It came to my attention
just the other day
there are very few poems
written about Worcestershire sauce.

Maybe it's the way we uniformly
can't spell the **** word,
as it walks onto the golden scene
like a stumbling child unable
to put one foot in front of the other.

That's how it feels as it rolls off my tongue,
and I find myself lowering my voice
to a desperate hugh to mask my unknowingness.

Worcestershire sauce is plagued with good looks.  
She is mountainous on paper,
like a range over the Alps,
that I want to climb barefoot in spring.

Or a rare type of dog
you find gallivanting next to it's
owner at the Ohio state dog show,
conditioned hair glowing in the light.

But lets not forget how she
compliments a stew,
or a lackluster dish
like a sailor to a maiden:
how you season my day!

Would Mary's be ****** without her droppings?
I'll save that answer for the day I can pronounce her.

So often you vanish in the dark,
          my fair weathered friend.

Although it is there where I require you the most,
          my reminder of a silhouette existence.

I will become my own shadow,
          no difference between me and lightlessness.

I expand like a riddle in your thoughtless mind.

It is the army of children
who wake me from sleep
          each morning,
as they march towards
the neighborhood park
with their declarations
of freedom, their words
turned to song like
a carefree lark.

I thought I was them
as I awoke from my rest,
but my pasture of purpose
has changed from
      slide to desk.

I thought I was them
as I longed for
thrushes of green,
and the dirt lying in between.

I thought I was them
as I slipped into my vest
instead of my rugged
hand me down dress.

I thought I was them
as they laid out their quest
to plunder the deep seas
atop their sturdy jungle gym.

I thought I was them.
I could be one of them.
After all, I had a compass
and a map, longer limbs
to steer a mast.

I thought I was them
until I heard a cry like no other
from a select sailor
after an unfortunate
fall from the starboard side,

and my thoughts recoiled,
and I swam back ashore
to the serene silence of
my morning rituals.

There are lots of ways to
watch the babbling brook,

eyes closed fishing for
memories in a nook.

There are lots of ways to
walk along park trees,

a deep awareness of green
and the sound of autumn's breeze.

There are lots of ways to
name the sturdy rose,

white petal pearls  
and her iceberg clothes.

But today is for nature
and her in-between silence,

like a grey stone
tucked between dirt
we look to for guidance.

Lets you and I
speak in languages
of ultimatums
and dare to
never discover
what the blind
would want to know.

I imagine your foot
hovering over
the pedal.

Your toes
salivating
in their shoes,
ready for you
to just step
on it already.

And the green
light of our moment
sending you into
a forward frenzy.

You wink at me,
the apparent slowpoke
in our scenario,
as if you're winning
some imaginary race,

that only sends you
flying into the arms
of another red light,
and another one after that,
and a stop sign there,
sandwiched between
a cross guard and
a rolling ball that
sends you to a
rolling stop.

And as I catch
up to you,
as I always do,
I wonder if
that's how you
approach the
everyday lanes
of your life,
racings towards
      conclusions,
never stopping  
to smell the sweet
      surprise of your
slow surroundings.

Why does the cabbage
provoke such hatred,
unlike the sugar cookie
in an airtight package?

Why does the lover know
the way of the garden so well,
yet stampede off into
the path of daisies?

It is the same as why
I must contend with the
aftermath of my family,
and become the spy
amongst the shrubs.

It's the same as why
I must speak to my
uncle like a cherub angel
who knows nothing of
his place in the cosmos.

It's the same as why
I bite into a
strawberry to
taste nature's
emerald,
glowing with
answer and resolve.

It will always
be just a strawberry
      to them.

I lifted up the sky to
find a thermostat,
a small child fiddling
with all the dials.
And the clouds,
they were just the
soft heels of giants,
delicately managing
our inevitable collapse,
weaving the perfect story
to let us down gently.

Turns out we are just
a bunch of marbles
on the shelves of
champions who
simply enjoy our
sunset colors.

How bold to live your life
fixating on flowers just because,
to turn over petals and
find fully loaded barrels.

