our coolest babysitter lit a long joint and drove us to church
in her well worn '87 oldsmobile with chipped gold paint
a drooping side mirror and a tape player
that smelled like stale london gin mothballs
and a sunset butterfly heart at the same time
it had a deep ocean green calcite mandala
dancing from the windshield mirror
and a steal-your-face tattooed on the back glass
she used to blare brit-pop trying
to make the speakers bleed

that day when they finally oozed she swerved us
left through the other lane and sunday morning fog
to cut a jagged path through thick woods and into an oak tree
with a soundtrack of slow motion oasis and screeching tires
i clammored to the backseat to block the window
glass from your beautiful angelic blonde head as
dew sprayed into the vacancy from the ditch and
when i pulled the seatbelt spiderweb out of your mouth
and lifted you out of the car i was standing
barefoot in a cluster of bright red sumac next to
an ant hill pile of twisted steaming metal
and you were dripping blood from your eye and knees
asking me if we'd be late for sunday school
but you were awake and trying to smile so
we followed the powerlines back to the main road
holding hands dizzy and sweating
worried no one would ever find us
limping while the springtime songbirds
held their tongues for us but
when the hot ringing in my ears finally stopped
the sirens grew loud and close and the
birds too began their wet lipped eulogy

sometimes i think about
missing church that day
when the weather's bad
on nights like last night
sometimes i remember
our babysitter when
the fog rolls in over
the road in the morning
i wonder if she still
gets high on the
good stuff while
she drives or
if she's just
a treehugger

She sat outside the barber shop
In a silent plea
A statue blowing 2nd hand smoke
Into the faces that be
Almost threatening the men
To cut their white hares
The powerlines hissing as she glared

like the cool summer wind you came as the sun fell beneath the horizon
and the moon poked its shiny bald head out, in a vague attempt
to make everything  right you held my hand from dusk until dawn
we named constellations and spoke of imaginary lives
that you promised would come true should i have the patience to wait

but as the sun began to rise, you packed my bags,
you rushed me to the station,
you bought my train ticket
with the words good riddance
underneath your breath
like a smack in the face
with desperation
i begged
you
to let me stay

you left before the train did and as it pulled out of its tracks
with the sound of speed, the sight of powerlines and blurry trees

and i am (another broken promise, another mistake,
another you, another me, another ex, another us,
another one that bit the dust) gone

even teddy said i got the sickest tricks brah.
like my abilities source from some kinda legendary liquid
                                                                ­                      / praise the lord /
monster energy should sponsor me.
a kickflip over the king’s *** hole
& a halfcab for the looky-loos.
i feel so tall when i climb that heap of asphalt trimmings
& see clear from the water tower to the bluffs.
gimme a good day, any day at the bluffs,
bottlerockets & girly birds.

her body brings a swarm of worms.
decomp,
said the f.b.i. men one by one with tweezers.
not quite the homecoming queen, still
wrapped in plastic.

look up.
see that great mess of wires, nest of powerlines and owl bones?
it crackles and croons its electro-spectral purr
all night and day.

new neck tat &
cody spends his paycheck on a crossbow.
we target practice on a bull skull.
wet cigarettes and turpentine-soaked socks for a good huff
in the dry of the roofline as it dumps.

there’s that little boy in a ghost mask again, tap-dancing
in puddles below the streetlamp,
& oversized shoes.
his grandmoms always be watchin’ from the window.
[whispers] she’s teaching him magic.

lucky unit 19: where our young dead damsel once dolled
herself up, you see
men and headlights would roll thru thrice nightly,
maybe more.
& i remember her punch red lips &
big whicker hat; while she weeded and watered her garden of begonias.

the sheriff’s deputy, hart? hicks? hogan? well he loved her a bunch.
stole her clothes in the middle of the night,
& sat beside the river sobbing into clumped fists
of bra and blouse.
i bought ******* from that guy once or twice.
harold? howard?

guess who showed his face today?
josiah, from unit 08.
since the incident with molly’s beagle, he’s been rarely seen.
took a bee line straight for the mailbox.
a package. a prize. a decoder ring/secret map sweepstakes
to be seen and deciphered.

