You're always telling me stories you found
To make up for telling me lies
Sometimes I feel that I've had it with you
And just want to head for the sky

I've got to hand it, the platter to you
Without you I'd be lonesome blue
If ever anyone hurt me like you
They'd probably sing these words too

Like you're singing

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
All night and day you can take me away
To your very own special nice place

Play with me

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
You made me to occupy time that you needed
When it was time to get away

And so please

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
You're better off with me playing these games
Then just sitting and wasting away

The song is so merry
And notes keep it cherry
And fingers keep bouncing on keys
And clarinets sing to the french horns that ring
In the air is a freshness it brings

We're holding our hands
And we're dancing around
And we don't even care if we're seen
We're laughing and smiling and happy again
Feeling like we're in our teens

I wink at you as you giggle with me
Suddenly life is serene
Never again can I live life
Without you or someone
I swear that it's this that I mean

And you sing to me

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
All night and day you can take me away
To your own special very nice place

Take me there

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
Take me away
Play
Take all my stress away
Take all my miserable pain

And worry

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
You make my living worth living again
And again
This is all I can say

Come on and

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
Make up a medley, a game, or just play
Play to make time go away

Play with me

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
Move all the strings with your ice cream sticks please
A jiggle just might make me sneeze

Come on, please

Play
Play
Geppetto please play
Forget your worries and just play away
Untill it's another new day

Play

The geosynchronous
Geppetto One
With us orbits
Round our sun;
Blinking down,
Ringing up,
We're on lines
Like marionettes;
Transmitting selfies,
Receiving otheries.
Time to be Pinnochio,
Cut some ties,
Get up and go,
See eye to eye
When toe to toe,
Watch how small
Our noses grow.

(Alone, I wanted love, both to be and to do...
Creation is a dangerous fling when love is on the line.)

Wood carvers' magic lies
In the carving of their steel knives;
Sticks of wood and cotton strings
Give hardwood imitative lives.

Always, though, a thing is needed,
Or the living and the dead move only
In a dance surreal's reflection;
The dead must imitate the living.

Somehow string life is never quite enough;
True love must choose to stay...
To dance a half step slow or  quarter fast,
To jive against a jink and twirl an unexpected twirl.

And so I cried each night and prayed
For genuine, not wooden love,
And life arose in wooden hands;
Pinnochio was born, and stood

Wobbling on wooden feet, but living.
The joy I felt was full to see my son,
My own creation, moving on his own.
Then he, like any living boy, began to run.

Some say a loss is better if love comes first;
Some say it's better yet, to be alone.
I have seen both and can't determine which is best...
Pinnochio, Pinnochio, my wandering son,
Remember me, your father, and come home.

Geppetto
I am so happy that
You took me
Out of isolation
And loneliness
Also you came
At the right time
When I needed
Somebody badly
In my life
Now I finally
Got to know you better
And you also
Got to know me better
I love your green eyes
That shines in the light
Every day
We spend a long time
Together
Also we go for a long
Walk in the area
I live in
And also we discover
What is available
In the area
At the end of the day
Geppetto
Return to his home
And I return
To mine

I found my voice in a pocket of oxygen buried in my gut,
it was a hot air balloon
backlit by the aura of my lungs,
my chest was the sky that coughed it up.

Knowing that we are water-based creations
spread thin
like the last spoon of pancake batter,
I wear my impermanence like Jupiter wears her red spot.
I wear my fears like continents wear mountains,
pointing them toward the sky,
hoping to someday adhere a sticker to my chest that reads,
THIS CAR CLIMBED MT. COMMITMENT

I have the scars to prove it.

My mother carried me like the last drop of water in a desert canteen,
there was no need for a soft spot; I was headstrong.

I brought the kitchen to the gun fight.
Held my hands to the stove top
turned my back to the knife rack
kept one foot in the door jam and my mouth to the bedpan,
just in case these words washed my mouth out.

Most people never get close enough to recognize
that the smile on my face is written in Braille--
but you've always been there with a blind eye
reading my innuendos
and holding me to my words.

When your marathon feet hit the pavement
it's a lot like Buddy Wakefield at a typewriter
striking the first letter of the word benevolence--

You taught me how to b b b b b in the moment.

Even at my most negative
when my body is a hearse,
this heart is a corpse
and this life is a road-trip from funeral parlor to graveyard,
so that I may have spent my entire life in the company of mourners,
who loved me.

