With a heart made of paper mache,
A mask I had made the same way,
One to fill a vacant place inside,
The other tries to portray a lie.
But they still see my eyes behind,
That smiling face, they all see my eyes.
My heart made of paper mache,
And a mask I made to face my friends,
Because they don’t understand the way,
The hurting they say will fade away,
Never did; Stays the same.
So I pretend; I wear that face.
Smiling like they think I should,
A paper smile protects my pride,
A paper heart remains to this day.
Heart made of paper mache fills an empty place.
A mask I use to face each day,
Smiling for me to make them believe I am okay.
Made me a heart today.
Made from paper mache.
Made to take the real ones place.
Made to replace.
Made a new face today.
Made from paper mache.
Made it a smiling face.
Made just to face each day.
Made to hide the pain.

Paper mache hearts
Origami bodies
Folded in cranes
Molded into what ought to be

Fear in flight
Wings beating endlessly
Trying to fly
To places we will never reach

Our hopes torn
Turning into scraps of vellum
Drifting down lightly
On to brittle phellem

Thoughts become calligraphy
Ever so beautiful
But antique
To remind us we are frail
     In this paper mache world

I've used them on my windows
To see the clear outside,
If I read the Op-eds,
I shudder, shuttered and hide.

I've spread them 'neath my plates and cups,
My shelves all neat and tidy;
But the headlines made it clear to me
My glass is more half empty.

They had a place in the litter box
For **** to scratch and squat;
I laid them round my garden plants,
They made fine insect traps.
Rolled and twirled they'd start a fire,
I could fold them into hats.
They cleaned the grease from BBQs,
And they're safe to pick up glass.
Crumple them for packaging,
They work as school book covers;
Add water and some flour,
To shape papier mache lovers.
Fold seeds in them to germinate,
Then use them for compost;
There's many ways to employ
Your Times and local Post.

But I won't subscribe to Dailies
For the felling of our trees;
And yet I miss my papers,
And the ways they worked for me.
But when enthroned,
You'll hear me grouse,
There's no **** paper in this ****-house.

My cell works well to scroll and swipe,
But it's only good for a virtual wipe.

Paper mache hearts
Stepped on
Broken-
As people walk on.
Not enough glue
Not enough paper
To repair them all.
Not enough-
To place the shards of our hearts
Back together.

Is a pack, is a clique,
Is a group of tightly-knit friends
People who can rely on me
The way I'd rely on them.

                                                        Bu­t people these days are plastic dolls
                                                        Car­bon copies, cardboard homes

And paper mache walls.
Disappointing, fake, humanoid clones.

There are times in life
when a man needs change,
And I don't mean,
dimes and quarters.

Remember when you
were just sixteen,
Driving all alone, solo,
in your old man's Buick?
All the windows down,
radio music blaring,
Your bare arm draped
out over the side of the door.
to better exhibit your bicep.

Hell mister, no doubt,
you were ten feet tall,
the king of the road.
Ever wish you had,
that feeling back again?

Cars were always my thing.
I owned some Detroit
Muscle, Full blown Chevy,
Firebird 400, Chrysler Hemi.
Smoked some tires and
went to Court a time or two.
Of course all that was long
ago in my fitter youth.

When I became a Yuppie
I acquired a Poodle Puppy,
a Porsche and a MGB.

But the ***** does turn.
and so then, did I,
And my road got,
a little bumpy.

Along came marriage,
then a baby carriage.
And a big house
In the Burbs.

Then came a progression
Of Volvo Station Wagons,
to Soccer Dad Mini Vans,
to large SUV's.
All for hauling,
any number of things.
Kids and dogs, strollers,
bikes, kites and scooters,
Fellow car poolers,

And less we forget,
"Pulling" things too.
Boats, RV's, Utility trailers,
and all nature of landscape,
gardening, and general
shopping paraphernalia.
Little League Teams,
Drooling big dogs,
Papier Mache Volcanos.
Home Coming Floats,
Once even a Goat
You name it, I hauled it,
Or pulled it!