To travel slowly
on zephyr winds,
without a single idea
as to where you're going.

To see the forest for the trees,
and pick apart every detail
as to stitch them together into
a warm quilt of knowing.

How shall we break our bread?
In the company of our neighbors
and foes who we know are
nary good for our grow?

Shall we walk backward into the sunset  
as to warm up our backs for
what our enemies shall see
as we turn the other way?

Signaling to our bodies how
we are free to be unarmored
and bare amongst our families
without the expected sting,

and that we are free to fly
towards that delicate red,
buzzing for the nectar
of thought that every
flower possesses.

and realize that
we are the same
we are the same
we are the same.

our wings in their trance
humming with what makes
everything and nothing special.

Do you hear that in the distance?
It is your silence asking you
to throw her to the tides,
she sees you are overdue
for a lesson in sound,
she sees the people who
putter about yearning for
that unsung chorus tune.

Leave her with her compatriots,
doubt and worry, just for a moment,  
you can return to their measures of
circular comforts tomorrow.

Leave her with the ash from last nights smoke,
you built in your minds midnight eye,
the fraught furnace of your future fantasy.

Your silence will arise again,
as she does with every passing moon,
she is tied to you like an anchor to a ship,
or maybe she is your ball and chain,
one cannot presume a relation
that shifts in tune with the northern wind.

She will always be greater than you, accept it.
And she wants nothing more than
to survive in this loud world,
she claws towards it from her thirsty well
where the people drink from her,
where they drink her up and
never retain her hydration,
she's learned to put holes in
her infrastructure to
vacate the premise,
her well dripping dry
of all her subtle wisdoms,
so that when you hoist your
bucket down and pull it
back up, you hear nothing
but the echo of air and dryness,
for there is nothing
like sound that
fine tunes and
greases up her
stillness.

You search and search and
look for some shining sun,

as you are rock in your boat
drenched from the rains,

your paddles ready to depart
into the tides that want to

claim you as their own,
for your current is strong,

and you realize as you look down at your feet
you are made of stone, rock, gravel and cement

you are the glue, you are the lighthouse
the circulating beacon to guide

those who are lost, to those who have
tried to burn you down to watch

the bonfire of your sturdy wood
for their evening supper warmth,

and so you carry yourself from
out the storm and into your keep,

remembering remembering you
are there and always will be.

Why does one have to be
dead to be considered?  

Fine! I am dead. Consider this.  

Consider the living and the
tolerated death between breaths,

Consider the repeated
stabs of recycled days,

the preparation we gather as
decaying boquets for a final blow,

See how death roams the streets,  
and in the gargling of human feet,

See how we shutter in unison when
she peeks her head into our mirrors,

gazing back at us as wrinkles and error,
how she makes us halt our breathe

although our hearts tells us
its not over yet, it is not over yet.

so let it be known,
clear as day,

that I shall always stop
for the painters paints,
            still wet

I shall always stop
for the writers words,
           still fresh,

for if death shall stop for me
than I shall stop for heartbeat.

She was a person with a lot of punctuation,
wherever she went punctuation followed!

Periods never lasted long
since they carried resolution,

and she was a woman always
embarking on what was next,

to uncover what was beyond
the point of no return --

the flat earth made round,
as to run in perpetual loop,

commas and exclamations
were common guests

and stayed long after supper,
well into dessert and into
         run on mornings,

they commonly crashed on her couch
until they got soaked into her furniture,

and now whenever she tries to rest
her head in the ending of her day,

she is poked with the scythe of her commas,
reminding her there is still work to be done,

her YALP! summoning her exclamations
from under her favorite pillow --

falling baseball bats barreling out,
their effervescent presence bubbling

to the surface where they burst and
reveal how itchy they make her feel.

Maybe the real work of our
lives start on a nothing Tuesday,

when you get stuck between
a question and its answer

resting on the tip of your tongue.
For that is where they really live —
all your answers.

They are never fully capable
of flying from out of your mouth,

they are words without wings and they
enjoy sitting atop their enamel throne,

so you spend the rest of your life
searching and grasping for them

in movie theatres, lit-up streets,
cold museums, lovers and silence,

to try and fully taste what it would
be like to live with their existence.