There are too many people here.
Streets are crowded with vendors
and an indelible smell thickens.
Buildings are painted a faint blue, or pink;
they rise upwards, lofty and erratic.
On the balcony of my hotel their roofs are speckled;
one of every color.

Outlandish art fills sun-glazed shops.
Some are only twenty feet wide. Motorbikes
wiz down the cracked roads with intimidating speed.
I look up to the knotted powerlines strung above
cluttering the backdrop of twine green trees.

In the humidity, there is no fresh air.
I can scarcely breathe. Here is a city
impractically shaped, a different world,
but the tender is coming as I descend further.

In the interior is Birla Orphanage
where laughter spreads.
The children wade gigantic waves
on the shore of Do Son Beach.
Mucky water sticks to the sand on our skin.

A boy, three feet tall, beautiful bright brown eyes
peers into my life. I do not know his language,
the most we can do is share gaping smiles
as this city unfolds its secrets to me.

Tonight's grey cloud hangs over the pearlescent blue and pink of today.
The gray is an avalanche
criss-crossed  
with black
powerlines
that spread like cracks in a mirror.

The rain starts to fall.

To my right is a young blonde
age (17?) unknown.
        Her bag and telephone
would
match
        but for a shade.

The rain starts to fall.

Young lovers kiss in the calm embrace of one another
beneath an awning the colour of
old ladies - no
boredom - no
subjugation -no.
        the under side of an old mattress.

The rain starts to fall.

Across the gap stands an Asian man with the complete accoutrements of a golfer.
Obfuscated now by a train
with the palette of a McDonald's ad.

The rain starts to fall.

The streets are become slick
and every lamp bleeds the start
of an oil painting
with brushes made of light.

The air is cool.

There is a canal that stretches between seats, walled by rows of heads.
In the distance a little girl peaks her head up in the middle of all this,
she wears a bright pink plastic bow on her head that blinks and glows.

Traffic lights streak
green and red
over black gesso.

Cars streak
silver and blood
down black gesso.

"I simply don't need to cheapen things further"

Matching work uniforms.
Matching looks of boredom
Matching shoes and glances
Matching telephones
Matching lack of conversation
Matching hair
Matching matching carpet and drapes
Matching posture

why is everything matching?
       (they got off at the same station)

Suburban princess holds the phone like a bible.

I attempt to sketch her arm in my head....but I am too ******.

I am hungry.
The outside air is cool.

This is a carriage for the antisocial
3 rooms of solitude.
Everyone is plugged in
No-one dares to speak.

The Art of Conversation.

An old woman sits in front of me, with the face of Ray Winstone in drag.
Her hair is a dandelion
and her eyebrows are birds
painted in the distance.
Hands wrinkled and knotty
like old fruit.

Trains are predictable
the purest form of modern transport
all the little fishies
in the giant metal can
are silent to one another.

The train conductors voice is boredom.

I mistake ambient noise for music.

I. That summer the radio
Played nothing but Cat Stevens
While I hummed harmonies
In my first car
It was a wild world indeed
when kudzu overtook
The cornfields
All the ears were foreigners
The leaves basked in light
That dead-ended on route 15

II. That fall we spotted UFO's
Shining over the municipal
Park
We chased them across the
Ballfields
To the high school cross country course
A dirt track running
Through the woods
And when there was nothing
Alien lurking there
Our hopes fell
Faster than the stars

III. The following winter
Three inches of ice cut the powerlines
Impounded our school supplies
With the outtages
And the temperatures plummeting
Seventy percent of our hearts froze
All the parts that were water
Expanding our chests
Like balloons
Expanding our vision too
We thought this was the beginning
Of the end of St. Clair county
We though we'd all get out someday

IV. By spring the graveyard smelled
Like lilacs
And dead town elders
Came out to dance in the scent
We played capture the flag there
On school nights
And the cops could never catch us
Behind the headstones
Of our family plots
We wrote our own epitaphs
"I was water and I could have been
A fine wine"
*I fell asleep in sweet green clover to the sound of smalltown sirens...

the boots are *****,
from stamping the ground.

the wet sound of
rain-stricken earth.
as if we could pay strangers,
such as our therapists;

whom have their own powerlines.

