orange like beeeee
careful beeeeee
cautious beeeeeee
irrationally aware
of the world around you

red like tooooo
night toooooo
stop tooooooo
hesitant when the moment
calls for action

blue like weeeee
were weeeeee
aren't weeeeeee
are drowning
in oceanic air

Dance!
She told him.
So he drug his feet across the newspaper
turning headlines into layers of ice,
gliding just over the surface of a world
to him forgotten.
Boom!
The bass dropped and his heart nearly popped out of his chest.
His ribs too visible beneath his South Pole
bowed, creaked and shuttered
but muttered something about,
something about feeling alive.
Clap!
A series of muscle convulsions.
Shutter glimpses of the unseen acts of lightning
looking for a cloud to call home.
This one bolts into the highest thunderhead
and waits to be told to go. Go.
Sshhhh!
The sound of rain blinks from his eyes.
He squeezes the fruits of life
and serves the sour mixture to those who look on
with amazement and terror,
soaked in his story of craze and misfortune.
Clap!
This corner raises walls to his perception.
This is the metaphysical explanation,
God can be found in his dance.
This is where his last meal came from
and he won't leave the next one to chance.
Boom!
B-boy breaks down the laws Newton discovered.
Spinning until the world learns to turn
so that the seasons bring rain
on the just and on the unjust,
not just those who can afford to ignore each other.
Clap!
The applause brings tears to his mother's swollen eyes.
Swollen with pride and shame
of the things she's been pushed to, and pulled from.
She's reaching above the waves,
he's dancing his way from hell.
Sshhhh!
The ghosts now dispersed at the first sound of silence.
Their consciences are begging
more than the boy's pride will let him.
But their shoulders were born cold,
and the boy skates for nickels.
Clap!
As if God Himself were impressed
by the display of acrobatics set in rhythm,
the storm system raged and umbrellas dotted the streets.
Camouflage for his tears, he thought,
he always has what he needs in its season.
Boom!
The soul-box pumps out the old clocks.
Time has folded itself, molded itself, so it's no shock.
Rhythm and blue depression mixed up with B Boy steppin',
It's harder to find a meal on cold pavement than you'd think.
Dance!
She told him.
And he sinks.

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.

have you ever looked at a word
looked at it again
and read it as if it were your first time
reading that word
as if all the other times you wrote "night"
the letters were somehow
different

I saw your picture on my nightstand
I don't believe we've met

Wife beater and faded jeans,
******* on the end of a straw.
Big tent circus, jumping through rings,
giving his excuse to the cops.

House full of magnets, face full of metal,
Pinball queen, she's the star of the ghetto.
But never can get that make up right
so the light tells tales of the yellow-bellied devil.

"Officer, please, I'm telling you the truth.
Swollen knuckles really ain't much proof.
We were drinking that 151
and I think she lost a memory along with the tooth."

Wife beater with faded genes
slurs words in the back of the car.
patriotic lights and he's off of the scene,

and she misses him already.
Stockholm girl took blows like confetti.
Every day's a party when you're married to the hulk.
She says he ain't so green in the morning.

Shells wash up on shallow shores
Sure and unashamed

Ancient treasures shed by shadows
The ocean ricochets

Patiently musicians wish
To share imaginations

Champagne fish and visions of the
Starfish constellations

They shout their cache of consciousness
Shivering vibrations

Sugaring the fishermen
With ocean incantations

There is a doorway through which
life and death both passed,
shoulder to shoulder,
exchanging nothing
but a moment's glance
in silent accusation.

Death defeated,
Life restored;

Behold the thorn-crowned,
bleeding door
rising from futile tomb.

I left the seat
in the front row
of the place
with too many lights
for it to have been
that dim
dripping in music from head to toe,
from hip to soul,
listening to my ears and their lobes
ramble on incantations of unknown songs,
enchanting nuances strung throughout their chatter
like puddles strewn across concrete,
like grey matter,
like static
but much more in tune with nature
and far less understandable,
weaving my thoughts through new-found looms
stitching patterns of fumes,
gasses,
smoke and the solemn ashes
of melodies burned alive
under a nearly full moon,
under skies that humm
with the clanging arrival
of moments to be counted,
marked,
measured,
treasured for their value
though it elude all reason
because seasons do not lie
except for early spring evenings
when the lights are fading
and the music you heard playing
is quick to
leave your tongue.
It was all said and done.