Even at my most positive
when my body is a universe,
this heart is Hatch Shell located on the south bank of the Charles River
swelling with the sounds of the Boston Pops
and this life is everything leading up to the Big Bang,
so that I may have spent the entirety of my life in the company of creation.

Even on the night we met—same night I found my voice
we stayed up to watch Lake Michigan come to life in a pocket of oxygen
under a Chicago sunrise so inescapably underwhelming
it was covered by clouds.

But we were not disappointed.

Even though all of our rainbows have been stitched into flags,
draped over coffins
and buried by the same people who taught us to believe
in optical illusions.
Our hearts were not drawn by Jeremy Fish,
we're not weighted in fiction,
we did not have heartstrings rigged by Geppetto.

No, we were not disappointed,
this was nothing like (I still remember) when we learned
that we couldn't all be Mouseketeers.

Disappointment is a pastime that we reconciled
when we laid our grandmothers to rest
and recognized that their tombs did not believe in resurrections.

The past is a hot air balloon hoisting us up to a sky we'll never see.
I get it.
I'm not lookin' down.

We are old enough to know the truth.

The light at the end of the tunnel is behind us,
that's where we came from.
We are not running from it.
There's no looking back.

The little bones of clouds
I used to keep; Lethargic Dynamos of odd begotten piccolos...
dainty mint of pish and tosh
a dandy lark
ellipse and farce, surpassing strange.
Are you then, a ' withering fiction ' ?
an addle carp of Cain's insurrection !
Or a less offensive Icarus
who hails from Sweden?
You, who sold me the bones of little clouds
and kept fair all frost and longing...

Hither go, encased in Larceny
a prince of deep wish
and ill-favored, disjoint Harmonies
Soiling Time... Adrift-
Our mad Geppetto
in waning light

But not quite
as redeemed.
For Hell's Bells have brushed
the tips of my wings
and I'm off -

and aloft

And away.

You're a mad rapper
I'm a mad hatter
Ideas in my head always bleeding
So lyrics you won't be needing
You spit them
I write them
You rap them
I rhyme them
Lines we be exchanging
Like I'd be interchanging
The lanes fast on the freeway
Paving the roads leading away
From the ghetto
Like Pinocchio was to Geppetto
We be each others woodwork
Combined we be the spork
Together in our minds
Like buns on girls behinds
We ain't getting lost
Whatever the cost
We'll stay in the light
Never fly stay and fight
Cause we be the illest
Cough Cough we infect the rest
Wanting to be part of the fuss
They try and copy 'r' us
But they will never ever
Be as swift or as clever...
© okpoet

You want your life to mean something
Yet you refuse to put in the work
To build that life around you

You like for people to think you are
Much more than you know you are
And will fight to the death to keep it

You love the complacency of it all
The trust you have in your system
The predictability gives you comfort

Life isn’t predictable
Life is far from fair
I know
Because I’m the one I’m talking about

Geppetto didn't make me
God did
no matter how broken I am
he's not fixing me
any time soon
and I never was a real boy

Some people say I’m over emotional,
but I can’t help it,
see love can be tricky to find,
I mean you can’t exactly Yelp it,

even though soul food is more filling than pop rocks,
so I focus on Self and people mistake that as selfish,
but there’s a difference between self centered and selfish,
and you’re a fool if you choose to not know the difference,

would rather be alone than with a clone,
that’s me being self conscious of all the noisy nonsense,
I’m strongest when I’m alone & when I find a love that’s true,
I get all Neo-Em and act all helpless,

well this,
is just the way it goes,
up late alone listening to Emo-Soul,
ready to Seal the Deal with a Kiss From A Rose,

while all these liars lie like Geppetto,
or better let Pinnocchio,
trying to prove what they say is true,
but I’m no fool so I just observe as their nose grows,

and no I don’t believe Them when their scheming,
because We’re wild & beautiful & They’re just tame & gross,
see nothing is more disgusting than a liar,
nothing more a turn off than someone frontin’ like they on one,

so if you’re not don’t front like you’re the one,
you’re not a rider you’re a parking meter who’s time expired,
We are Amazing Spaceships,
you’re just a scarred car ready to retire with flat tires all tired,

drained of all feelings,
you’re counterfeit not the real thing,
I don’t care about your Brand Names,
you can’t copyrite Freedom,
I don’t care what you are,
I care who you are a a human being being,

and I know I’m getting worked up,
but that’s only because I feel let down,
so don’t be surprised if you wake up,
open your eyes and find I’m nowhere to be found,

and you realize that I lost your lies found truth and left town,

with just a backpack full of daydreams,
and a heart full of gold,
I’ll have hit the open road,
just Me, Myself and my Emo Soul…

