Spring in Kansas.
It doesn’t come in softly.
It roars in with the wind and rain beating against a steel roof, washing into the old soddies and stone,
Clearing out winter in one giant breath.
The change comes within a week,
From dry dead, brown, to startling green, an emerald landscape of winter wheat.  
The emerald isle has nothing on Kansas in the Spring.  
Then the color starts, red buds against glorious green fields
and thunderous skies, a painters dream uncaptured.
And forsythia, the first blooms, beautiful and stark.
Crocus, daffodil and dandelion crowning the ground with gold.
The trees, bare of leaves, burst forth with flowers in shades of white and pink and the magnolias burst forth, ready to fly off the tree.
Our mighty cotton wood, drooping with frills that will become light catching tufts in the early summer sun as the leaves murmur their constant song, piling like snow in the heated streets.
Thunder rolls as lightning strike turning day into night with hail filled clouds and twisters striking like Greek gods, angry and awesome.
Creeks flood and clear the way for tadpoles and crawdads in streams and pools.
Spring comes, the earth warms, we all wake and stretch and wait for the sunflowers to do the same, yearning to the summer sun.

The night was rainy, hot and humid. It was the kind of night that populates steamy, black and white, noir movies where someone is murdered. The stars seemed reduced to sloshing behind moldy gray clouds, as damp and listless as seaweed in the surf.

“Let’s go see a movie,” Sophy suggested, as she brought up the Fandango website on the 70” smart TV. This quickly drew a brouhaha of excited interest.

“Ooo!, Bullet Train,” Anna said. “Elvis!” Lisa gushed.
“Where the Crawdads sing!” Sunny gasped.
“Super pets!” Leong declared, pointing - producing groans all around - THAT was a no-go.
“Maverick!” I said. “I could do that,” Sunny agreed, “he’s crazy but I’m a Cruise fan.” she added.

In the end we decided to do a movie marathon with “Maverick” that night and “Elvis”, “Bullet Train” and “Where the Crawdads sing,” on Sunday.

As we ordered our treats at the theater concession stand, a tall, skinny, spotted, teenage boy attempted to flirt with Lisa. He smiled at her as confidently as a lizard, but sagged, like a shirt whose coat hanger was removed, when she pointedly ignored him.

Basquiat poetry
coffee grains
in my teeth
and dreams
I wake up to the walls in speech
recollect
drunken journeys
Emma the girl who
sits at your window sill
mourning the death of night's child:rain
and it is September
or either
August
I am lost in a booklet of ancient nobles
Upstairs
reading mythology
drinking
***** brewed by patients of poverty
Piano skin and noises
leak into the fire place
all alone
There is no more Time
only windows that shine
only windows that are dark
only women that lay naked on my bed and kiss me
Do not worry
I am not here
writing these
rusty poems
as I slowly push them into the sides of your eyes
Shakespeare eyeball
Ginsberg Navajo
Gas station clerk
high on
crack *******
I give her money
she gives me
a smile
a pack of
Marlboro cigarettes
that stench up the church
hiding the smells of
sad prophets
cheap wine and
oyster crackers
85 cents for off-brand large bag
Adam and Eve
clock time forget sleeve *** spoon food coffe-table
Death moving in down stairs
room
103
or was that the opiates
crawling into the tree veins roots wooden finger tips of my
body
of my
soul
of my
bulb
of my
Skeleton that is colored like you
Termites
mistook
a dying flower
for a limb of a tree
that grew sideways
too avoid the hum buzz of Vehicle Highway I-435 Kansas
Age 400 and 3
Child at birth
Man at death
oh how the seasons brew into a facade
oh how
the *****
sleeps with me
I make her coffee
3am
we smell of smoke and tired souls
pointing at the color red
as we
take lefts
and rights
into a city into bowels of streets and sighing police men and sighing homeless
I take off her clothes and
she falls apart like pedals attached by scotch tape to a rose
Nothing it Rains
Nothing it is Cold
Hello
We are the Nothings
and we
sit alone
on bar stools too high
and our knees are bruised from
praying to the bartender
to
pour
one
more
Whiskey
Yet we drank it all
and the juke box is broken
so we listen to
Homosexual men ******'

City Cough
Everybody has lung cancer
or is
walking to a 24/7 grave yard
Will I be buried with you?
I ask a mouse
climbing on my walls
to catch a roach

But he says nothing
and the roach escapes
only to reply
with
“Yes, you and I.”
my mouth gutters “And he and she.”
and the Rat complies
“And sometimes Why.”

Get another drink
April Angel casting a shadow into a lake of bass and crawdads
“Geh me ahnothur dreeenk” drunk lingo speech
***
***
***
Fill your bucket mind
with spatulas
Broken television screens
the toe nails of angels
Piano Keys

Spit into a well
Spit into the wine
500 dollars a bottles or 6,154 pesos
make a wish
make a diamond
make steak
make wool
make love

My starving father filling up on the apples of Vice

Number 3
lights a cigarette in the dark
and the shadow glimmer dance of her
Eyelashes
cheekbones and
Eye bones
and
lip bones
are projected onto the cement wall
an art show
a Ballet suicide attempt
a winter experiment on the Indians of North America

Ride a Train
Rise of Tides
Ruthless Killer
Ruthy big breasted girl in my dreams dancing about a fire that I built from
old paintings of my
Grandfather
as Kansas was spilled like hot chocolate milk

“Get up”
“and where are you”
“can't you tell it is 1am”
“why has the clock mistaken me for someone who cares”
“lover”
“where are you going”
“the river is too cold”
“you will die like Hemingway did”
“you will die”
“i will die”
“Hemingway will die”
“but not tonight”

Shakespeare.
Tapping on my window.
He gives me.
A pill.
We take a bus too New Orleans.
And visit the grave of William.

Cold coffee
Caramel popcorn
Southern Cut Marlboro
Telephone
Lampshade crooked
asking
attempting

Under my eyes
engravings of a crescent moon
from gazing up
on so many nights

A sunny serenade of Cyan Skies

On a Strangely soothing Sunday afternoon

In the south wing



The White Rabbit tells me about

Beautiful Butterflies batting their wings

To the beat of a bohemian movement

and I blush at the gesture

And

The Mad Hatter tells me about

The Kevorkian crawdads clawing at each other

Under the crystal clear stream

Bent like a Candy Cane

And I cry for the dead.



I hear her, I hear her

But I also hear the

Marsh Hare

And

The Marsh Hare tells me about

The analytical anarchists armed with arms

Marching around the inner atrium screaming

"All hail Anarchy!", "All hail Anti-Society!"

Aiming for the heart

And I amaze myself



I hear her, I hear her

And because of her I hear

The chains and restraints



The Queen of Hearts tells me about

My fantasies of White Rabbits

My dreams of Mad Hatters

My imaginings of Marsh Hares

And how only she is real



The straps are too tight

The clothes too thin

The walls too thick



And she stabs me

With a Red Rose

All in white, The Queen of Hearts Says


Wake Up Alice


And now I can see

My sunny afternoon is shady

And

I am barred from my butterflies.

Blip, blip, blip… It taunts me,
blip, blip, blip… appearing, disappearing.
That little bar, right where my last words left off.
Like a schoolyard bully he mocks me.

I cook, I clean, I pace, I surf, I do everything,
but still he taunts me. Blip, blip, blip…
Like a mad man I prattle on to thin Air,
I ask her, what would you write?
As always I get the silent treatment.

I scream in my own head, “oh words where are you!”
Torch in hand I search the pitch black catacombs;
still I find only a void air won’t inhabit.

I walk down the street to the city creek
and flip each stone; looking for syllables.
Like crawdads they swiftly scurry, side swimming
my hands as I vainly grasp at clumps of mud and water.
I make my way from the creek back down the long road.

By the time I’m home autumn has come,
each tree’s leaves wear a different color;
red for imagery, brown for alliteration,
orange for allegory, purple for metaphor.

Like a letter lost in the mail
Air’s answer finally arrives.
The leaves fall all around me!
With god like haste I rake them up
and swim in a pile vast as the ocean.

Let’s see you blip now!!!