One more highway home

among the trees and stargazers,

convincing my eyes

of what my ears have undone.

The elephants are dancing on the ballroom floors
prim as pachyderms can possibly be.
They are flaunting their tusks jovially about
and stepping on no one's feet.

The charlatans trace enigmatic scores
with their heel-toe trot around the beasts.
Each dip, each spin, a calculated route,
graceful and ever discrete.

Their skin, I've heard, is full of sores;
chafed by every whisper and nod.
The music is fading and shoulders are tense
listening to the hardwood creak.

I fear I might one day roll down these hills
without so much as a dimple to stop me.
Erosion is a powerful force of nature,
even more so of human kind.
These honey-tongued vipers with sandpaper suits
have quite the moving picture show.
Narrow shoulders offer far less resistance,
and it is easy swimming down stream.
I fear one day I will have filed my edges
to the point of no return.

What is there in a footstep
wanting to be discovered?
Surely they are dancing,
who move without question,
following none but a song
or whimsical sense of duty.
Surely they are determined,
who are pounding their heels
back into the soft earth
that is calling them home.
It has been far too long
since I trusted my feet,
since I listened to their telling
conversations.

I got your number off the bathroom wall.
I was hoping you could help me forget.
I don't need a girlfriend, so much as a canvas.
Let me paint you with the taste of her lips.

Come and rest a while young soldier.
Lay down your arms and sleep.
Your bones have battled your blood
has battled your lungs have battled your kidneys.
Come, take refuge, and weep.
On days you feel like the lines in the sand
originate somewhere in the palms of your hands
and trace your every vein,
when you can't shake the shellshocked feeling
of blood cell battle cries,
before your eyes wander distant,
come dream a while of peace.
Even God rests his mind once a week.

And on the road back to your body
that looks less like home
than where you you've imagined yourself to be,
stash a few visions of tomorrow in your pockets.
Eat them like candy.
Wake with the taste of hope on your teeth.
That golden-ventricled soldier you left standing guard
has picked up his drum once again.
March on to the rhythm of his faithful resolve
with a the song of revolution on your lips.
Rise up young patriot.
Fight tooth and nail.
Wear your flag on your skin.
Take aim at anything that tells you
you were born to be less than free.
March on into the morning,
each step taken
seizing peace.

Chase my voice through clouds of sulfur
convince it to let me burn it alive
parade it down broadway to light up the corners
starved of recognition

Tie anvils to the tips of my fingers
light them also on fire
it wasn't really the cigarettes
so much as the flames of sacrifice

Ignore their judging eyes
invite them into my home
whip my back until it bleeds for their religion
go to sleep with the smell of incense in my throat

I wish we could be genuine.
Touch our hearts with our fingers and hold them up to the light.
Paint murals where the shadows once dreamt.

I wish we could be bold again.
Scream with the intensity we did when we were born.
Find what we desire, and pursue at all cost.

I wish I could be broken.
Set fire to this barrier wrapping my limbs and chisel into the bone.
Mine what I know lies deep within.

I wish we could be genuine.
Flush our faces with insecurities and hold more than each other's skin.
Let our tears and our laughter mean what they meant.

stop with me
in the madness
of electric lights
and broken songs
in the chaos
of insecurities
take hold of me
go nowhere
with me
explore the vacancies
between breaths
treasure rooms
of mirrors
stop and see
with me
the home we are
forbidden

