Resilient

I settle with settling.
My thoughts, overlapping,
are details shrouded in clouds.
Images awaken and stir in themselves
the old and aging thoughts
raised like veins.
I pray for insolence, usually,
but sometimes I pray for
the weak to be free,
for strength in numbers.
I pray for the art of mind
over matter
over death.
I'll be free when
the rhythm is running again,
when I'm riding inside the rushes,
when the other worldly colors
let me fold them and squeeze.

I'm looking up but I'm looking down.
I drop.
I lose my sense of everything
but the friction
the fiction sustains the glides.

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

Bobo's kitchen

in the kitchen
icebergs rampage from the freezer
burying pizzas and waffles
in a glacier jungle
Bobo swings forks and knives
at the ice until the maintenance man
cusses in Polish
gallons of water
dripping downstairs
sizzling Bertalina's soul
the fiery bilingual single mom
living in fear
below his fear
of noise complaints
she sends tape recordings
to the landlord in her
cute red faced anger
loud people! and bongos!
guitars! stomping! laughter!
nightmares for her boys
who think they hear ghosts
her tight black spandex
drives Bobo mad when she runs
drifted scents of her food
sift in through his windows
knocking him out
in hungry frustration!
¿Como estás? he asks her
I speak ******* English! she barks back
back up the stairs Bobo goes
to his own kitchen where
the mice crawl out the stove tops
and potatoes grow tree roots
clear through the window
toward another life

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

Mushrooms

And our lives really are
nicely shaped
primitive blunders
filtered and fashioned
out of that dream sense
you always speak of

And the world
still holds tight
we sit still staring
motionless at the ground
layered twirling and
shifting beneath us

Until the dust
this golden speechless dust
its ghostness enough
to rise up cloudy into my red skin
Your red skin getting finer
even more crystallized
than those bright blue veins

We are worlds turned upside down
newer than this
world of psychedelic rocks
Ancient trees
stare at us
chess pieces
the tumbling ground
filling now with infinite prairies
and valleys and dancing sand dunes

Does it hurt sometimes?
losing to the thoughts of turning back
comes close to blindness
sometimes this fading clarity
breathing and sighing
I close my eyes enough
now to feel the throbbing sun
absorb me
I'm awake
I remember

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey

I'm telling you
I rotated through a world
of symbols smacking me
straight in the jaw with
with their static persuasion
clear
mindedness is a notion
easily lost under the
bridges and over
grown in the river banks
with nasty roots
soaked up in the
grime and grit
of this town


keep following that
windy path
that winds over itself
like holographic
anti-dimensional
shapes and viking
rocks that float
through you
I rotated through a world
I'm telling you

Jake Mahaffey

Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey