There's a broken banjo in my birthright,
It was tied to were I wonder
Hidden between John Henry's Hammer,
and the hobbling post on Humble Hill.

I've walked this far on the blame in my grit,
pushed to by tailwind sunsets,
So kick me a mea culpa kneejerk
hardball, and sandstone my stonewall.

Forget storms in the cradle,
I found dustbowls in my waiting room,
Chasing rabbits in a wordwind,
plinking at the vermin as
they rolled into town with the rest of us,

*****, but soaring, Carrion pigeon in the clouds
not getting caught up in admiring the reflections
in all the silver linings,
Just... Flying.

narcissus couldn't manage
the glory of wax work wings.
But Icarus knew real beauty.
He felt it.
When he hit the ground

The heat of floating zeroes
blasting his broken bones
into the obsidian of desert floors...
See, angels can be as jealous as God.

Anywhere can be as lonley as the long plains
of Kansas,
Empty canvas trampled by dog and pony shows
as cowboys rode mules muddy miles
through ****** brambles
to drive herds of bulldogs and lions
from the hunting grounds of dragons
to the safety of home
from High, High, Horses.
Under the shadows of eagles.

But the devil never waits at the crossroads, people.
He lays in lies.
And six shooters,
Under Dog Collars,
with the blood and scars
of everyday life,
and the beaten bodies of
seraphim, fallen to **** the well,
with their phoenix ash.

Sheep and shepherds are never friends,
Ones happiness is the other's hunger.
Dont get me wrong, wolves get hungry too,
But at least their honest about the arrangement.

The weathervane slept high above with a lolling head.
Clouds were holidaying excessively in Spain.
Sun was lost in a haze after chain smoking cooling towers.
A lethargic wind, moseying low with cat-like whiskers,
I hear it complain “I’m tired” in child-like whispers.

My hands are sweat-sore with callouses
And salty enough to summon the call of gulls in numbers;
I find shade, imagining myself as a cartoon Huck Finn.
When I put dry grass between cracked lips and think of dustbowls
In a zoetrope of sun-stroke, I vanish through my buttonholes.

This is now where one would rise, wake or come to.
Nothing I recognise, else the world is enveloped in storms.
I strain my sight, blink repeatedly to force myself awake,
The angels are listening, I hear wheezing, see fingers in my dreams
Gripping tightly to milk thistle stars, bursting at the seams.

Amongst the angels, whispering too! Did the stars imprison you?
Free-spirit like mother, but I slept our childhood through
Sustained by knowledge gleaned from canteen floors—
My eyes feel somehow sharp, heavy, like spears more than eyes;
I thought I saw the weathervane spinning madly, unraveling the skies!

Nobody talks about the weather.
There is a good chance of wrought nerves.
This is a time of stillness and dwelling on doorsteps,
In doorways where death sits among us, resting his eyes,
An end to the ration that was harmless reminiscence
As memories go up in the heat like celluloid;
Now the stars are a steely prison
Heaven’s lustre is lost, missing.
Through the angels I have seen that this is a time of living -
Through our dreams I have seen that this is a time of living -
Outside the confinement of the Holocene.




*—I have dreamt of drowning...often. I always seem to wake up out and breath and feel I can taste the salt in my mouth but fear does not play any part in these dreams.