How shall I understand the nature of small?
crumble my body, folding my flesh in on
itself until I am round like
the rolling armadillo?

Praise the grains of sand that
make up our coast while
ignoring the sea?

Maybe I will just
write a haiku instead and
turn into a word.

And for her next act she
decided to become a pencil,
but only to use for the eraser,

her sharpened lead
made her look strong
and important,

and she enjoyed sitting
in her own pool
of possibility,

rather than contend with
the upkeep of her
success.

so she never really wrote anything,
she just paraded around town
as a pointed pencil and overused eraser

pantomiming her emotions,
hoping for someone to
drop a few quarters
into her ***** sidewalk hat.

Sometimes poems are so full of themselves,
loaded up on words and story,

with their "likes" and their "as"
to connect the most dissimilar things
     to denote clever

with their superior pinkys
erecting into the air

before prose ever made its
way into the catalogs of dialogue,

their indistinguishable punctuation
and schizophrenic indentation,

and the greatest of them all
never knowing when to stop,

sometimes deciding to merge into
the next book as you decide to
put them down.

"I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived of the pleasure of hoeing."
-John Updike

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be consumed
by the pleasure of scrolling,
there is no knowing,
how many souls have been split by this simple exercise.

The dry thumb like a weakened scab,
in perpetual rowing,
revealing the traveler's roam,
without ever leaving home.

How neatly they pile on the streets,
eyes due south into screens.
Wise is the ignorant boy who
has never performed this simple, stupid and useless wonder.

My skin felt invasive as
it was covering my soul,

I was shining so bright that day
as the rain kissed the ground,

and you felt like the clouds stampeding
over my sky, all billowy and inflamed

weighing me down and stuffing me in,
and yet at the same time a necessity.

I knew I couldn't survive the elements
without you, but oh how I wanted to.

You are there
and I am there,
or maybe I am there
and you are here,
or you are there
and I am here.
We are just toggling
back and forth
through the lanes
of time and space,
missing each other
always by just a
few seconds.

The great thing about being married
to my alone is how she is everywhere,

she is in the bathroom stall and
the never dialed midnight calls,

she sits under layers of conversation
when relation has left the dialogue,

nestled in my car rides where I
can truly soak into her aroma,

and sing her songs that sound
better only when she's around.

She's the same as she ever was,
and she hasn't aged a day,

open and expansive,
molecular and cool.

She knows herself so well,
and takes up space as if

she created it herself.
I envy her sometimes

when I am all places at once and
empty vessels are nowhere to be found.

But she finds herself back to me
so often I believe she never really left.

I dare to say we might be soulmates,
is what hits me as I take my walk to the kitchen

and leave you comfortable in my bed,
in your unhappy marriage to your alone.

As quiet as the dancer lost in her own grace,
I was being replaced that afternoon.
I could feel it coming on like some seasonal flu,
or attack of the locusts

A new mindset or way of relation was
swarming around me and ready to land
into the day's equation.
I was being replaced

by another step in the ladder,
another shed of what didn't matter,
in favor of bigger fish to fry.
I was being replaced

by the thought of my 80-year-old self,
crinkled and ragged under the canopy of my past
wishing I had better surfed the terrain of emotion,
like the ballerina who can pirouette in silence,

making grand movements without a single ripple,
daring to be small within the large halls of my own world  
was something I was inching toward as I
looked at myself swarming into myself,

and crossing the rubicon of what I was yet to become.
It looked small where I was meant to go
and I was okay with that since these halls were
becoming too large for my next dance anyways.

I tried to imagine a city
without a cause.
Was it just the country?
Was it just James Dean
stuck in Indiana,
slinging shots of
espresso along
the main strip?

Imagining this city
without her cause,
felt like taking the
song away from the
opera singer,
or making butter
without the churn.

The city always needed
friction to run properly,
a soundtrack of gossip and
tire screeches making
their way to the surface,
an invitation for
us to step into
the womb of its
mortal coil.

