And in the whitest dark I
Ask for only that
To keep
Me there, for just the span of
Your snowglobe smile
That aftershock nightlight in the
Afternoon heat
Wait for me there
With your bayonet heart
Hands
Shoulders
Beneath the powerline
Wire, asleep but for me
Awake but for
The rest
And doze after
Half-light dreams and
Headrush spotlights that
Blur and
Mar my
Little love frame
Bright night air, fill
Every niche
Till whole is all
And all is this

white clouds swell up
anvil bloom

a lowering gloom
scuds by

stacatto drops
on the windshield

punctuate  
powerline sway

radio crackle
sparks

sheets of tenor sax
and blunt

gusts of cool
I lower the window

and steer
into the storm


Tom Spencer © 2018

Weaknesses
My weakness is sweets, but don’t get it twisted, no food is found to weaken me. But a sweet personality can, so can a sweet smile, or a sweet touch. Basically sweet people are like sweet candies  of different cultures, and I shall be a proud cultural culinary taste-tester, moving races like NASCAR in motion.
My weakness is money. The all mighty dollar isn’t so almighty to me, but what it can do is. I long for the materialistics of life that money can bring, and the attention it can get you from supermodel brides or low-key bed warmers. I like the feeling of being wanted and tolerated regardless of what I’d do and how I’d do it.
My weakness is power, for, if I held the power of a man’s life and spared him, he’d be loyal indefinitely, and that would be enough to satisfy my needs to feel loved. I’d have a friend who felt indebt to me, and that feeling of needing to accommodate would change my view on what was real and what wasn’t.
My weakness is attire, for you see, when I walk into a room, I want to draw the eyes of those watching, hateration rising in their veins and jealousy shown on there face. I want the Black haired beauty with the short red skirt and open-toed stilettoes with the dark purple toe nails and thick hips to come my way and think lustfully of me, is it a crime to desire such reactions?
My weakness is body, for I love a girl who can take care of herself. Long hair, manicured nails, teeth that aren’t begging to be drilled, it’s a weakness I have and can’t seem to fix. But then again, why would I desire to fix it? I’m not asking for perfect like a conceited rejectionist, or wanting more than what I can give like I was lying to myself, I want someone who can keep up with themselves before even attempting to keep up with someone else.
My weakness is *** appeal, because whenever she bites her lip and looks in my eyes, I can see rockets shooting through her glass lenses and aiming at me. But once I smile back, determined face, cute features and as much appeal as I can muster, explosions happen in her body that causes goosebumps to pepper her flesh like shrapnel in a war-zone.
My weakness is skin to skin, after all, it’s my right to want to be loved, why not demonstrate it by holding hands? Why not live past the edge and on the tip of existence like birds on a powerline? I am careful enough and she’d be loving enough that no vibes of failing would even cross our way.

There was a squandering ember that climbed her spinal chord
and lit the deteriorating birchwood on the peach-fuzzed tea lamps.

When those stairwells cramped and swelled with staggered liquid terraces
in the foundational pin-cushion that cradled family after family.

Woe begone chants that railed support beams moaning under elemental abuse.

A litter of ghost kittens coiling underfoot where the rug
used to yawn before the grandfather clock,
now senile and rotting with absent-minded tick-tocks.

Inside her streetcorner, the music was that
monkey hopping to street ***** blue notes on somber ropes.

The air thick with the regal, chunky vibe
of batting eyes, flirty sighs, and bourbon.

Between the buildings again...
embraced with the same warm feeling that
entrances your fingertips, lips, and ears when within a man's arms.

In this city, Love is those two birds on that same powerline
that bowed and ebbed with summer's sweet sigh.

The rat king sits upon his throne of a thousand skulls,
gives all he's got to convict doom on the dead man in the boat.
But looking back, One will notice the last words the dead man penned.
He gave his once empty soul to the Almighty, and practiced this nightly.
Sincerely signals of love surround a joyful surrender.
.
I am the lonely bird on the powerline.
I am the lonely homeless man holding the sign.
Just take one look at this town, and it'll make you frown.
I wanna live, I wanna give.
.
There is the abandoned, forsaken boy.
Secluded, solitary, reclusive. Oh, what an outcast from joy.
Raging wars of hatred and lonesome in his head.
Wondering what happens when he's dead.
Suddenly hits rock bottom and retracts his rejected heart into a harden.
Thereafter, he identifies how to stop blame and grant pardon.
For he catches glimpse of a Love that no one could fathom.
He sees the One who parted the seas.
Discovering that there is someone who loves him dearly.
The Lord with no confines and is with him every step of life.
Sincerely signals of love surround a joyful surrender.
.
I am the lonely bird on the powerline.
I am the lonely homeless man holding the sign.
Just take one look at this town and it'll make you frown
I wanna live, I wanna give.
Let go, and let God. For tomorrows never promised.

In the caste of what the fir trees denoted what should be or what should not be,
I clasped the fig twigs and watched them split as if to say that all must come to an end.
And in the end, who can the charred leaves blame if there should be tire rods and hubcaps strewn  
                               across the forest's floor?

After totaling the costs of what should not be,
the last mast of yesterday's trade boat could skiff along the shore,
with flag flailing like the playground children's hands.