∆ LaLux ∆

She had trespassed and slept in the bed of a bear
And had eaten their porridge and broken a chair.
When the bears saw the damage, they Goldilocks sued.
The defendant is guilty the judge did conclude,
So he ruled they may cut off and sell all her hair.

That Pinocchio lied, everybody could see.
A bad puppet and son to Geppetto was he.
With his nose greatly grown and no longer a youth,
He had mastered deception and twisting the truth,
So he set off to salesman or congressman be.

The Pied Piper was hired to get rid of the rats.
When he finished, the leaders of Hamlin said, "Drats!
Many children are missing, but rodents remain."
When they re-read the contract, the mix-up was plain
For it stated, quite clearly, get rid of the brats.

Since the Beast loved the Beauty, he asked for a date.
She replied you're too ugly, unfit for a mate.
After therapy sessions for years he'd endured,
The good Beast is now married and happy and cured
While the sad former Beauty's with spouse number eight.

When he rubbed the old lamp, a kind genie then said
He would grant him  three wishes, but look where it led.
The result was a tragedy none had foretold.
For Aladdin then wished for a mountain of gold
That delivered by drones was then dropped on his head.

For a handful of beans, Jack had bartered their cow.
"That's a terrible trade!" moaned his mom with a scowl.
But she changed her opinion and ceased being peeved,
When her Jack sold the stalk and a fortune received.
It's the world's tallest tower for cellulars now.

Remember the puppet that you were

who thought himself
a real boy
still only just a boy

remember
like perusal of hate mail
        their postal telepathy
as though flipping through cellophane
photo albums of many nameless
faces

distant / detached / races

Remember how you had
not known them then
                 floating on airs
ignorant  / clueless / willful
still constantly fair

like May flowers
in pebbled gardens

Yet this life / its tangled strings
Deep sea of trees
(tug & pulling)
with Geppetto's fermented footing
precariously
curious and nimble

that boy was
quite...
           agreeable to a fault

happy to oblige a fly
Try not to waste in thought

But something else
also had its gravity
(pride for tiger stripes)
taunt tainted trite
there within : an invisible string

to keep true
be mindful
be cool
(nimble thimbles cool)
Indian in steel cupboards
searching but not so...
High times
"you will know when you find it
you perpetual student"

open as pouring rain
always in awe of it
                                  all
dismissive of the drowning
Empty can be pain
barely afloat in city-scapes

Boy refusing to grow up
who's dreams are tall
Inside a lotus
Cup of hands
              Lips waits to open
Brown Eyes
         like quiet ripples
Electric wings
A dragonfly on the pond
in our pebbled gardens.

1.
Remember the puppet that you were

who thought himself
a real boy
still only just a boy

remember
like perusal of hate mail
        their postal telepathy
as though flipping through cellophane
photo albums of many nameless
faces

distant / detached / unmarred

Remember how you had
not known them then
                 floating on airs
ignorant  / clueless / willful
still constantly fair

like May flowers
in pebbled gardens

Self sacrificed fool
still only just a boy
and like all in their youth
selfishly optimistic
        a wide bellow
for the wide world
and untoward
night

Yet this life / its tangled strings
(tug & pulling)
with Geppetto's fermented footing

precariously
curious and nimble

such as
and / that boy was
quite...
           agreeable to a fault

happy to oblige a fly

But something else
also had its gravity
(pride for tiger stripes)
taunt
there within : an invisible string

to keep true
be mindful
be cool
(nimble thimbles cool)
searching  but not so...

"you will know when you find it
you, a perpetual student"

open
as pouring rain
always in awe of it
                                  all
dismissive of the drowning
barely afloat in city-scape

And now a real boy
living / colors / the lessons
of life  
            a dance  
     (Kick ball change)

carrying its rhythmic weight with
a style & a smile
always in all ways / in awe

Boy refusing to grow up
who's dreams are tall
Inside a lotus waits to open

Brown Eyes
         like quiet ripples

A dragonfly
on the pond

in our pebbled garden.