Night,
          is my lover,
                              with long brown hair,
                                              green eyes,
                                         like texas stream,
                                        with tiny crawdads,
                                        living in the mud,
Night,
           a melody,
                            possibly composed,
                                  by Beethoven,
                                      one night,
                                  on purple ***,
                               that sailors drink,
                                  after a storm,
                                   and land,
                                is as unfamiliar,
                                yet is fantasized,
                                  like the ******,
                            dreaming of **** kiss,
Night,
           long road,
                             Dharma bound,
                                                         bare foot,
                                                           ­               hungry.

Today I want to crawl away and bleach my mind.
A balloon of Worries rises in my chest
compressing my lungs till it's hard to draw breath.
classes,tuition, taxes, fear, nothing makes sense, I don't know what to do                          
I want to crawl back into the recesses of childhood,                                    
To the smell of the house in summer, open windows, old wood,
traipse through the woods to the creek,
spend hours digging under rocks for salamanders,
When I though a quarter was a fortune,
when school was just books and friends.

Sometimes I think I just want to abandon it all,
find a sweet, simple, country boy
settle down in a tiny house,
have children, a boy and a girl.
Elias James and Elaenor Elizabeth          
I will take them down to the creek,
teach them to catch salamanders,
and crawdads without getting pinched.
Wash their muddy faces and feet
when they come in for supper.

Then I'll send them to bed, with a kiss and a story,
and my husband and I will sit on the porch,
hand in hand, staring at the stars,
talking about God and Man and all that is.

They tell me I would regret
not having a career besides that of motherhood,
but days like these sure make me think twice.

It’s the cool breeze on windless summer day.
Tall grass gently swaying on a poise afternoon.
It’s the mesquite tree in the yard tolerant enough to grow.
A dry lively summer brewing in the dead of night.
A cool gust comes from the west dragging a pail of water,
The flooding the cracked and thirsty Earth.
It’s a five acre pond replacing the countryside.
Grass and shrubs drowning as they take a last breath.
It a crackle of lightning playing in the background,
Along with the thrumming of rain on the forming lake.
Bristles of hay coming down the creek,
And clogging the ditches introducing the crawdads.
It’s the chocolate lab running joyously through the rain.
Two brothers playing football in the puddles.
A father starting a peaceful mud fight.
It’s a mother cooking jambalaya and baking cornbread.
It’s Christmas in July.

Crawdads have a crazy *** life. There's not  
much to courtship and no real copulation. Boring  
as this may sound, it's somewhat engrossing  
for me. Likely more than any lady crawdad ever  
thought of it. I would think most women might
agree. Sadly, reminiscent of **** really. Males
act like ruffians, catching females like prey,
turning them over, and leaving a sticky deposit
on their undersides. Worm like sperms adhere
to her, which she carries with her until she lays  
eggs. I've seen this while preparing étouffée.

Not the *** act, just the worms.  

Life is a multiplex of convoluted situations.
"Please yes, oh no!" What's going on in those
crusty little heads? It seems such a foreign
lifeform. Still, eerily familiar to what I've found  
at the bathhouse. I think I'll fatten up my tail,  
wear some antennae and pincers this Halloween.

Mmmm... Étouffée.

Thanks for the drop
So Seemingly accidental
Kicked like a pebble along this gravel-road time line

I turn and glance a mirror
How introspective.

My ***** cragged shell
My thoughts tainted by my odious flesh
Mississippi catfish have seen better days

I can only swim backward if I’ve  finally seen the danger
And the warning signs come a flooding
Crawdads taught me well.

A clam diving headlong into the sludge
Detritus never felt so comforting

Sand in my eyes
Sand in my eyes
Exfoliate your corneas boy!