Love is green
Life to spark life
From rooms unseen

Ever wide eyed
Song of our children
Strong as the tide

Hope for the risen
Making all new
Accepting the given

Color of youth
Branches to vine
Green is the truth

Truth is divine

Don't call it silver
It is so utterly grey
Your banner waving
To humdrum anthems
Of countries upset
By the way you say
Patriotism
Loyalty
Words that are never
To be written in grey
Whose fibers cannot
Be found in your atrophy
You will die quietly
Not as a martyr dies
Never as red as the
Blood-stained uniforms
That blanket so many hills
There are none that you would die on
It is a shame you share
The color of stone
One might mistakenly
Paint you trustworthy

she was born to bend this way
her muscles sing through the air
wrapping physics round her finger
handspring, handspring, tuck,
plant
her equilibrium ponders life and its meaning
every twitch intentional
every smile framed
if life were more like summersaults
and less like crashing planes
if the truth were always inside your ears
and the applause came only when you landed safe
if, when you fell, there were always a dozen friends waiting
to lie to you about gravity
maybe she would tumble beyond the mat
into rumors of spiraling fates

Avalanche pending
The look in a drummer's eye
           Bury me alive

You have grown heavier and heavier with each hour of talk.
When I met you I could just make out your silhouette on the horizon.
Thin as bird legs, you danced with each gust,
Teasing my eyes like candle flame shadows.
With each word I caught falling from raspberry lips,
Words I wiped on my chest to keep them close,
You grew wide and tall as a redwood forest,
Shielding my whitewashed bones from the sun.
It used to be, that when you moved, my heart kept walking.
My blood runs stronger than canyon-cutting rivers.
With each conversation you are deeper and thick,
Behind you the sun whimpers over the horizon.
I can see sides of you your silence once held,
Fooling my ears and turning my head.
But you have grown heavier with each hour of talk,
When you shift, my heart strings pull me to your side.
Your every step directs my inward thought.
Should you chase the setting sun to far stretching oceans,
You would tilt my world and my love would roll,
Head over heels until you saw fit to stop
And I could bask in your shade once more.
You are a giant in the eyes of my heart,
Heavier still with each recitation.
I imagine that years of words will swell,
Until I can just make out my own silhouette on your horizon.

I have a heavy taste in my mouth.
cinnamon sticks and sage
broken wisdom in sound words
I have the earth on my tongue.
cloves and winger squash
thirsty for sweetened rain

Here and forever you are
Yesterdays and tomorrows
Filling the heights of what we imagine
Passing over our foolish ways
Greater still than all we can fathom
Here and forever you are

Here and forever you are
Yesterdays and tomorrows
How could I escape your boundless love?
Where could I run that you’re not waiting?
King of earth and skies above
Here and forever you are

Here and forever you are
Yesterdays and tomorrows
You are the truth, the way and the life
The only song worth singing
God of mercy open my eyes
Here and forever you are

Blessed is the house
Whose walls pulsate with laughter
Uninhibited
Vibrant eyes and flushed faces
Le joie de vivre
Symbols of security
We will ever call you home

Once there boled a harmistor
With yarler like a tom
He ***** and frissed, but after this
His murly belly pommed

Choe and choe, then choe some more
He criggled at the thought
That sumpty soon he’d choe the moon
And abend would be glot

What could bew the buggle?
He plawed his nomer friend
Harmistor, you silly mer,
The pomming ne’r will end.

And so the woddly harmistor,
Bezined and full of dee,
Proquined the shole, the land in foll,
And called it Hungary.

Verdant epidermis
rolling silk
farther than eyes
Veritable smorgasbord
twice removed
Coastal pull has
stretched you
bled you dry
forgotten plains
Do you still keep secrets
and give away bread?
Do you still keep God company?
Vested sustenance
true as earth
impervious to time
Velvet sodded canvas
I am moved

There is a forgotten woodland
or a bluff overlooking the lake
I was meant to meet this evening,
but I didn't.
And I can feel the ropes of fate,
elastic as they have proven to be,
pulling on my heart's disguise
in angst.