2.
Smooth stones
pave a path for bare feet
there's no use or need for dirt
on our way toward
peace.

no ripples on the pond
dragonfly wings - like glass...
clear of mind
tend to the life and health of our garden
that is the duty of Earth's wardens
a light to shed the night...

although the lotus may bloom
out of season, arriving late,
it is the wisest of all flora
knows to wait for the rain,

so here we are late bloomer
Lion of the southern gate of Maan,
looking for you ...

The circumference of every pond
is only valued by how deep
it quenches
the thirst those who drink...

my hands are empty
and what falls from heaven I will cup
that's my gift, overflowing, honest, open
Falling
up.

Cook our intelligence
Look at the belligerent
Hate filled hornet nest
Continent of ****** pest
Fumigation of the U S

litigation red tape
when a sticky red fate
gets caught on tape
Oppression communicate
When killers walk out gratis

CIA, FBI, NBC, All of them be
Lying to me, cause the tv told me
this was the nation of the free

**** that we are a nation of slaves
Haven't evolved since yesterdays
Declaration freedom from tyrants
Then drove the natives to tears
Never equal when they see ants

Regicide of a king who had a dream
Martyr the leaders to slow the steam
Now the nation burns its mainstream

ACAB, SRA, BLM, All of them be
Talking to me, cause life told me
That freedom it ain't really free

Data stream use instant transmission
Every one, one team with one mission
Can silence a king how about a nation
All chasing the dream of compassion
Fighting mace and tears with passion

While our president hides in his residence
Plotting with pence on building a fence
And Biden forgets he was the antecedent
Passed in 1997 military gear to the precinct
Two party election, its insanity or compliance

That trump boy works with Geppetto
Puppet and toy to masters he echos
Funny money, president to get dough
String pullers they really made a show
Now the polls they swinging so low

But Biden's another flunky
Dancin to the biddin of ******
Oligarch kings of the country
Sayin dance you ****** donkey
**** the country till it walks funny

Scared of the protest they cant contest
Plants in the crowd to **** interest
Cant fold wont be fooled by insects
Declare a war on our country's best
Commit war crimes in blue vests

I don't know where our future will go
But if we keep movin and never slow
Where we're goin is better than now
Yesterdays wounds will heal I know
This nightmare could end tomorrow

Maybe this was never the land of the free
But it could be if we wanted it to be
If we plant the seed nurture it and see
Keep it safe from greed's insanity
Nurture it with bodies of the bourgeois

It is three, perhaps four, in the morning,
And he is, as is his custom, fully awake
(Slumber not being a restful place,
A habitat of undesirable outcomes, on and off court
Rife with pasts he can neither change nor comprehend)
He is not replaying the evening’s blowout loss
(Thirty-eight points, to be exact;
He always knows the final margin)
A tragicomedy performed
For the benefit of a few dozen disinterested spectators
Who had taken the time to mill about the school’s tiny gym
(Player friends and family, mostly,
Punctuated with a few students stopping to warm up
As they were coming or going from some off-campus gin mill,
Or the odd five-and-six –year old
Running unencumbered through the mostly empty bleachers.)
He is scheming, devising, alchemizing some offensive formula,
The salt shakers double-screening for the wine glass
As he seeks some methodology, some incantation
That will transform his charges
Into a unit capable of implementing his vision.
There had been such a player once,
An extension of that vision, indeed its living embodiment,
Whose feel for the game went beyond mere understanding,
Something inherent, wired into his very being
(But co-existing with other forces else as well,
Something which could not be contained by offensive sets
Nor subject to the dictates
Of what some point guard’s fingers flashed
As he walked the ball over half court;
Like Geppetto’s afflicted creation, he didn’t need any **** strings,
And eventually told the old puppet master
That he could shove the rods up his ***.)
They had, in ways no less painful for their inevitability,
Failed each other irreparably,
So the old man ended up here,
And as he moved coins and condiments
In picks and curls and back-door cuts,
He thinks about how a young assistant told him after one loss,
Well, if you’re going to get your *** kicked,
At least it’s a pretty spot to do it.
He’d almost let the kid have it both barrels, but he let it go,
Figuring the kid would find out the deal soon enough,
That the woods around this place were nothing but darkness
And their only promise to ******* close in on you.