Irrationality piquing: birds dip and dive like a boxer's fists made of shadow
from one powerline to the next.
Training for the changing, biting winds, watching the unconscious cars staring.

And the skiff oozing through the unmentionables littered in the creek : what will
become of him?

Lodged in stale, fossil bones -- floundered between the swingset and the droning, dusty traffic at 3 a.m.
Metamorphic scarabs stolen from the gusts and pants of too much play.
Basketballs stained with carrion, precarious gusto in the wake of money suckling and ripping alongside                            
        the skiff.

Cross here with two pennies.

Goaded by the solitary abandonment of the 1930's, the used ******'s mouth gaping open like hungry carp, dusty trails of light from the past lamplight hanging in the air

Birds measured up along the powerlines, moving mindlessly along with the flock
Bird drones, feathery spines
Birds perched along the playground.
Bird play so far as to say
        does this not look familiar?

Bobbing, weaving, slathered in cadence and involuntary muscle jerks.

First we were here
Then we were not.

Life is the answer to the stars’
first question: Am I known?



Beyond the reflections and grime
of my office window
a pair of crows
is grooming one another
on top of a powerline pole.

Gently, he works his sturdy beak
along the nape of her neck
- and then she responds,
rubbing the edge
of her beak against his.

Two sets of obsidian eyes
- just lashes apart -
join for a moment’s mirroring -
an ember of knowing
alight in a jet-black world.

Leaning against the glass
the pulse of my breath
clouds and clears -
forming beaded wings that
ascend and then, disappear

into the longing
to be known.


Tom Spencer © 2017

My summer palette
If it were perfect
Would consist of...

47 gum drop
45 tangerine twist
53 sour blast
36 thin mint
24 tranquility
97 frosted
21 cotton candy
22 not-aye girl
38 alien
18 powerline
11 black cherry
66 kool-aid
49 calabria
71 mochi
02 mocha
01 solar beam
52 stellar
41 rusty
13 always October
17 honeycrisp
55 sun-kist
99 starburst

And I would wear this palette
Proudly
For it is me
A little always October in me
And in love with a sunset
Hopeless romantic
Who hasn't reached love yet
So I reach for stars
And solar eclipse
And run miles up and down
Thin lanes of traffic
Chasing dreams
All while wearing my palette
Proud

Since the body carries ashes,
We can agree on a minute full of silence.
The nightmare that crosses over:
            Now one foot in, one foot out
            And the jealousy’s already set in.
Two foul swoops, one kiss alive
And arms already divide in surrender.

That was the first mistake,
A moment most secure in mind,
                                    In thought,
                                    In heart
Behind a barricade of trembling worlds,
            A shaking utterance of a misspoken exchange.

I mean, what do you say?

            What can you say
            without giving it away?


Into the Broken and Want.
Unto the thought between
            the Memory and the Hopeful.

I saved it all for this.
            When I turn from stars to lights
            and I want sights that behold
            a white light that the purest of
            innocence could not see.
I waited for all this.
And the rest could not stir before the stares could not blink.

The symmetry of a child’s song is the summer’s last fire.
And on this wire is a sorrow’s flaked choke.
Passion’s thread through a needle’s eye
where we sat on a rock beneath the
            olive branch to listen to
            the beard of wisdom.

The adrenaline like a hyper fly’s flight,
and those two birds crossed on the same powerline
            could feel the Earth tremble
            when our minds could not.
It was all in time, I know.

I rustled the trees
and the child did know it was time to leave.
This plundered sigh – a harvested verse ripped from the Truth.

god are you there? please talk to me

god?

please

suspended
holding my breath

as the crow floats down
lightened

before landing
wing tips fluttering

talons extended
reaching

for the top
of the powerline pole



Tom Spencer © 2019

a stenographer, suddenly faced with the importance
of a freshly-inked word on a desiccated page
was so silent, and silence dictates

it spoke volumes, but she was deaf
so her hand just plotted along...

it was as if the texture of the page suggested it
and away the pen ran along the grooves
the scholars were so **** upset
so uptight, alone and aloof

so they spoke to themselves, to no others
and no one fully listened, or tried
(just half interested nods
with minimal eye
contact

and we waited for the end)
as we had walked along
the dusty shoreline

you said;

'I hear the clattering of the television in the next room
the scant candlelight manifests over the dead powerline

& when anyone reads, re-reads it,
I will wonder what was being carried on about
and speculate why your persuasion pervades
a soul-crushing cheapening of the divine
an endless routine, banality of eternity
strength or weakness in our climbing limbs
hosts and the departing parties, faces sans grins

The power line outside my window is like me in so many ways.
It is long, but skinny.
Just like me.
The energy, it courses through it and explodes at random moments
Just like me.
It has great potential, but it is confined.
Just like me.

The energy in the powerline is not like me.
It always chooses the simple path, the easy one.
But I like to challenge myself.
It always chooses the path closest to the ground.
But I am a climber.
It has a chosen destination. It knows where it is going.
But I don’t.

I have no idea where my life will lead.

the house door shutting
coins in my pocket as i run
shoes on the gravel drive
buzz of the powerline
silence of the sunrise
the calm before the
the grind of the brakes
click click click
            of the bus lights
the squeak
            of the folding door
bullies insults and names
             insults and names
my heart in my ears
             thump thump thump