Rainy summer day,
storming actually
The kind of day that made you want to crawl under the covers and forget yourself
drift off to sleep

Still
despite the navy skies
It was still summer

summer means peaches
big ones, bursting, dripping
honey nectar and sunshine

so we make a peach pie
cinammon and sugar sticking to our fingers like slow molasses
underscored by the constant drip, slip, flooding
arranging produce like composers

and we waited
we waited for the pie to bake
we waited for the crust to crisp, for the sugars to melt,
for the peaches to ripen, to brown and butter
we waited for the rain to stop
we waited for sunshine, for dry shoes, for beach days, powerlines
we waited for hours
we waited for months
we waited eighteen years
we sat, and we stood, and we waited.

We sat in front of the oven
eyes pressed against the window
we waited
watched the sugars bubble, the scented cloves
we were two years old and one hundred at the same time
we waited for the kind of lives that we saw in movies
the kinds of dreams you wanted so bad it hurt
we waited with stomachs churning
wasting our youth, one rainy afternoon at a time
waiting for life to begin

Rainy summer day,
storming actually
The kind of day that made you want to crawl under the covers and forget yourself
forget about the peaches
forget about summer, about friends,
about anyone and anything
drift off to sleep

The winds howl through the valley
galloping across the fields
gusting into town

knocking down garbage cans
rattling grain silos

shoving highway traffic
stealing people’s hats

blasting tractors
slapping around limbs and branches

knocking live powerlines to the cold winter ground

interrogating clattering palm trees
threatening creaking, aged oaks

They’re just outside the door, now
whispering, moaning, vehement,  loud.

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.

My palate makes the switch from heavy hops to rooibos, ignoring
The powerlines and harmonies and busy highways.
There’s a chill in my bones upon discovering something beautiful:
Someone who can play the piano,
The disconnectedness from self I learn to love,
The gradual erasure of self
Into
Silence
Apart from the occasional clever word and smug smile.
As love spills towards me like a waterfall from the mountain,
I solemnly realize that I have a problem and the bitter-
Sweet voice replies “So do we all.”
I trust and love that voice more than everything:
More than the wallpaper that has guided my trip up the stairs for years,
More than the cigarette-smoke smelling basement,
More than the front yard that tastes like pine sap and motor oil.
I take to the neighborhood the same way
A shark takes to the taste of blood.
I could write for ages about that basement and the spaces of it I never walked
The corners I only gazed at as if they were the darkest depths of the human soul
And never touched --
Because they felt like ghosts upon my skin,
Because the television cast a glow on them that told me to avoid them.
It lives in my sternum, like the pill which sticks in my intestines
And eats away at the tender membranes til they burst.

we see angels in forklifts fixing our powerlines but we never see the snake in the river handing out our medication. it's mediation that keeps us mellow.
monday's blues.
tuesday's yellows.

I saw a squirrel without a tail,
running on some powerlines.
He didn’t seem to really care,
that his **** was missing a puff of hair.
Cause he ran as fast
and jumped as high
as any other squirrel.
So it made me wonder,
why the heck
do squirrels have tails at all.
I thought it through
and realized
It doesn't matter if theres one or not.
A squirrels a squirrel
dangit

There were still little words grated in the brush, ourself riding around, a great black horse,

the eyeliner, and an iris forest escapes.  I am the flowering fire, a sunset westcoast in the twinkling

airwaves, or radiowaves, and so we can breathe the literal mass of wind.  The green carressed and

aerially blessed, deepness and depth; what is truly grey.

The powerlines stretch hungrily for days, we see the purple glow and thus it exists-- we graze like

ghosts or bugs and try to find the blessed.  We wind up and clear the smoke, and blindness is only

black until death peers through, and calls the bird call, a shrilling through the spiritual silence.

I can see you on maps, you reoccur the same, giant and all. You are the same story and dwell

in roles through my brain.