We climb in,
with our desperation
and seek answers
to the meaning of
what is human,
adjusting smiles to
carry the weight
of what's expected of us.

While the birds remain
in their trees,
light as wind,
unbothered,
next to their babies
crying out,
look at the
mess you've made,
be still, already.

I awoke this morning and
wondered if I was even sentient.
The curtains failed to close
over my lids once more,
forcing my mind's actors to
repeat their tired monologues.

They wax on about regrets,
and the lovers who failed
to pass the test of time,  
friends too for that matter,
recipes that will be born
in the upcoming week,
and the subtle noises
emanating from the
dark corners of my room.

Try as I might to pull
the rope of my velvet curtain,
there remains my lead actor
once more trying to
prove her point that
the road to success is
in the wee hours
of the morning,
right here and now.
The entrance on my desk,
where the muses like to offer
me cement for my tired bricks,

even though I have been
harping on about how they
have been doing their
timeless work of threading
inspiration into my flesh
in the afternoons as of late,  
amidst the heatwave when
the citizens of the world
recoil inside their homes
to escape the sweat and
throngs of people who
leave me weary during
the early hours of
the morning.

I can't remember when
I started to see color,
maybe it was when
I chose you as
my lover.

Or when the delicate hum
of conspiracy wrapped its
violent claws around my waist,
and I learned how to speak her tune.

The grey landscape turned blue
when I chose to see my lens through you.

Your mouth is a piano,
and I want to play her
is what I thought when
the candlelight flickered
across your words.

I hadn't heard such a
symphony of statements
arrange themselves so
well since my first love
introduced me to
awareness.

I know you were just
searching for ways
to not be a beginner,
stumbling left and right
into the cushioned walls
of your straightjacket mind.

Oh, don't tell me I have confused
a stone for a diamond once again,
for it is close that a mad genius
and clever man sit to each other.

And tonight I can't tell the difference,
or if I should merely jot down your song
like the birdwatcher to his bird
to recall it again at some later date,
or join you in your fanciful flight.

It is striking to believe how
little applause the morning
bird gets after her daily song,
as she sits perched on
her branch marking
her territory like
the dog and
his lifted leg.

But then again,
I dont believe birds
undersand the
nature of applause,
inasmuch as the
worm wiggling
his way out
of the dirt or
the cat's eyes
darting into
their direction.

These are thoughts
that overtook my
mind as I wrestled
with my coffee to
turn the key to my
mind’s engine already,
feeling as if I was
once again but
a fingernail
floating
inside my
mothers
womb.

I've become very fond of my no's,
and the ways in which the
wind does not go.

Lend me your question
and I'll lend you my no,
after my season upon
season of insatiable yes.

I cozy up next to my no
like the cold to a stove,
we are a perfect match,
her and I and we dance
the tango at midnight.

My no is starting to have
a mind of her own,
enlarged ego and a
questionable claim
to a no man's throne,
her master plan
to repurpose my
night away from the
masses and throngs
who never seem to
know which way to go.

I "no" my way into secluded gardens,
water sheds and cemeteries,  
preferably alone, where my no's
like to stampede over the paths,
forging her own.

I've made friends with my "no's",
so much so I dont know
which way to go without her.
The road to yes is paved
with a thousand good no's
is what she subtly whipers to me
as I gaze over to you,
and your question starting to
drip into our current affair.

What better sound shall
pour from my lips than
the steady cadence of
my self-assured no?

What good is a conclusion
without anyone there to hear it?
Is what I wondered when
I realized I did in fact
love the man who
asked me where
my smile was,
even though I
know I wasn't
supposed to.

I often ask myself
the same question,
strange man,
usually after I see
the sharp corners of
my mouth ache
for their lost soft.
and something foreign
has taken its place.
a slow settle
like the
thick fog
that sweeps
over orca waters,
usually right after
a month's long fight
with a pen or falling
too far from my
blanket of zen.

Maybe I'm not meant
to smile this year.
I am after all happily
engaged to my year of solemn,
another conclusion
I came to on my
road of conclusions.