"It's happening on a day when the DOW industrial average was already down 175 points."
- Adam Johnson, Bloomberg Television, covering the Boston Marathon bombing


One by one she piled them,
bodies and fragments,
broken and tattered,
onto the golden scale.

their hands and feet,
swollen with innocence,
fell lifeless as the eyes
of their adjudicator.

where is your soul,
Lady Liberty?
where is your god,
oh, Freedom?

cold gears creaked
as the balance swayed;
songs of the hand
that guides the machine.

what is the stock price
of flesh these days?
and does our ignorance
provoke or appease you?

Boston, it seems,
is filled with heavy streets.
Inciting the terror
of empty pockets.

When our death tolls
read like itemized deductions,
something has gone terribly wrong.

Sweet intoxication
flowing through my eyes.
Don't let me down,
don't let me down
until the other side.

I know you hide the best of you
just beyond my reach.
Sweet intoxication,
tell me your name is peace.

Cover the lies with blankets of morphine,
ecstasy and bliss.
Surely if there was a heaven to have
it would taste something like this.

Plunge down like you did again,
fill my veins with the rush.
Sweet intoxication,
you are never enough.

There is dust on the shelves
and more shadows than light to allow them.
The floors are awake with a moaning
that crawls down hallways my feet avoid.

Why have You brought me here?
to this place of introspection,
to my untouched furniture and silverware,
this place where scarcely a mat is welcome.
Why have You brought me here?
There were lists of reasons I hid the key
behind the smiles I wore as diseases.
This museum of wounds and clever bandages,
of wars and fears and organs broken.
My face looks foreign in the picture frames.

These are doors that scare me;
That stare back boldly with eyes like nights
when you find yourself without a moon.
I am embarrassed to say I will need a guide.
I could not tell You the bedroom from the pantry;
it has simply been too long.
The walls have shifted and carpets moved on
to cover some fresher stain.

What You mean for me to find in these piles of relics
is beyond my understanding.
But if I am to go on, then my knees will need convincing.
Speak to my infant soul, Dear Friend.
Convince it to sit down with me for dinner
and let some light in through the drapes.
Open the doors that divide me from You,
and make me a place worth living.

Do not suffer the suffering to speak
Their words have a habit of earthquakes
Each syllable a fissure
Laying waste any doubt
The earth will groan her judgment
Justice only needs a mouth

Do not let the wounds of the innocent bleed
Their blood is a cornucopia of life
Each drop a fertile seed
In time will yield its song
The earth will spring up children
New life from where life’s gone

Do not attempt to break the broken
Their scars never seem to fade
And when they rise
For they will surely rise
And you meet them face-to-face
Your artwork bears their testimony
They have no need to speak

I went looking...
looking through legs
so shiny and bare;
looking through the eyes of a stranger;
looking through arms
tangled in dances,
through fingers gripping
the satin sheets;
looking into eyes painted with fire,
across the lips of one saying
"more is never enough,"
across the lying lips
and wayward hips
of countless washed up sirens;
looking through the dessert
and courting each mirage,
each cracked and broken sea floor,
each petrified promise;
looking through the heat
from a thousand neon suns
shining down on the hopeless,
the secret;
looking through the savagery,
through rite and omen,
through the increasingly hypnotic gaze
of priestesses and virgins;
looking through open mouths
into the lonesome hollows
where souls bring pennies on the pound;
looking through piles of amputated dignity,
through prosthetic dreams
that have played themselves out;
looking through fiddle shaped shadows
and straining to hear their mozart memories,
watching them sway,
watching them play,
never hearing a whisper of music;
looking through daughters
and sisters long estranged,
through cousins and neighbors,
through the cause of someone's tears,
through the pain so blatantly fueling desires;
haven't you heard that heartache is kindling?
haven't you ever thrown yourself into a sea?
didn't its hands feel just like comfort
all the while building your cage?
haven't you heard the song of the ******
in many a mirror's conversation?

I went looking for satisfaction
in the soot covered ruins
of *****
and fell into the lake of fools;
where the ego swims freely
and should anyone condemn
you are never found without an excuse.
I went looking for you in Gomorrah.
You were no where to be found,
and the gods I once believed in
could not even speak your name.
You, whose tongue is made of lightning,
who spoke across my sky,
you saw me naked,
and looking,
and never blinked an eye.
Your love is a force unfailing,
undeserved,
never blind,
calling me back to the world of the living,
unlearning my ears
of the mirror's lie.

