Please keep talking.
Bring me home.
Each brush stroke inflection
Stokes fires of resurrection
Bringing back memories of
Baseball diamonds,
Karate lessons,
One-room school houses and
Overlooked blessings,
Of hills so high that we
Named ourselves kings
And of our fathers' shadows
That reminded us
We were yet princes.
The sound of your voice
Is unearthing ruins of me,
Of blueberry fields
Where we stained our clothes,
Of the sulfur we often
Held in our noses.
In your ebb,
In your flow,
It echoes more clearly
Than my heartbeat:
Will a tree forget its roots?

I have no inspiration,
five poems to write,
three cookies on a plate I bought to avoid washing
and seventeen hours until I redefine home.
All the anxiety of numbers decreasing
and years parading themselves like Thanksgiving day.
Larger than life,
not Really flying,
more easily enjoyable in front of a TV
than filling your lungs with the smog of 6th Ave.

ambient glances
transpiring from ashes
and airborne oceans
my senses surfing
the evening glow

honeycomb lights spinning
restless with bees
and could-have-beens
and what-I-might-do-
if-you-were-downs

it is April
in every sense
of the word
incense swirls around a
strange foreshadowing

Would you be angry if I howled?
You awaken sleeping fires inside me
more primal than modern words can express.
You look as if you are dressed in the moon
with Orion around your wrist and Leo on your neck.
Such pendants chase the pedantry of speech from my mind.
There are no steps in your stride.
You move about teasing laws of inertia,
kissing gravity on the cheek
as if to acknowledge his feeble attempt.
I have searched all of time and space for you
and you have found me speechless.

Would you be angry if I howled?
Threw my head back and let loose my lungs?
There is a wind in your eyes that stirs my soul.
Sentences that made sense not two minutes ago read:
is the moon you pretty as not as... what?
letters strewn across my tongue fall into my throat
you are a category 5 lunar storm
coating my eyes in moon dust and shine.
There is no man in me so eloquent
as to answer the ancient beauty I have seen in you.
All I have found is a cartoon wolf
with his heart popping out of his overalls
and his eyes on fire with the moon.

A stripper does not command the same feelings
when there is no music
when there is rain
when there is **** beneath their feet
when there is no stage
when they are
naked.

Step off stage,
peel their eyes from your skin.
Layer after layer
of pervert,
of bloodshot,
wipe the trails of loathing
they leave behind.
Take a cotton swab to your navel
to dry your mother's tears.
These are nothing you haven't seen.

Find glass where it is not broken,
Break it.
Pull on your face until you can see your cracks
echoed in kaleidoscope reflections.
Let your tongue swipe your teeth
and slurp down the dollar bill smile.
Chase it with the cat that was
swimming in your eyes.
Imagine what you would look like dead.
Make silly faces in broken mirrors.
Turn away before they fade.

Shake your head in your hands
until music flies from your ears.
Shake harder.
Spill the hypnotic equilibrium they sold you
Watch the room start to sway.
Sit down.
Stand up.
Find your legs.
*****.
Heave,
feeling there is much more poison
than will ever come out.
Cough into the air,
knowing your hands are sacred.
Wipe your memory on someone else's sleeve.

Walk to the door.
Let your profession slip from your shoulders.
Become human.
Become blending into the crowd.
Become busy with something in your hands.
Open the door, then your umbrella.
Do not breathe.
Take five steps forward and wait to exhale
until your hear the door slam behind you.
It isn't healthy to mix the sight of rain
with the smell of broken pianos.

Walk forward.
Out of your shoes.
Wince as the concrete speaks to your heel.
Bathe your toes in the nearest puddle.
Let your umbrella slide from the warmth of your hand.
Watch it fly.
Notice the people.
Move your sight from the ground
and rest it on their chins.
Realize you're wearing no clothes.
Pull the confidence down and off of your walk
and turn to the closest alley.

Step off stage.
Peel their eyes from your soul.
Become an individual.
Forget "the people."
Notice the persons
wrapped to their noses in professions and smiles,
confidence and ignorance pouring from their eyes,
heads tucked low beneath charcoal umbrellas.
Smile.
Without trying when you hear the clouds roar.

Stop when you find there are more walls than bodies
and the smell of ***** is stronger than your own.
Forget your smell.
Open your mouth.
Forget your taste.
Bend your knees and raise your head.
Close your eyes and feel it rain.
Scream.
Strip the religion from your prayers.
Scream the ineffable confession.
Forget your body.
Drink the rain.

there is no music
there is rain
there is **** beneath your feet
there is no stage
you are
naked.

She laughs.
With a smile and a sound
She paints the walls with sunshine.

When she laughs,
There is no tomorrow,
Her voice giving life to hallowed now.

She laughs when
The smell of love and music
Is stitching its kiss in the sky.

She laughs.
With eyes like no others I've found,
And leaves it all behind.

Mother Nature,
green-thumbed,
with eyes of purpose,
with floor length gowns,
went about her morning gardening.

Singing to her crops of we,
the skin of her feet tracing mountains and reefs,
granting rain to the thirst farmer patch,
her scent driving men to humility.

Lungs filled sharp as she winced her eyes,
at the sight of blood she grit her teeth.
The urban thorns were growing now
and choking blossoms of unity.

Remnants of her song now ghost,
the sky grew dark as she approached.
She snipped, with hurricane-force sheers,
and trimmed Louisiana's coast.