And yet although
I have no one to
speak to on my
epiphonous road,
these conclusions
do exist and  
will persist,
despite what
the others
might
say.

I take off my enthusiasm nightly
like a cloak of bad behavior,
or a well-worn brassiere,
oh great sigh of relief.

I let my feelings melt onto the
***** floors where they feast
upon debris for their supper,
them wild things.

I let fall my voice and laughter too,
my propensity to smile thereafter,
dangle them on rusty hooks,
them ****** things.

Rid me of thee until the sun rises.
I enjoy my night straight up
without the decor of my day
holding me down like an
anchor to the parade.

The night always brought
with her a certain sensibility,
of ownership and reclaim.
I shall take back that
which the day has taken.
She fills in the cracks
the night has put upon me,
let me break in peace,
for that is all I wish to do.

I smelled something
curious as I entered
my home today,
a musty yet
familiar fragrant
I hadn't whiffed
in years trailing
from my dining
room table.

There nestled between
the flowers and the mail  
thoughtfully brought in
was your love letter,
that reeked of the future.

This whole ******
house reeks of it now,
and I have to shoot these
clothes into the wash,
or set them ablaze.

You've spilled our past
into this cursed letter too,  
compliments stuffed
in the margins like
a Thanksgiving ham,
absolutes written in sand.

You've tried to hide
space with your ink,
your cover ups,
smoke and mirrors
are heavy here,
the same patterns,
bright as day,
expected as the
migrating duck,
I must navigate
out of.

It sings of how
time can strangle
your dreams,
and weigh on
your shoulders
with hybrid
sentiment.

And right there in
the middle of this,
stuck in the heavy
gossamer of your word,
is me.

My future shouldn't
reek of this flavor,
I prefer the stale
moment of my
presence to
engulf me,
and to sit in grey,
I enjoy my grey.

To be both
guest and host
in my world,  
and to continously
arrive back to myself.

I am the prodigal one,
always leaving
always returning,
back and forth
back and forth
i am the wave
and you are just
the traveler,
i am afraid.

I dont want to
cradle your
head with a
soft pillow,
no more
than I want
to hear the
willow
remind me
morning
is here.

I don't
want you
to believe
that I am
particularly
good at
what
I do,
or have
a clue of
what it
is that I
do in
fact do.

I want to
nestle my
veins in that
there thorn
of your brain,
to pick
and pluck
to swim
in muck.

I want to run
blade first
into what
failure has
to offer,
a warm dinner
with fine dine silver.

I can make you
out with just
your cheek
and toe,  
there's a
silence in
your glow.

I never saw
the appeal
of applause,
or **** offs
mimicking  
waves,
a sycophant
and her
head full
of braids.

Two excitable lips
were never
better than
the funny
man's quips,
with their
flashy red,
and their
he said
she said,
I turn
my neck.

Shall I make
sense to you?
I am a train
without the
choo choo.
I am failure.
I am pause.
I won't do
what you
tell me to.

I used to enjoy
spooning dead
creatures up
from deep
bottomless pits
to give them life.

I liked to
interrogate
their despair,
untangle their
hair and polish
the mirrors
I would
shove into
their faces,

telling them
to mimic my
words, bright
and round and
in harmony
with one another,

while i reserved
the jagged
and rusty
phrases for myself,
sharpening blindly
for the sake
of the sharpen,
for the sake
of tradition,
until I had
turned around
into my own
mirror
aghast to
witness the
knife I had
become.

You will never
know how I held
back sharp words
behind a caged mouth,
when you asked
me of my day.

I wanted to cut off
your golden hair
and wear it as
a mustache,
because you
forgot to take
out the **** trash.

I had my lighter
right around
my neck,
and knew
how to
spark it,

but knew
that one
spark
of anger
would
destroy
our million
pieces of
shared joy.

And so I
refrained,
and thought maybe
I had completed
an important
life lesson.

