"Bring your gumboots and rain coat, we're going on an adventure"

Lost, going around in circles; embarrassing.
Rainy, sick, "Let's go".
Pizza! Closed... cue more embarrassment.

Car rides along the main street, soft music playing
"Can I borrow that towel for my hair?"
Picks place to eat.
"Let's become humans again"

Dry hair, deodorant, changing shoes.
Struggle...
Horn blaring.
"This looks weird. Windows fogging, horn going, scraggly hair"
Awkward belly laughs.

Best avocado burger and aioli chips ever.

Often I wonder about just what it is that I am doing
with what I say
with what I write
with my family and work and health
with everything I do

I don't wonder about the all at once
but in the quiet on a summer afternoon
my wife still at work
my daughter off at camp
I wonder

It is not the wonder of how
of fireworks
of Starry Night
of a successful Aioli
of an airplane heavier than I can lift gliding silently overhead through cloudless blue

It is the wonder that bares the burden of wrong
of blindness towards others
of their fears and needs and beliefs
of reaction without thought
of articulation for it's own sake

And in the quiet
on a summer afternoon
I am
saddened
and truly sorry
for the blindness

1
Eggshells cannot be
the foundation of trusting
I’ve tried it before

2
eyes that mirror earth
hands that reflect the heavens
you are everywhere

3
You sing silently
I have been known to deafen
our song is the same

4
If I paint my body
colors of sincerity
would you believe me?

5
Look into the woods
and tell me you don’t see it
looking back at you

6
reaching into me
you may find gold or garbage
accept both or none

7
The clouds are empty
the ground is already wet
stop praying for rain

8
then she wants ice cream
I’ve never before tasted
a woman so sweet

9
There are seldom nights
when sleep will trump poetry
tonight is seldom

10
count the syllables
in the God-forsaken screams
of empty poets

11
distance makes the heart
double its normal volume
love is broken ribs

12
Up jump the boogie,
blood dazzler, piano farm,
what will I call it?

13
wind through the branches
spinning its propaganda
trees will always bow

14
brevity, my friend
is grossly overrated
buy low and sell high

15
When clouds are singing
the melody is raindrops
falling on my head

16
Carbon has big shoes
Standing on earth’s jugular
Cause of death well known

17
People always say
the news sounds funny. It’s just
rock and roll to me.

18
A question rises
amid the revolution
Where are the poets?

19
if the sunset tried
to be something beautiful
it would cease to be

20
They found him floating
on the screen of an i-phone
Poor young Narcissus

21
Sleepy hills yawning
Under a needlepoint sky
Just a stitch in time

22
Our hearts and our hands
Are far too often strangers
Unite with passion

23
Dandelion girl
Dancing, amused by the wind
Never taking root

24
Rain on my eyelids
Spring’s pocket always carries
A panacea

25
spinning in the queue
are we escaping the tea
you poured for Venus?

26
Parmesan crusted
cauliflower bites served with
garlic aioli

27
surround sound crickets
each with its electric voice
serenade the dark

28
I will always have
more things in common with a
mirror than with you

29
there is very little
a properly placed sunset
cannot remedy

30
cocksure and wanting
we are blind and we’re leading
this dichotomy

so Olson (#2), Honorarium

around here,
poets have been advised and disclaimed
the genuine praise of others get repaid
in kind, in k i n d

no, nope, not in
succinct pithy praiseworthy commentaries
that pays the quid pro quo bills

no ******* it,
a full blown poem is your honorarium,
you have torn open that envelope, and gosh ****, golly gee...
debts must be paid for the scales can not exist imbalanced,
until pieces of me equal pieces of you,

and I hate owing (for one never can be owning) poems...

Honorarium

this lonely business, never paid the rent,
at best, I hear them whisper, leave him be,
he’s entranced in other galaxies, breathing
words of nitrous oxygen, which has oft
produced excitable effects, copious weeping, hysteria,
and uncontrollable hyena laughter and
a sadness so deep, we fear for his retrieval

while
conversing with others in his head,
but when he writes of honor & love,
beware his bewitched bewitchments,
when all flu-like symptoms starburst all at once
the words are corded and stacked.
for fiery consumption in a hearth hearted fireplace,
word fries with aioli spice tendered in repayment

not a one lost, for those poems, though up in smoke,
lung imprinted, and breathed out into the clouded atmospheres,
dragon exhaling, poems roaring, stored and restored
honorarium in the crematorium of word debtor prison

an “the end” sigh dot dot dots the bitter end,
the anchor resting on sandy bottom,
at last, the last word, debt paid, honor restored

this, this
he loves best, when the beast released
and then returns to rest-in-chest and
await his next self imposed commission,
immolation in isolation...