We come to a complete stop.
At a red light.
We wear our arms like seat-belts-
crossed for protecting our pilot lights.˚
I can't help but wonder how many airbags might deploy
if a meteor crashed headfirst and heavyset into the planet
and pancaked us eternally into this moment-
and how our fossils would look confused;
funeral flowers on a wedding cake.

None of this matters, we're both thinking it,
God is a foster child playing with his erector set.

You grin with as much conviction as a dented automobile,
breaking the months of silence to say,
"I miss you."

We can never fold these road maps back the way they came.

Somewhere existentially above this moment, there is an asterisk
that confirms
you- are here.

There was a younger version of me that you never got to meet,
he was here once,
stupid as a slinky.
Shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Crooked as the question mark that punctuated his voice.
I looked good in hydroplane,
my eyes- bigger than my belly,
so I drank my weight in promises- I knew would be hard to keep within arms reach.
I also knew an encyclopedia's worth of how it felt to lie to myself.
I did it for twenty-three years
until I finally let go of stupid and held on to reason.

At some age I wrote letters to my favorite musicians,
using the sloppiest side of my penmanship, I'd ask for answers
and my mother, like a paperclip, used to tell me - she'd say,
"Kiddo, just because they don't respond
doesn't mean they didn't get the message."

She kept her chest of hope upstairs, away from the living room.
She only opened it on the hallow end of October;
that's where she kept the blankets.

Shy, I kept my hope chest covered in a T-shirt-
at the very least.
I never opened up.
I emptied my toy box of all its fiction, filled it with voices.
Deployed an army of rubber wrestlers, martial arts amphibians
and those inanimate toy soldiers with plastic parachutes attached
in search of the confidence I knew was supposed to belly-flop inside of me.

It hid, unfound for decades.
Until you entered.

Hawaiian domino effect, circus of chain reactions, avalanche of affirmation, chest-plate yielding gravity mouth speaking brightest anything forever night light, all apex and eyelash and cheekbone.
You -from big island- broke me.
I opened like the dry side of an umbrella, kept my back turned for shielding you.
I showed up for love on time, like a subway train in echelon city
wanting these arms to feel less like turnstiles.

All my sign languages were in waves.
All my ceilings turned to skies.
All my jitters packed into my hunger stomach.
Typing hyper with caffeinated hands
a swarm of nervous words bee-hiving in my butterfly chest.
Something like a hummingbird
when I finally drop your name like an alarm clock whisper
my lungs empty like cathedrals on the day after Christmas.

I brought the sermon to your Sundays,
you brought the choir to my masses.
We built a church around these esophagus bell towers.
Held ourselves up to the stained glass and showed off our light;

I swear I don't believe in a lot of things, God knows,
but there's always a but,
so much as I believe in the eternal depth of everything,
so much as I believe that we'd have plenty of water if it weren't for salt,
so much as I believe in eight marbles rolling around a gas lamp,
I believed we'd find a way.

'Cause in all the ways my sky could never hold you- and I mean this-
I believed in you- same way some people believe in Jesus.

Because you never judged my albatross mouth when I said things like,
"Self deprecation is the new love."
You kissed me-
less like doorstop,
more like lighthouse illuminating windmill.

You were a merry-go-round pivot decorated in Kona coffee beans, Christmas lights, cough syrup, paper mache pineapples, plastic dinosaur bones, a collection of worn-out Asics, board shorts and a dubstep remix broadcast through the static of a blown-out rotary phone.

You were everything I could get my hands on-

A full-tilt action-packed kaleidoscope jungle
with blender tongue and volcano heart.
I looked good in your sad panda coat tails,
teaspoon swallowing my doubts
while you Tarzaned my ability to breathe,
gave me ocean view and weak knees.
Is that sea breeze in your aftermath or are there already tears in my happiness?

You came camouflage out of my blind spot dressed in magnet armor,
diving board and drum set.
We passionbent cymbals into cannonballs.

I found comfort between your breastplate and your shoulder blades,
where you held me like a promise
when all my wishing was for want
and all your wanting was for wishes

Granted,

I know that there were days when you couldn't help but wake up like gorilla speaking Pidgin
and I couldn't help but waking up like an abandoned highway with a chip on my shoulder-
some maps don't show this much detail, Google Earth-

Which is why I always came through for you like a well-lit citrus truck stop
pressed against the dusk in your moonlight life crisis.
We only saw stars.
From our moon base.
In bewilderment, in our hunger, we learned
that if you hold me to my vending machines you'll get what you pay for.

So here it is, the truth, as I have always known it,
delivered to you on the outskirts of an echo,
my voice, supporting my existence like a monolith.

I'm standing in the middle of a you-shaped hole.
It's as wide as a promise crater-
we built it together.
It's not my favorite place to stand
but the exit strategies are made in the shape of a me that I haven't constructed yet.
I had a lot of things planned.
I referred to things as "ours",
when I really meant "please".

Bury me in your time lapse.
When your emotional excavators discover me in your sediment
they'll find me all pterodactyl-
wings spread wide as potential, sky-diving toward forgiveness,
forever.

Truth is, I'm wingless.

We met at a stop sign.
Our paths crossed.