I want to cut heart-shaped holes in his wall
so he can see the clouds
billow and pucker up for him, so he can know exactly
how much I love his soft, pale patches of skin
in the expanse of a happy sky
and its clear skin. Ripples as wind
across grass
picking up the skirt of some meadow down south
the powerlines fell but there is still
electricity all over him, I am the kind of lover who
has a heartbeat only in someone
else's hand. I want to have a window into his.

a murmuration of starlings
shivers over an empty parking lot

blue sky emerges from the gloom
and then disappears again

indifferent to my approach, a stray cat
yawns and blinks its copper eyes

grackles gather on the powerlines
in the middle of the day

weeks early, autumn winds
chase leaves down the sidewalks

anxious about the fate of the nation
I search for signs and portents

a wave crests and then is gone
I comfort myself by remembering

that it has always been so

Tom Spencer © 2018

would that the wind-flung
raindrops at my window were pebbles
thrown by my lover.

white Geranium prunings
left lying in a heap
this morning, snowballs in the yard

what is your question?
triangle face tilts toward me
Praying Mantis asking

tuxedo cat
chin pulled in
licks crumbs from his dicky front

powerlines- a stave
ruled on a page of white sky
making music- perched starlings.

this hill is getting old
on one side her skin is gone
slipped into the sea below
her bones are showing through
I know how she feels

driving home from Mahia
way out to the left
across the green sea
sun breaks through cloud
strikes  triangular white cliffs
a row of giant shark teeth
Wow  I shout
Wow

Bronwyn,changing white clay into frogs
moans  “It's the toes that take the time”.

windstirred bamboo
black brushed on
silver moontrack
spilling down
rippled sea.

Frog steeped in knowledge
of the mysteries of pools
tells me only “croak”

WAIHEKE

the Island lies far off
sea bites off bays then licks
my memories fade

ZIG ZAG

unseen visitor
left a calling card behind-
tiny feather floats

I'll be the slumpy man
caught on the clotheslines in the wind
strung out on powerlines
graced by the company of crows
and the circling buzzards
all hungry for my eyeballs

I'll be the slumpy man
hung over the sofa
draped across recliners
trying to dry out
before my braincells die out
trying to stay awake and sober

Mountain rocks are calling me in
I waved goodbye to you
As you cried from the drive

I could smell you on my shirt
As I sat down on the diamond
Sharp tool box

The sun sets down between long powerlines
Running to the mainland
I felt the weight as it set
Oranges and yellows and reds
Paint the corner of the clouds

Goodbye

The humdrum of machines. A missed cycle, a bad bearing, a bent fan blade.
It makes a music like no one would believe. The electric hum of powerlines and transformers. The clanks and jeers of a crowded bar, the cheers of an arena.

The construction on your neighbors houses while you set in humble shame. Jackhammers, swinging hammers. Little handlebar bicycle rings from the children you never had.

Sometimes, you want to say **** it, and burn the world down. Then you remember, some people aren't unhappy. It's not your place to sabotage their trampoline. Sometimes you're just who you are, and no one else, and nothing else matters.

Sometimes you're you. The rest of the times you're just trying to be.

The city sees deciduous trees
Sparsely populating
Their concrete streets

Barely brown remnants
Of formally great forests
That branched out beyond
Our small minded conception

Bisected by buzzing powerlines
Spindly fingers clench tightly to
Old empty robin’s nests
Until frost and rain
Dismantle those ghost homes

Once vibrant basking in
The sun’s brilliance
Now anorexic
Throwing up multi colored leaves
Bulimically
Before winter’s burn

I was an assassin,
With magnifying glass and firecrackers,
Bringing *****'s destruction down on pismires.
BB's left feathers fluttering on powerlines;
Slingshots made Swiss cheese of tree nests.
It's the Wild West outside the urban boundary
Where the .22 slew coyotes and red-tailed foxes.
Old dogs and tired cats were destroyed.
And just now, when the January thaw is here,
I trapped a housefly between my windows,
Opened to draw air.
It will die of starvation in a merciless frenzy.
"******," cried the old king.
"Most foul."