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?

Keep your hands to yourself!
     If I have to tell you one more time to stop touching her
     I will duct tape those fingers to your knees so help me God.

Fresh from the womb I felt her.
My hands clawed the air and found her smile,
Before my eyes opened, before my ears could discern,
I felt her love, palpable and near.
After the synesthesia, when her finger no longer sang,
I felt the warmth of her neck as she swayed,
Dancing to the honey her lips spilled in the cool night air,
Her touch was more music to me than rhythm,
More primal an instinct than survival,
I would die holding my mother’s hand.

Bubbles were so much more fun before they became personal.
I spent hours chasing invisible globes
My father created from a mixture of heat and lawn chairs.
I have spent years chasing invisible globes
My peers have created from a mixture of insecurities and histories of cold.

When I am gone my heart misses you.
When I return and you extend your hand
I begin the conversation I have had with myself too many times to remember.
     They don’t mean that they don’t love you.
     But doesn’t their heart feel it too?
This magnetic pull of our celestial bodies
Gravity drawing them together until they would join in the enigma of unity
Nebulous at best I would call your reaction
It seems you would rather keep me in orbit,
Just close enough to peek at on cloudless nights,
Just far enough to let me take the asteroids on my own.

I want your hands all over me.
Since birth the world has removed itself from me,
Carving borders and barriers, walls and fences,
And the immutable space that is between you and me.
Deep in my heart waves the flag of rebellion
Held in the hand a young boy thrusts high in the air
Forever kept in the age of innocence,
The age without fences,
When it still seemed right to embrace the ones you love.
He is wearing a baseball cap and cowboy boots
And wants to know why you feel so cold.

So here we are, floating.
And I’m asking you to fall.
I am asking you split your bubble at the seems
And leap into my arms full of fear and free of expectations.
I will catch you and press you close to my heart
Where the children of the rebellion meet.
We are not falling, we are jumping.
And the heart of the earth has missed us so.

at first bite
lavender blossoms
perfume the air
on soft sugar hills
under lemon suns
always one step above
the crumbling earth

and after
such presence
as to inspire memories
of the just now
of the longing
reminiscent
before I should be

She was every captain's secret,
Five hundred fathoms deep.
She haunted and charmed the waters so,
And chased the dreams from your sleep.
Her ghost was known to plague our nets,
To dance across the ocean waves.
The bloodied corpses of her children fled
To the beaches where they would be safe.

That night her body, titanium clad,
Punctured the wall between our worlds.
Her arms, a strange bewildered dance
As startled, she uncurled.
The gaul of those men who found her!
Breaking into her home!
She had run from every advance they sent
But legends never die alone.

So few of our men indulge in mystery.
So few embrace the unknown.
Most seek to banish the fear and wonder
And so legends never die alone.
They are prisoners chained to mortal bodies
And drawn from the depths of the sea.
Her eyes, I swear, had pearls of tears
As I watched the Giant Squid flee.

I want to lie in bed with you.
Scratch that.
I want the feeling I had lying in bed with her.
I doubt you'll ever give me that feeling.
I'd still like to lie in bed with you
just to evaluate the difference.

1.
Because you are lonely too. And you know what it's like to spend hours waiting for a notification that someone values what you say. Verification that some of the people in your box of friends still walk through your forests waiting for trees to fall.

2.
Because you didn't understand the metaphor and so it must be deeper than your reach. Because people who appreciate poets are more approachable than poets themselves, and are far less likely to spend Saturday nights alone.

3.
Because the words look like family. Because when they pass your teeth it's as if your heart joins in chorus, and their syntax wraps cozy round your shivering bones. Because their eyes look like yours and because they know how to cut you, but don't.

4.
Because you are in love. And if a raccoon tore a hole in your garbage bag, ate last week's green chocolate cake, and returned it to your porch shortly after, you would see poetry in it. Because poems look like pies through rose colored glasses and it's really hard to find a bad pie.