Years rolled by,
eventually the Kids
flew the nest, got married.
And low and behold,
The wife and I split,
Each going our separate way.
No one's fault, just grew apart.
The thinly veiled allegorical
Previous Patriarchal
arrangement became,
A whole new start,
A workable self allegiance
to just one.

Soon once more, I was the MAN.
I ran out, bought a **** boat
But not having the kids around,
Soon sold it, having found out,
that alone, I was not a water sport.

I caroused around, dated women,
got my pockets picked,
learned a few lessons.
Fell in love, fell out again,
Took a few pretty good blows,
Right on the chin,
Even some down lower.

Round about then,
An Epiphany kicked in.
Remembered my most,
ennobling, happy events,
behind the wheel,
driving Dad's Buick.

As I stepped on the lot.
There was never doubt,
There was only one choice,
I just had to have that,
Little VW Bug Red Racer.

Nothing like your Mother's
Beetle, the engine's up front,
Not stuck in the trunk,
And man it produces over,
200 Big Time Horsepower
Not to mention,
Lays rubber in three,
Of six gears.
Getting all the while,
33 miles per gallon.

Receiving additional help,
from a sweet Turbo Booster,
Just like a big, Indy Track Bruiser.

There's 19 inch racing
tires and alloy wheels,
They look so cool,
Spinning in motion.

Dual stainless steel exhausts,
And best of all,
a cool collapsible,
Convertible top.

Rack and Pinion steering,
Handles like a sports car,
Yet still offers a backseat
To take my Grandkids,
out for a spin.

Dude, it's got,
All the bows
and whistles!

Top Down Driving is such a thrill,
Makes me feel sixteen again.
The open road, the sky above,
The wind blowing thru my hair,
what there is left of it.

Perhaps the only thing that
Could possibly make this
Driving experience greater,
Would be to speed down,
The road, going eighty,
Behind the wheel of my
Little Red Racer,
Completely **** naked,
And of course all the while,
Feel the wind in my hair.

I don't know, I'm too old,
To call this a mid life crisis.
But on the other hand,
Maybe the acquiring of
This little red sporty car,
Has something to do with,
Those Testosterone shots I'm taking.
I'm even thinking, of dying my hair,
naw, lets not get crazy!

We come to a complete stop.
At a red light.
We wear our arms like seat-belts-
crossed for protecting our pilot lights.˚
I can't help but wonder how many airbags might deploy
if a meteor crashed headfirst and heavyset into the planet
and pancaked us eternally into this moment-
and how our fossils would look confused;
funeral flowers on a wedding cake.

None of this matters, we're both thinking it,
God is a foster child playing with his erector set.

You grin with as much conviction as a dented automobile,
breaking the months of silence to say,
"I miss you."

We can never fold these road maps back the way they came.

Somewhere existentially above this moment, there is an asterisk
that confirms
you- are here.

There was a younger version of me that you never got to meet,
he was here once,
stupid as a slinky.
Shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Crooked as the question mark that punctuated his voice.
I looked good in hydroplane,
my eyes- bigger than my belly,
so I drank my weight in promises- I knew would be hard to keep within arms reach.
I also knew an encyclopedia's worth of how it felt to lie to myself.
I did it for twenty-three years
until I finally let go of stupid and held on to reason.

At some age I wrote letters to my favorite musicians,
using the sloppiest side of my penmanship, I'd ask for answers
and my mother, like a paperclip, used to tell me - she'd say,
"Kiddo, just because they don't respond
doesn't mean they didn't get the message."

She kept her chest of hope upstairs, away from the living room.
She only opened it on the hallow end of October;
that's where she kept the blankets.

Shy, I kept my hope chest covered in a T-shirt-
at the very least.
I never opened up.
I emptied my toy box of all its fiction, filled it with voices.
Deployed an army of rubber wrestlers, martial arts amphibians
and those inanimate toy soldiers with plastic parachutes attached
in search of the confidence I knew was supposed to belly-flop inside of me.

It hid, unfound for decades.
Until you entered.

Hawaiian domino effect, circus of chain reactions, avalanche of affirmation, chest-plate yielding gravity mouth speaking brightest anything forever night light, all apex and eyelash and cheekbone.
You -from big island- broke me.
I opened like the dry side of an umbrella, kept my back turned for shielding you.
I showed up for love on time, like a subway train in echelon city
wanting these arms to feel less like turnstiles.