Rotten fruit never tasted so good
Spoiled milk and flies
A dog to its own *****

Thanks for the shock collar
The pound
The castration
Hand that feeds
How sweet and tender-hearted
You cherish your convenience

I am a cursed man
Born dead
Alive and dead once again
As time is slowly ticking

I gasp for air
Salt water
Light to relieve me of crippling water pressure
It’s too dark down here

Why is the end of the tunnel above the surface?
I can’t breathe up there

Throw me a line
Yank me away
To an abrasive serenity at the hand of a fisherman in the kitchen sink

A plastic ring will do nicely
Might as well sink and feed my brothers
Might as well think to myself
Rather than lead others

Might as well smudge my words so that no one can read what I wrote
With the needle in my side

My thorns are innate
Yet I wield them as stripes
My fillet is laid
Across the plate at the last supper

My time as a bottom feeder is through

Late Sunday mornings beside 'Rabbit rock' on the walk home from Scott Lake , across the highway down Hemphill Road toward beautiful Camp Creek ... Blackberry stained hands , prying waters in search of crawdads and mud puppies , jumping 'Bobwhite's' along the Pine forest edge .. Whitetail tracks in every direction , homeward bound through fields of corn and sorghum ,  summer sky filled with the glorious music of the Bentley Hill UMC choir , reverberating through the wisteria scented countryside ...

There once was a man
who lived on down da bayou
went crabbing for his amors etouffee but before he got to dat bayou
he picked up his bon amigo
then dey headed down highway 41
Well the trip was going smooth
as the wind be blowin til they stopped at the station for some pane upon arriving to dat station it was being robbed for its payment and now they got a 3rd in company
Its been a long time coming, who dat cajun running, said he must've lived on down the road. Ain't stopped for no crawdads ya know they dont know where dey at, the ole creole man be ramblin again. Dey been back and forth, up and down, fought like a mule, acted a clown, dont think dey known theys right from left. Mason jar of daniels, open road in the high beams. Ain't no telling the cajun man's dream and his podners sceme.

My dreams are drying out by the salty shore
I may build sandcastles and rocky bridges until
The waves wash them out again, laughing as the surf
Swallows my ankles,
Forgetting the cuts and the burns and the tattoos
Sand between my toes and sun pink cheeks I may,
Forget I'm trying to hold on so tight, to dreams that easily
Slip away in the morning fog, I might catch them,
In a butterfly net, through the lamp of a lighthouse,
I might catch them like crawdads and lizards and keep them in jars,
To keep me company through lonely nights, like fireflies,
I might just make them stay, but for now they are dying
As short lived as mayflies and as easy to pass as a summer's cold,
Like music in the witching hour, hidden among the hills
Impossible to pinpoint, like thunder, rolling as ancient wars
Sitting here, letting tears seep from my eyes like steam from a kettle,
I wipe them off with a ***** dishtowel and wait
For my dreams to come home, like teenage runaways,
Or selkies upon the moor,
If I make it through tonight, if I make it through high tide,
If I make it through tonight.

On the day I pass I believe I'll stop by -
Orly Terrace to tell my friends goodbye
Check on love notes carved in Pine trees -
and hunt for 'crawdads' one last time at my
favorite creek , walk the side roads like they
were dirt again , chase the ice cream man
down the road just one more time , feet flying , half dollar in hand* ....

Adapting re
voluntary reading
to the future, when we've
nothing to do so, sub-con
science frictions call all men liars.

I am by no means chief,
I came from the Calebland Productions,
early Eighties,
Macintosh and Appletalk, and Silicon Beach
grand brainstorms insisting if we heat it
the entire idea of dust as us and our mites…
just willing to revolve with the planets will
enough all those old winds that twisted
like we did last summer,
wind up like
those ones, wow, so real.

Northwest Passage is open, and yet,
none acknowledge life in full control,
something literarily evolving
where the crawdads eat the corpses,
Bayou Blue, Barrios and Pepitons,
cheri mio, we had some fun,
we all sung, on that by
you seem to agree, we won.
we won the evolutionary war,
mankind, wombed and un,
ever so long ago, none knew, we did

but time is a bit of a Ouranos cycle,
looks like a great ocean churning gyre,

of which the last swirling tide reminder
fit to an old spider web designer,
loser backslider
with a gambling wife,
who took a chance on me,
what do we see, but what we get,
generously, love is there
for the looking for,
and for remembering finding, and
really, when a man

from the molds
that made our we this kind of old man,
an individuated
NPC, in a cast of thousands,
acting stand in assistant to the
assisting intelligence time accounting,
massive messaging, is a thing
are you aware…?
your connection can self correct,
your bluetooth can whistle
in your ear,
eh,
we made it up.
The loss, we, laughed and made it all up.