Maybe somehwere up
in the heavens
God and Jesus
were cajoling
over wine
of my decision,

The little cherub
angels were
sounding their
trumpets
preparing for
my arrival
one day,

and sharpeining
their wings
to inevitably
carry me back
to my improved
return as
some great
historical
figure or
rare bird,
to reward
my refrain,
to reward
my refrain.

The high priestess sun
and the moon
sitting
on a throne
of space
were all
people could
write of
before
screens
took over
the face.

Galileo liked to kiss
his telescope with an
eye full of curiosity
jotting down notes
of invention,
while Monet stared
so hard at flowers
he came back as
pollen riding a bee.

The wind whispered
a different tune
back then,
it had a voice
and plenty a
listening ears
to land on.

I heard the sea
also slept with sirens,
who slept with sailors,
that slipped into stories
we don't know to be
true or false.

I wonder what it was
like when two worlds
knew how to coexist,
when humans
lived with magic,
and without
the need to
overtake.

But I believe
we have glued
our wings too
close to the sun,
we never got the
chance to fly.

I often see
our finish line
in the way
we treat
each other,
save for the
select souls
who can still
sing the
siren song,

who can sit
with silence
and heartbeat,
swim into deep
hours of nothing
and bring back
significance,
jotting it down
as verse or book.

Let us inch closer and closer
to this forgotten behavior, you and I.

I think of all the times I have wanted to use you,
but chose your stronger brothers:
damp, muggy, soggy, dank

Or heard you pass through the slips of human lips,
and shuddered at your mere presence.
Damnation was never your goal in life I am sure,
you had greater ambition, despite your condition.

You never deserved the dank basement
of vocabulary, or the back of the bus.

I hope that when the sun rises,
some lunatic with a pen takes you up from the ditches
and writes a soliloquy about his lover's moist lips,
how they so gently move within his grip.

I hope that when the travelers sludge through mud,
they hear moist moist moist echo from their shoes
and are reminded of your being
as you stay lingering in their traveling heads,

across the mountains of Timbuktu and into Machu Pichu,
most likely streaming on a thread atop a skyscraper
dangling in the wind for no one to see.

"Out of the ash,
I rise with my red hair,
And I eat men like air."
-Sylvia Plath

My father's office
housed indentured
servants of paper stacks,
all crawling towards
the ceiling to escape,
mildew man in a
metal bin can.

Old German phrases
lingered in the air
escaping my grip,
all your ich bins
and ein kleines,
the Nachtmusik tune
and the cuckoo song,
turns of the *****,
in replace of an
I love you.

I dreamt you were insufficient
so it'd be easier to forget you,
my want is my want,
but you're always there,
with your Luftwaffe stare.

Where were you when
the night turned blue?
you do not do what
the other folks do,  
with your jagged soft
and history besmeared,
secrets spewed out
car windows you  
dont have words to.

You've swallowed
your children whole,
with your gobbledygoo
and witches brew,
as we crouch down
behind ancestors
begging for answers
they won't reveal.

Don't matter to me!
I can spell out
complex words
with vague candles,  
blow them out and
start all over again
and again, it's true,
join the rat race,
blending in well
like your split pea soup.

I can move myself to
sit in my presence after all,  
I can make myself known
when you enter the room,
holler over revved engines
and your quivering pens,
erratic hair and swivel chairs.

Daddy oh daddy oh,
you didn't raise no fool,
for me and her and
the ones yet to be her,
we are not through, daddy oh
After it all, she rose up with her red hair
and gulped you down like easy air.

It's so easy to pick up a color
and dance her to bed,

he picked up blue but
prefered green instead,

he tossed her aside
and mixed her with red,

without a color wheel
he painted her dead,

I am wary of your hands
from now on she said,

I'll dance with the moon,
and then eat an egg.

My Fathers Office
sat with with
indentured servants
of paper stacks, crawling
towards the ceiling,
mildew man
in a metal bin can

old German phrases
lingered in the air,  
and my shallow
net unable to catch
a meaning,

of your ich bins
and your ein kleines,
your Nachtmusik of
revved engines,
cigar suitcases and
old turn of the *****,
in replace of an
I love you.

