I'll walk you through the rain..

Hold your hand in the lightning..

We will clap our hands as the air cools from the passing lightning,
THUNDERCLAP rumble on through..

Come play with me in the puddles brother..

Lets make a bottlecap boat with a sailor ant and watch it float on through the grassy ant lake..

Lets watch the rain moths fly on through after a good storm.. where do they go? into the dreams of the ones who are sleeping now..

Smell the atmoshere, smell the rain.. Watch as the day becomes filled with orange and sad gray..

Sure its muddy, and a bit cold.. and of course we are not wearing shoes.. But we are having an adventure, there is no time for such nonsense.. Only magic u and i create.. together brother, always together..

The adventure in the rain was for my brother and I.
We would jump in the puddles and make plastic bottlecap sail boats for ants.
Barefoot in the cool water.
Warmed back up by the summer mud.

I am one of those people who collects bruises like old bottlecaps.
I count them from time to time, but I can never remember where
I got them.

Waiting for bread to toast, I slapped a knife against my thigh,
marveling in the way it rang like a tuning fork.  When the toast
popped up, I looked at my leg and saw there was a huge red welt
just starting to bruise.

They only hurt once I've discovered them.

You poked the knife-bruise and asked, "Who beat you up?" but didn't
wait long enough for me to summon the laughter to say that I'd done
it to myself.  You moved on to the next one, dragging your finger like
you were following some yellow brick road, playing Candyland and
winning.

A Pleiades's above my ankle, a crescent shape below my knee.

There was one small circle in the middle of my toe that you wondered
about, and neither of us could imagine how I'd done it, so you just
laughed at me and tickled my feet like some old husband.

Soon you get bored with the bruises and you move on to the tic-tac-
toe grids on my knees from the pool tiles.  You write your name in my
arm with your fingernail because of the way even light scratches
immediately become red and raised.  I made up a word for it and
you believe me like it was some sort of real medical condition.

Somehow my face hovers in between a real smile and an aching grimace,
so when you look up at me, you put my face in your hands and repeat
my name.

I must be your favorite curiosity.

Click, falls to the floor. Dusty movie theater with shoe dirt on the backs of the seats.
Noisy couples in the back ******* face and other parts, distract from
The dead body on the screen and the 3-D pool of blood dribbling towards them.
"Love, won't you bite my eyes? Your lipstick reminds me of the deadly ruby liquid in your veins."

Because it is.

a.) a crossed off to-do list
b.) crumpled toilet paper, used as a tissue
c.) white paper, rumpled but never used
d.) raisins
e.) sins
f.) a green plastic bottlecap, inscribed with the waves of a far away sea
g.) a mechanical pencil, out of lead
h.) a bobby pin, rendered useless due to short hair
i.) a small piece of string
j.) the small piece of my heart which contained affection for my father
k.) just kidding, that never existed
l.) the sleeves i cut off of a tshirt
m.) the heart i cut off of my sleeve
n.) a ****** poem about alcoholism
o.) the self loathing that weighed me down for nearly a year
p.) a list of the different gym classes available
q.) q tips, in the interest of alliteration
r.) one very old, very ***** sock

Years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew
while I sit here in the second floor of a double decker bus affiliated with universal energies that haven't been given names, and gods which haven't yet been killed over.
Sudden Spring makes me sentimental!  I daydream with my eyes shut and sunlight repeatedly washing over my face that Im racing on some enchanted eastern express en route to Benares while Lama peak Nepal is weakened with Earthquakes. Fallen monestaries still romanticized and newly forged in my mind. A few countries North, the radical religious groups are continuing the impractical path of world decay with frequent threats and televized beheadings.  We're guaranteeing ourselves a real apocalypse to save ourselves from a fake one!

Owls in suits recently drycleaned return home,  their bedroom drapes appear ethereal veils of cruelly false night-brides twirling from wind beating fiercely at the door. Next morning the
Hong Kong tram serrates the neon
acid streets where blankface ghosts are observing the hundred thousand faded shoes and wirey laces encircling the larger paths of Chinese cities like a hollow caffeinated sterile ball of yarn thrown over by the communist Cheshire cat. Bluehue sad sickness is the largest global airborne infection we all have to worry about!

Many Summers later, Debt and debt collectors are equal hell,
I'm home and showering off the society sweat and mutual bruises of some mundane corporate copy job where I copy and jab and jib and bob my head outta the sea of slate jaws and somber smiles. Everything has become a bore! The year is 2045 I'm growing gray and I feel like it, the world feels like it, too. Why did I let go of the poems? The rebel heroes in the 1960s who fought off nuclear holocaust with rhyme and meter?
We could really use that now!
Whatever happened to the soul of India budding in my veins and making me stiff with insatiable wanderlust? My prescription needs to be renewed and my passport expired two years ago. Nobody but the dead travel anymore and they aren't getting to their destination by plane. Those greenhouse gases really ****** us for good! All the aircrafts are now modern art and all my dreams are hidden in hypothetical fallout shelters crossing their fingers they survive before the generators power down on them.

