nothing is any good
you know
unless you
share it
so Tom has brought back the bar:

the Elvis impersonator
who almost
played las vegas,
the hair dresser
come future race
car driver,
a sufi
and a seer.

the seer
tells me she hit a cat
the cat was still alive
so she ran it over
again and again,
"and that's when god
talked to me."

"was that before or after
you ran over the cat
the second time?"
i asked.

"She talks to me every day,"
the angry divorced seer
tells me.

is god talking, now?

now, elvis
joins in,
"what if camus and nietche
met. what would they think
about the cat?"

"nah, who cares,"
the race car driver-
hair dresser,
says, snorts another line,
"what if they
started
a rock
and roll
band."

the Sufi wonders,
"who would play
what?"

"nietche on drums!" tom interjects
with a smile.

"yes,
and camus,
a gibson semi hollow."

"vocals???"

"god!" exclaims the seer.

"right on," i say, everyone smiles
and the seer is looking better and better
after every beer.

sometimes the dead
travel the road
to nowhere
with a smile


and i've got to get
up at 7a.m.
i'm a college
educated
toy store clerk

it's closing time at the circus

Those that weep,
oh weep ‘neath the shadowy, masked spectre of dreamless sleep,
where time refuses to define the state of the lost divine.
These are feeble sheep whom tragedy is want to reap,
whom when faced with fire turn away from the truth of its healing heat,
it is the Shepard’s of the herd who hurdle false virtues with tenacious leaps.

But why oh why should the best of mankind’s minds all dwell on the tortured side of hell?
They either submit to their anguished musings
or are crowned with the fruits of their immaculate offerings,
there is no compromise.
But who has brought back from the abyss, the truth of it?
and who only offers the seedlings of their sufferings?

Was it Nietche shielding the beaten beast of burden?
Was it Mark Twain is his converse between young and old,
of which motor best foretold mans immortal soul?
Was it Nero playing his fickle fiddle whilst Rome was razed to rubble?
Was it Jim Morrison dying with his wine upon the vine
whilst Indian ghosts crowned his fragile eggshell mind?
Was it Bobby Dylan with his ever changing soul touching his bones via lucrative lexicon?
Was it Julias Ceaser as he crossed with hardened heart across the rubicon?
Was it Buddha sitting ‘neath the quiet of his tree whilst the void whispered to thee?
Was it Jack Kerouac upon that rolling road of soulful life,
embracing with equal measure all love and ceaseless strife?
Was it the nameless brave whom have been lost to the ages
of times endlessly cascading pages?
Will it be You in your pursuit
of what your inner vision holds true?
Will it be me in my turbulent sea of bleeding dreams?
None can say but death itself, for he holds the skeleton keys