5.
Because you hate this poem but won't tell me. Because our relationship hangs on your approval, and you know I'll expect you to make me feel ok about writing this. To tell me people don't appreciate real art anymore, and that's why no one else has responded.

6.
Because it doesn't rhyme, and there are numbers separating the stanzas that force you to read the last line slowly. Because it references Facebook and so it's something you can relate to. Because it's cliché enough to be memorable, and a little out of the box but still inside mine.

7.
Because you know why I wrote it. And you know that seeing your name beside it will be all the consolation I need. Because their is loyalty in a signature that even our forefathers acknowledged, and because it's the best way you know to take sides.

8.
Because the last thing you liked was McDonald's French Fries and you're looking to diversify your portfolio.

9.
Because you want me to remember you. Because we haven't spoken in years outside of birthday wishes and silence is a hard habit to break. Because neither of us is sure who the apology belongs to but because you're willing to take a step on faith.

10.
Because you know the impact an echo can have on its target. Because we all scream from stages built with fearful hands. We carry microphones in our pockets on nights too quiet to sleep and purge our lungs of their angst. Because this cave can not be empty. Because words are not like family unless they are spoken by someone we love. Because some nights all I need is a name to believe I still have my own.

Your lips were made for Hallelujahs.
Nothing less will do them justice,
and nothing more exists.

When granted the joy of life's creation,
their Maker sang into the heavens
and choreographed their dance.

The breath that passes between their mountains
carries with it the secret signature
of death-defeating hands.

Your lips were made to form sweet praises
with all the spirit and humbled passions
your heart and soul enlist.

What will the magician pull tonight?
What mystery will come from the hat?
Through the curtain of wonder and what might be
into the dessert of blood and bone reality.

Thomas Thornburg killed a man last week.
Shot him in the chest from his front porch.
Said he had it coming, but he didn't know why.
The white-haired prophet/executioner.
The confession was perhaps surpassed in the news
by the miracle of Tom finding the the trigger.
Thomas Thornburg brandished 104 years
of what he hesitantly called life.

When brought before the judge he denied representation.
"Never had nobody say nothing for me."
When the gavel struck, Tom raised his hand
and took with his age, his permission.
"Your honor," began the old man's graveled voice,
"This here is not a fair trial."
"You ma'am," he pointed to the woman in blue
who shifted her feet beneath her juror's chair,
"What did you make of Stalin?"
"And you," to the well-groomed 20-something with hair,
"Where were you when they bombed Hiroshima?"
The judge began a sentence he was forced to cut short.
"Ma'am, I imagine you might recollect Duke Ellington,
but I shook hands with Scott Joplin,
and had more than my share of drinks with Fats Waller."
"Mr. Thornburg," said the judge in a patient tone,
"is there a point to your interrogation of the jury?"

"Find me eyes, judge," said the stolid man in lowered tone
"that have seen what I've seen,
that knew life before world wars were named.
Eyes that have watched generations die
and everything change but politicians.
Find me a man who has had the displeasure
of waking up more mornings than there are in a century,
and I will call THAT man my peer."

Tom then turned and, on the weight of his cane,
shed the last of his living tears.

Her quaintness was saturated with 'sweethearts' and 'honey,' bespeaking the youth of my face. I have let its hair grow free for three days now and the bare patches are starting to show, but it seems I have not fooled her. No. I have not fooled myself either. My teacher shoes feel a half size too big and my feet are sweating profusely. I wonder if God made summer for the lemonade or the perspiration. In three years I will have developed a label for this period of my life. I am currently three years short of expressing myself properly and I fear this will always be the case. What do men do in empty hotel rooms? I kick off my shoes to watch them bounce bluntly on the carpet I have seen somewhere before. There is a poor imitation of jazz playing in the lobby and I'm positive someone has mistaken it for the real thing. It leaves a weak hope I will fool them too. Maybe most men are pretending.