Those past inspired goals faint and lifeless carried by anchors to underwater trenches. Back when my hair was down and long. Dandelions were polished in rainwater outside Vietnam Hostels encased in zipper basket backpacks on stock with incense,  teardrop ecstasy stains and cantinas filled on liquid dharma platinum with the zen seal bottlecap. Well off they go! hearts of an aspiring mahasattva sticking to the back ends of sticker stapled scooters gliding
down to the outdoor booths in Saigon.
As was expected, even the scooters were left to fizzle away in the cyclic guyas once all oil tapped out when I was 37.

Sedative Queens have tightened their authority on all of us and I'm sleepy in the wholes of days where thoughts barely catch wind off the finish line. Nobody is a firecracker anymore. Radios no longer work in closets!
I heard they used to. Radios worked anywhere.
All sound is dead. The angry ghost of an eighteen year old watches out his  kitchen window observing the approaching storm and listening to The Velvet Underground feeling like the world is gonna conflegrate to rock & rubble from the creamy ******* skies ready to drown us out.

Hepcat hideous mangled in gradual oppression diseases!
***** teen hormoned out of homosexuality, I thought we'd gotten past that ignorant belief!
Animal axed in syringe oblivion muscles tense then loose, consciousness BLANK.
Ozone overdosed on air miles and morning commutes, they said it would never happen!
Happiness hung on air, we've been told that our experiences depend on how we choose to perceive them, so maybe all this worldly wack has been my fault!
Dragons exist behind snowy beards contrast to a blood red tie sitting up on Senate! Why'd we been told they're make belief? They're burning everything down!

It feels like Summer no matter what season it is these days. Those Alaskans sure work a good tan!

All in all, years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew,

And we're running low on bowls.

i've scribbled my lies onto
napkin dispensers and
on bus stop windows
hoping their distorted reflection
would resemble someone i recognize

i'm sitting here between
train tracks between
reasons to live

the lump in my throat consists of
a tired shoelace
a broken wavelength
a bottlecap
a cigarette ****
a brick of charcoal
a shard of stained glass

knitted on a dodgy bobble hat
or a favourite chunky jumper
from scandanavia, or yorkshire

untasteful but definitely practical..
smelly and friendly like a wet dog
pliable like warm playdoh...

patulioi oil
will always remind me of you...
'a hippy place in my heart...'
like a beachnut,
no, a beach hut
shelves littered with the flotsam of our throwaway society,
flip flop corner...

19:10
some random hermit crab making his escape from
the dripping bundle of just found fishing net
down through the crack in the floor...
into the sand
and back to the sea.
the moths and midges gravitate towards the fossils and rock shelf
because that's where the gaslamp gently hisses.

suncracked and faded
pieces of
70's buckets and spades flicker in the corner
between the scraps of rope
and the deflated inflatables
and the bottlecap damian hurst
next to sea purse corner,
biological tendrils contrasting the ever stoic rubber ducks
who escaped from the pacific gyre...

panning around, the smartphone registers,
the garish tatty windbreak
and the 90's ghettoblaster
which still has some juice left from those batteries
we bought at the gift shop...
last year...
for our imaginary beach hut....
in the outer hebrides...?

you take the camping gaz from the cupboard
and put the kettle on...
the beach is desert island white
the sea azure like a gaudy 70's postcard
the wind tugging relentless through our hair.
but the pub is warm and friendly
where grizzled fishermen philosophise
hardily. by the fire.
between warming shots of smokey single malt.

he liked how she wore rain boots in the summer
and wished to build her home in the marshes
where she could sing with the toads
and play a cattail harp, reed symphony.
she kept a journal
she would draw rain clouds
and snow,
he'd watch her fingers loop around the pencil,
brow wrinkled with concentrated focus.
i guess he loved her.
as much as anybody could.
loved the bottlecap eyes
and wide mouth full of crooked teeth,
cause when she smiled
his heart went crooked too
and she was the type of girl
who he could visit museums with
and they'd both stare at
the same painting
and think something quite
different.

to permeate
in the leaves of trees
we hibernate
like gold in
the hands of thieves
across seas
I know you'd be proud of me
set the scene
velvet ropes
for a quarter life dramaturgy
weeps as it sings
in your car
in the rain
everything's different
left exactly the same
purples and greens
in the rain
in your eyes
I miss holding your hand at night
loved you harder
than a bottlecap opens
sugar fizz boils over
come over


COME OVER

Your charismatic friend
Loud friend
Hides friend
Pass to the next day friend

Your incessant poem friend
Bottlecap friend
I’ll tell you friend
Like you in one way friend

Your high friend
Hair friend
Let’s try acid friend
Your nothing to lose friend

Your new phase friend
Song friend
Bird friend
Your vent friend
Cement friend

Your all the colors friend
The one on your dad’s mind friend
The hope’s to be friend
Your plain bad friend

Your gay friend
Bi friend
Straight friend
What’s your name friend
It’s losing your mind friend

Your day friend
Sad friend
Too much friend
“What did I do to you?” friend
The summer at the all end
And hit send to
Your sad friend
Your done friend