Don't matter to me,
I can spell out any
words with candles afew,
blow them out too
and eat the cake soon.

Some of them
do not do, you do not
do not to,


Where were you
when the night
turned blue?

but of intentions

you carry secrets you
dont know the words to,

a revved engine, cigar
suitcase and boots

Sometimes you read a poem
and your glass becomes full,

more often you read a poem
and your glass stays the same,

Sometimes you read a poem
and see their glass is filled with wine,

and yours is filled halfway with 2% milk
or maybe it's an old milkshake,

which begins the endless journey
to fill your cup to the brim,

to become a caretaker of creation
an alchemist of thoughtful transition,

to turn your glass of cow mucus
into a glass of fine French wine.

It is nightly,
I shift from person
to sleeping archaeologist,  
as I shut my eyes
and fall into you.

And it is nightly
I set out to
decode the great
hieroglyphics
of your sky,  
etched out by
extraterrestrials
or maybe the great
ancient spirits,
who try to
relay simple
answers to
heavy thoughts.

It is is evident to see,
after my nightly research,
that you are simply
the dancer's ribbon,  
and the beings
yet to be written,
the ghouls in the attic,
and the poet's poem,
the union of electricity
and circumstance
colliding to
put men in
their place.

And as I fall
deeper into
the excavation
of my slumber,
I hear your whispers
dancing through my sheets,
saying: yield to me
when we one day meet,
not like the lunatic soldier,
but like the silken lover
who is reliably there
upon your awake.

You are the whooshing woman
       spewing out idea after idea,
            in a boardroom meeting full of men,
              who pay big bucks for your easy genius.

Your constant shhhhh,
    remains the greatest reminder  
       to stand silent,
          it is the wind of your water,
            that carries fish to a new life
              or the waiting beak of a gull.

And as your water topples to the side,
     you become nature's velvet curtains
       forever drawn to hide secrets
         never meant for human consumption,
           it is there, where you declare victory
               over the paradox that is earth.

Has anyone ever told you  
    your movement is your stillness?
      Your calculated charm of "go"
         provides anchor to the
            nebulous change of man.  
    
Sometimes I can hear
      you in airplane cabins
              and in evening traffic,
                 when I am really trying hard
                     to return to nature.

But most of all I hear you in relation,
      between two hearts beating with purpose,
          within a rapturous conversation
              about human chemistry.

I'll admit, I have tried to carry you,
    but you are too slippery when wet,
       and you are always bursting with
         significant moisture.

I've never been to The Grand Canyon.

In fact, as far as canyons go,
I've only been to two or three.

And each time I slide into that mineral womb,
I am wrangled into a new identity.

I've become a waffling man
stumbling headfirst into his first love,

A child staring into the
smoky barrels of adulthood,

A castaway stranded at sea,
the center of a tornado,

A speck of dust on a speck of sand,
a decorative ring on a gentle hand,

And a dog lost in the woods
who has lost his urge to howl.

At this point, I have resigned
myself to fervently avoid you.

Seeing that smaller forms
can ****** me into a tailspin of identity,

I don't care to know what your grandness will reveal.
I think I might dare to give you my life,

before you decide to shoot me into the
dizzying preamble of my next form.

So for now, I'll make do with carrying your spirit,
as long as we are in agreement that you carry mine.

Those who can't do, teach
and those who can't write novels,
write poetry.

The world of poetry
never stood a chance
next to the world of music.

I'd take Miles Davis
burping into his trumpet
over Allen Ginsberg
singing his gay praises
into a microphone,
any day.

Or watch Elvis Presley
ricochet his pregnant
hips from east to west
and croak his
hand me down tunes,
over Shakespeare
In The Park
any day,
adieu.

It's that ****** tune
that gets me every time,
that jolts me from my seat
like a reversed lightning bolt,
and into my red dress
and perpendicular thinking.

and then its poetry that
ushers me back down
the aisles towards
the exit sign after
the whole show is over,
and to the silent
dormitory of my brain,
left with my thoughts
and words to crochet together
when I am all too tired to
pluck the strings
of my dusty guitar.