You are becoming my stride;
my thought between footprints
left burning in the sand.
I have learned to hold you
much closer than my breath
when floodwater insecurities
grab hold and pull me down
                                         down.
You are more than I was seeking.
Your heart won't seem to sit inside you.
You are painting;
always;
rising in me like the morning sun.

Twigs and things
Sticks and strings
Patchwork fabric
Wallpaper of dreams
Rapture forever
In the eye turned back
Sweet cradle
Unsung in use
Robin’s loom
Of earth and tears
Sacrifice woven
Between the laths
Wallpaper sings
Children see magic
Robins see sticks
Twigs and things

AT ONCE!
And a just-forgotten moon
Splintered the frozen time sky
Airplane sewing machines
Pistol rock candy
Violent as birth
What is this night?
Chrome wheeled interjection
Sparkle studded sister
If there are clouds they are whispers
In the euphony of sights
Nebula rising
The horizon drowns
Settle it to say
Red eyes are waking
The forest burns with appetite
The fields are full of fire seeds
The shadow houses wink and beckon
The smile of thieves is on the cusp
Swimming the Black Nile
Hoping to be enough
The fiddler is spellbound
As the candid universe
Sings a Martian sailor’s tune

There are times

when the moon is busy elsewhere
and the candles are growing old
that your eyes catch mine
in the simplest of ways

and send me.

When our gravity overflows
and we are drawn together
for reasons only the planets know,
I cannot place my finger on it;

I would likely lose my hand.

Those times I know
that a door handle decision
will be the difference
between goodnight and good morning.

I find no romance in the air tonight.
It would seem we have breathed it all in.

It takes courage to be born in a grave
where the earthworms caress
and the night is like day.
But where two or three are gathered
they will burrow deeper yet,
pressing the earth to their faces.

It takes gall to bite the mouth that eats you,
little rocket ships
who never left the ground.
Launch your cultured pungent taste,
for if you must go,
go loudly.

Daikon, Cherry Belle, Easter Egg,
Black Spanish, Red King,
you are conquerers.
Digging away until the sun comes to find you,
blushing in myriad shades
of fearless ambition.

It takes integrity to never leave your roots.
Break bold and crisp,
candied keg of gunpowder.

I have fallen down holes one hundred words deep
And with every slippery movement of my tongue,
My world seems that much darker.
I have formed sounds in my mouth good for nothing but regretting
And released them as poison to the ones I love.
Droplets of toxins filling relationship coffins
Faster than the undertakers can have them prepared.
I swear, on whatever is meaningful to you,
I was not born with silver ***** in hand.
In my youth I spoke truth with the purest intent,
Building mountains I would climb to feel closer to the sun.
But as my feet grew longer and my eyes grew wider,
My ears learned the ways of treacherous men.
The first time I felt myself falling it was fun.
The rush of my own voice ripping its way past.
The second time I felt myself falling it was fun.
The thrill of the drop made my heart stand still.
The third time I felt myself falling I heard drums.
Faintly at first, but no doubt, they were drums.
There was the sound of skin, stretched over emptiness,
Shaking in the wake of a violent hand.
My eyes folded narrow, slipped shut, opened wide.
I could not discern whether I was the drum or the hand.
Both shaken and violent, empty and strong,
My skin stretched over my ribs and under my fingernails.
Seventy words down in the hole I heard the pulse,
At ninety words began the droning.
Matchless tone, like piercing your lungs
And listening to the shout that escapes.
At ninety-five words I hated them collectively.
At one hundred words I hated my self.
I have fallen down holes one hundred words deep.
Please excuse my silence.
The darkness that looms one hundred words deep
Is sticky, and icy, and true.
I am not afraid of heights, only of leaving them.
And I refuse to fall in front of you.

I was angry when I saw her dancing.
She had no right.

Just last night she danced with me,
turning blues to pomegranates
and stepping on the seeds.

She walked through my corridors
(dim lights, bright-eyed)
painting the walls with broken expectations.

She whispered like a secret
she was now laying bare
at the tongues of anxious barbarians.

This morning her hips repulsed me,
churning smiles from grizzle
and burning coffee beans.

She had no right.