.
writing in second-best so that it’ll stay.
writing second-rate love letters
and pretending they’re real,
like the words i moan mean something other than
hello
i’m lonely
who are you?
like i’m not the girl who cried love
because the village had already learned
that wolves are lies,
and vice versa.
because faking it has always been my favorite pastime.
i’ll write love poems forever,
keep feeding my addiction for as long as it stays,
let my loveless track marks bloom cantankerous sores
on my ribs.
while i’m young
i’ll write poems of arthritis and weakness
and death,
because oh now i am immortal
invulnerable and omnipotent,
but when my bones are brittle and my flesh is loose
and my spine makes me bow to the earth,
my poems will be of life and strength
and god
because darkness is only beautiful when it isn’t
an imminent looming
future.
when i know i may die tomorrow,
i will write of bluejays
and of a love that never found me,
though it knocked on all the doors and called all the numbers,
waited on my porch while i hid in the closet,
nursing my ache
trying to fill a lexiconical gap
with bukowski
and insomnia.
supersaturated with emptiness
because all the words in the dictionary
can’t make up for the one that’s missing.
it changed the locks when it came,
shutting me out of my skull,
taking residence in my chest
and growing larger with each slow breath.
every huff of oxygen fed my
resident,
every injection of
late nights spent just writing,
every pill popped -
the lies that went down better
if i said them with a gulp of gin.
so my lovelessness cracked my ribs as it grew,
replaced my marrow with sterling silver
and i watched it happen like
a glacier devouring a desert
because i knew i would never survive loving something.
deserts were never made to run bounteous
with water.
just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess.
addicted to silver joints
and words that don’t exist.

Afternoon octaves from a Raspberry arbor ,
streaming with Honeybee delight , fledgeling
Cardinals hopping from branch to branch ,
Rubies pause then pose , streak away in zig-zag
flight
Bluejays crack acorns on cobblestone drives ,
Red wasp , Swallowtails and Cuckoo bees dance
in warm light , Cinnamon coated fawns dance
the forever fields of soybeans , Sugar Magnolias
stand tall in Purple clover dreams

Light seldom graces me with her presence. That used to tear me apart. Now, I have learned to appreciate her absence. I sit, perched on my plush cushion. Bluejays sit on my windowsill. Their wings are resting and my eyes are gleaming. How beautiful it is to watch a sentient being recover, rejuvenate. I’ll never tell you that knowing you set me free. All the things in life that are terrible now amaze me. My ears laugh at the sounds the bluejays have gifted me. They are so happy. Sipping the sweet, crimson nectar. Filling them with life and substance. I am writing again. My voice is different now. I used to be locked in your cell. Now, I turn to the light. The bluejays and I share a commonality: nectar is there for enjoyment, not necessity.

it's snowing in april and
the bluejays have abandoned their nest to
welcome the newcoming of spring;
we have no furniture, sweetheart,
but we do have time. last night i
held your cheek in my tiny palm and
asked if you wanted me to rest
in your arms forever -
"of course", you soothed,
and i brewed cherry coffee in the morningtime
to remind myself
that this life is good.
we have no money, sweetheart,
but we do have time. we do have time.