There's a lot of accidents at some intersections.
Maybe it's because that's not where those two roads were supposed to meet.

We can't time machine argue with the way things landed.

We weren't an avoidable accident.
We were just two cars that really wanted to dance.

I don't know what I'm trying to say but I know when I mean it.

There's a tyrannosaurus rex cradled head-to-tail just behind my curator heart-
all fossil spine, monster teeth, jaw head and piano hands.
His presence says a lot about the past.
There's an asterisk on the surface,
above this moment,
that confirms with absolute certainty,

˚something wicked awesome happened here.

For volleyball games with our kids*

and the grit of dirt slipping through your teeth
like a pancaked hand flat on cement surface.
Ball. Court. It is a good morning and
the sunrise rises to give life to the game. This game:
ours. We run and jump and sing; old bones

made to jog its memory. Bounces the ball and we run
again. Laughing like children. Next to the children.
Leaping after them. Watch as the ball rises high
in the sky next as outstretched arms give chase
to them: its hands caked with dirt; gravel on nails
from the swept cement rock and line paint. This we

share like a communion, a church service. Young
and old, here and not here we rise and we
fall prostate next to the prayers of the net, the brush of fingertips
against fabric against rubber, each palm
of the ball a Sunday chorus stretching, congregation, religion,

swept from the sky and made to kiss ground where
the gods of our sweat and grit belong.

Answering prayers
is easier than sticking
it out
Blessed be thee
and on the run
to the next sucker who'll
Fall
flat
short
pancaked
Face down in his own
grovelling

Keep the **** to yourself
If AIDS, genocide, starvation
never got his attention
The girl of your dreams
never will matter.

through misty nights and starless skies,

those years by the kitchen sink,

or pancaked mornings, burning bright,

sit we would, over a drink,

over childhood days and childless hearts,

upon tears over us or prettier things,

caught your gaze, once or twice

when Mary chased me over to a scary brink

of what, now, I fail to recall

as I fail to recall many links

remember, when once, on a green afternoon

you lulled in sleep over chicken wings,

and now I lie among roses ******,

for Johns, Coopers and other things

and now we can be forever friends,

and forever lean by kitchen sinks.

that's nice, mm, that's nice,
cover it up, keeping up appearances,
let's smooth it over, butter it up,
mm, slimy pistons moving
easily greased? indeed, for someone
who is to master the names of
many things, you seem overly
concerned over-using pronouns,
so you can't get coordinates,
you're abstracting basically,
smoothing things out, you're the easiest
to spot abstracting via a censor methodology,
i know you're not a philosopher
a snake eating its own tail with verbiage
of having thought out so much you
could claim to be a miner, but buckling
to a pancaked face when told to do rhetoric...
they really really do want to steal that
page from your hands, it's not a set-list,
you're supposed to be a trained monkey,
white paper and stages don't work
unless they're hidden...
but **** me, eroding your memory like that,
you must really love your work
to remember it like prayers...
i don't get it, politicians get away with it,
it's not heartfelt, it's autocued...
poetics promo... but why is it promo (reveal),
so abstracting means revealing?
i thought it was more like hiding something
and getting caught *******...
poetics occulto? so which is it, abstracting
is a way of revealing something or hiding something?
i mean, overusing pronouns and not engaging
in proper noun usage seems a bit futile
in a multicultural scenario of cubists using
african face masks for inspiration, excessive bloom
of lips and nose sharpened by the artists's eyes
into needle thin contorts - africans don't like
things being bouncy and bubbly... they like sticks
it would seem.

Pancaked to concrete
Van broken down
114 degrees.

Can't eat.
Can't speak.


I am lifting California off my back.


A thousand windows
steaming,

my hand curving down them
turns sidewinder  through mojave
  no relief, heartless people, concrete on fire,

cleaning perceptions
for better views

brown leaves carpet everything

even on my days off
I feel ladder rope
carving my wounded hands

survival mode on high
selfish city stabbing me

everywhere I go
Babylon against me.

It's no surprise
but now it's time

to burn rubber
and get the **** outta here.

Let's end this pretense
You don't know
What you are looking for here
Perhaps you've been taught good form

And you think you look for that
Perhaps you've been taught an appreciation of beauty
And you think you look for that

Perhaps you have an ear
It's clear what sounds dear to your ear

Perhaps you're just desperate
Will use this in your Darkness

I have been

Perhaps you're fumbling about
In life

Seeking a reliable
Rhythm

I can say
*** ***

I can see
Thru this

Thinning of lies
to the thickening

of maple sugar
time

pouring in
on my pancaked
day

you r so sweet
an' incomplete




Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­      But Truly Write

                                   Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 21

                    …poems are gatherings of words, in good order, in
                    simple order, plain and appealing.

                          -Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p. 77

A line of contemporary prosetry
Is a catalogue of florid structures and worn-out cliches
Pancaked with adverbs and tiresome metaphors
Flung down in a confusion of unconnected gasps

If you have something to say, then say it
Then tidy up the lines – like washing your face
With soap and water and a cotton towel
And then admire the sunlit, fresh-air truth

Craft your lines of transcendent poetry
As clean sharp-edg’ed truth in well-scrubbed words