All my sign languages were in waves.
All my ceilings turned to skies.
All my jitters packed into my hunger stomach.
Typing hyper with caffeinated hands
a swarm of nervous words bee-hiving in my butterfly chest.
Something like a hummingbird
when I finally drop your name like an alarm clock whisper
my lungs empty like cathedrals on the day after Christmas.

I brought the sermon to your Sundays,
you brought the choir to my masses.
We built a church around these esophagus bell towers.
Held ourselves up to the stained glass and showed off our light;

I swear I don't believe in a lot of things, God knows,
but there's always a but,
so much as I believe in the eternal depth of everything,
so much as I believe that we'd have plenty of water if it weren't for salt,
so much as I believe in eight marbles rolling around a gas lamp,
I believed we'd find a way.

'Cause in all the ways my sky could never hold you- and I mean this-
I believed in you- same way some people believe in Jesus.

Because you never judged my albatross mouth when I said things like,
"Self deprecation is the new love."
You kissed me-
less like doorstop,
more like lighthouse illuminating windmill.

You were a merry-go-round pivot decorated in Kona coffee beans, Christmas lights, cough syrup, paper mache pineapples, plastic dinosaur bones, a collection of worn-out Asics, board shorts and a dubstep remix broadcast through the static of a blown-out rotary phone.

You were everything I could get my hands on-

A full-tilt action-packed kaleidoscope jungle
with blender tongue and volcano heart.
I looked good in your sad panda coat tails,
teaspoon swallowing my doubts
while you Tarzaned my ability to breathe,
gave me ocean view and weak knees.
Is that sea breeze in your aftermath or are there already tears in my happiness?

You came camouflage out of my blind spot dressed in magnet armor,
diving board and drum set.
We passionbent cymbals into cannonballs.

I found comfort between your breastplate and your shoulder blades,
where you held me like a promise
when all my wishing was for want
and all your wanting was for wishes

Granted,

I know that there were days when you couldn't help but wake up like gorilla speaking Pidgin
and I couldn't help but waking up like an abandoned highway with a chip on my shoulder-
some maps don't show this much detail, Google Earth-

Which is why I always came through for you like a well-lit citrus truck stop
pressed against the dusk in your moonlight life crisis.
We only saw stars.
From our moon base.
In bewilderment, in our hunger, we learned
that if you hold me to my vending machines you'll get what you pay for.

So here it is, the truth, as I have always known it,
delivered to you on the outskirts of an echo,
my voice, supporting my existence like a monolith.

I'm standing in the middle of a you-shaped hole.
It's as wide as a promise crater-
we built it together.
It's not my favorite place to stand
but the exit strategies are made in the shape of a me that I haven't constructed yet.
I had a lot of things planned.
I referred to things as "ours",
when I really meant "please".

Bury me in your time lapse.
When your emotional excavators discover me in your sediment
they'll find me all pterodactyl-
wings spread wide as potential, sky-diving toward forgiveness,
forever.

Truth is, I'm wingless.

We met at a stop sign.
Our paths crossed.

There's a lot of accidents at some intersections.
Maybe it's because that's not where those two roads were supposed to meet.

We can't time machine argue with the way things landed.

We weren't an avoidable accident.
We were just two cars that really wanted to dance.

I don't know what I'm trying to say but I know when I mean it.

There's a tyrannosaurus rex cradled head-to-tail just behind my curator heart-
all fossil spine, monster teeth, jaw head and piano hands.
His presence says a lot about the past.
There's an asterisk on the surface,
above this moment,
that confirms with absolute certainty,

˚something wicked awesome happened here.

You wrap your word so delicately
They almost feel sincere
But i can see the cracks that tear
The O's perfect sphere


Flour made of crushed fake smiles
And water from eye dew
Newspaper strips torn carelessly
And drowned in smooth white glue


Your hands are sticky from the words
You tried so hard to mould
Happiness not gifted to me
But rather your to uphold


You act as though you've done no wrong,
No fault from the start
Perhaps now you should paper mache
My bruised and bleeding heart.

The leaves fall in September, during the festivals. They dissipate, reintegrate into vivid little vespers that bob and levitate on gusts of wind that leave one bristling. The ferris wheel looks like an electric celestial ferry, set ablaze and bound for distant dimensions, man with mutated mohawk green, eyes wretched, livid and obscene, was the maniacal who manned it. Glow stick ghouls, with faces smeared americana snow cone red and blue haunt the parking lot, purple precipitate that hisses as it hits the pavement the product of their incessant chanting, pulling fuzz-lined warmth from my marrow. Under the stadium lights, women tighten their scarves as tiny, cerulean seahorses shimmer and dance with the ebb and flow of their jewel studded breath, retreating, giggling like immortal birds fallen from the nest.
Love is paper mache; a pop culture artifact. Like a stuffed hare that seems to have lost its ability to come to life after one loses their virginity. It has long legs and keen ears. It's very fast and would be quite handsome as well if it wasn't so **** helpless. It has been bred into the fibers of contact, the filter we set on lust, the way recycled cans make castles on lily pads and dead skin makes dust. We are swirling around in its whirlpool, if it wasn't drowning us we would be dead by now, same goes for the mad, mangy men who will count their teeth with their dimes and pick at their scabs, finger their sores, the retired professor who was too clever to have ever been faithful, the mockingbird that sings on my windowsill every morning in French, the mailmen and the dogs who bark at them in Quebec. An obsessive complex affords one the privilege of straightening the line, counting in time and putting the rabbit en route.
If it is the case that detachment follows from distance then I am one cactus length away (average, or medium sized cactus of course) from destroying the moon's mezzanine, housing all of the dreams behind ethereal, Egyptian, colored crystal that a pagan god stole from a black hole, never intended for you or me.

I was a mosaic collected
in scratched nails
                  imbedded, bleeding
like I was meant to be touched
but can you really grasp a reflection..

How could you identify what
          I see, within the fallen feathers
of a crows smiles.
                               I'm hidden within,
a pile of dead bones wishing to fly again.

I could walk within the footsteps of those
in front of me on calm sands.
                               But I choose to run on
a beach of shattered shells, this is life!
broken dreams never really washing away.

I see smiles kept aloft by matchsticks,
                                       ready to ignite.
Within there embers embracing the true
               reflection of how I see others.
Parched realties of never really loving you
or another for the failures of there integrity.

I could love,
             in blindness.
But what is seen is nothingness..
I could love,
             in thought.
But memories will always lie to oneself.
I could have love,
             in myself.
But nothing ever comes from that..

Until I realize that I'm not in control
of this collage of moments.
                    I'm a Paper-Mache,
randomly collecting on a frame work
           of contemplation, that I will only
see on the completion of my life.

I'm but a part that I thought was
                                 irrelevant, immaterial.
But I'm just a piece of life collecting on
the shattered shells slowly reforming to
realize there is more to life than sandy shores.

The Pendulum swings above my head ,
with every swing once ,
twice ,
it falls ,
the jailers keys are turned ,
my histerical wife weeps for my death for ....,
the paper mache man is here .
his pendulum swings once ,
twice .......


..
The old clock chimes once ,
twice ,
It’s pendulum swings once ,
twice ...
It’s two in the morning,
from these dreams did I awake ?
There are dreams within dreams i. can hardly partake .
Yet here am I frozen in terror in my bed ,
from dreams I have awoken to find you staring at me from the rafters , from my four poster bed .
As in fear I lie awake to you’re silence ,
for in nothing did you say ,
a mask of paper mache you wear to hide you’re face away ,
of behind lies a darkness of sadomasconistic  misery and space .
Am I dreaming or could I be dead ?  
Is reality. drowning in my head ?

A cold wind sweeps across my room ,
You are still there but now you are staring at the moon .

How bright it’s glow so high in the night ,
and when sunlight comes you will be gone in the light .

It worries you ,
This sunlight ,
when dawn appears for you’re darkness will be exposed by the passing of the years .

The birds are in song their melodies sweet ,
and you have vanished in some daylight retreat .
For the sun now demands its time to shine ,
for all darkness disappears in the light of time ..