dangling from the
powerlines

crescent moon
and morning star

luminous jewels
suspended

above a blinking
stream of brake lights

crawling
into the dawn


Tom Spencer © 2019

lambskin cut the wrong way
to make the wolf more obvious

hanging from powerlines
floating, endlessly ******* floating
motion forced into reality
next to the wall I'm slumped on

Help me shatter this day. Our bodies make
transitions unbearable. All of us here hiding secrets. By design,
we are silent. It takes me days to fully sing.
                 We think walls are our doing, bridges our undeniable shame.
  There are things following me: the bird soaring, another one flat on
   the roof, and the other atrill on umbilicus of powerlines.
  This day is composition – let this day atonal. From where I sit,
  daily pursuits key in difficulties – eyes closed deep but not aslumber,
  are purblind: gauge me in this order: feel the world scabrous like Braille. In a world of continuing
  breakage, what is there to hold together.
                If not, a debris pattern. A held rigor in suffering – there is that
  crisp, sweet taste in the air again like some air winding out of ***.
  Look at me through dappled windows as reflection of an oncoming storm.
    Help me splinter this day. Placate my tremor of, and fasten me dearly
set beyond the grooves of this day. I teach myself a coruscating example – to reach for
  and break. To stop you climbing, plodding your way to a conclusion,
   waylaid you in your place and summoned your fiddling of chance – the duration is
lined by obeisance towards an endorsed situation issued, not accrued.
                  We are somewhat conveying this burden to equal our weight. Must we
  be afloat, what hoists our rebellion? What must we be
       to endure,    to witness these wondrous beatings ballast our gravities,
          no warning of, and against reliance. Is our being here what we determine.

The coffee ***'s braying invaded my daydream
so I snapped out of it and fixed myself a cup.
I sat back down at the kitchen table and
focused on the twirls and curls of steam.
Seeing the water join my atmosphere made
me think of prospective goals and my future.

Positive thinking, you know.

Such thoughts were like admiration for someone
who hates themselves; pointless and unwanted.
My eyes drifted to the sliding glass door and
I took a gulp, shuddering at the caffeine fixation.
I wasn't looking at the birds on the powerlines,
or the morning fog lingering under overcast skies.
Just at the two panes of glass and the cross-hatched
pattern of plastic supports that existed between them,
like expression caught inside of idealistic traditions.

Like seeing house pets kept in a cage.

At some point in my unfocused gazing my
thoughts shifted from the future to the past, and
I felt a hollow remnant of ex-lovers sitting with me.
They sat looking at me sip cooling coffee,
seeing me look at the sliding glass door.

Like an egotistical mirror manic with vanity and pride,
the reflection of the door showed myself watching me
and I liked what I saw inside.

I promise I am that fool of which I speak
The powerlines prowess admits to me,
In its careless potential and off color decree,
But I do not listen to it’s evening exposé,
Opt for inspecting the way it’s wires bend and contort in the breeze
The cut in the cord and the energy it seeps,
The pensive cold blue of rapid release

It’s burnt and **** and treats me with a saga of distaste
I sway wishing for the musty lust in the tangible fillet
A muddled display of connectivity, after it’s time and still I hope not too late.
In all the contact reveries, you will not find one of such dismal elation
Just a spark in need of a metaphysical escalation
I plead for a being I cannot fool

paint me this picture, sonorous color
clutching the quiet ****

             pressed against cloying scenes,
        a loose hand bannering a bayonet.

rivet me waters, and much of the Earth
tightly groping inlands,

                thatched in the branch nowhere alone,
                is the song of God lullabying cities.

again the whole sky with its keen eyes
manifests a gleam worth knowing a cherub,

                 and sooner than it is later, when the seasons
    postpone their flamboyances, chiaroscuros of smoke,
   deceit, uncared for and unheard shrieks bounce off careless corners
    and the song of God is but static with little wings clipped
    and tossed into vicissitude:

song   or    no   song
bearing a fruition of attrition:

                    resounding far-away:  a comatose  of cars,
             a scuffle of powerlines, a melee of battlement and tranquil

continually     fluster the  child
   in  metronomic dance.