LET SLEEPING PTERODACTYLS LIE


Rusted scythe
perched on a nail


high up on a wall
a sleeping pterodactyl.


I can't stop myself touching
it to see if it is - real.

Smacks its lips
laps up my blood


from my foolish fingertip
deceived by shadows.


It's grin glinting
the smile come alive.


The ghost of a horse
whinnies in the stable


that's gone long gone
the then merging into the now.


Or maybe Mr. Death
too tired to go on

hangs up the instrument of his trade
time to retire the old bones.

“No way to make a living!”

I back slowly away
blinded by the sunlight

that screams. . ."Run!"

Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

In my dream a wise man told me
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Glass pterodactyls are falling
Like raindrops from the sky.
The answer is in a caravan,
Should judges ever lie.
Beware of turning into them,
Lest the angels realign,
Leave us fighting
A war  we don't understand.
Turn to wayward follies
Should specters cease to be.
Skeletons sleep in closets,
Dreaming to break free.

Hypotheses abound, regarding the extinction
of the reptilian hordes, those base or of distinction.
Some aver, and others vow, things must have gone this way
and when I hear such lofty speech, I clear my throat and say:

“It seems to me that when we speak with such calm certitude
we miss the possibility of death by attitude.
For when I look upon these bones of prehistoric herds
I catch a glimpse of simpler times, and then I see the “birds”

For while the stegosaurus trod with stoic steps so slow
I perceive he may have been arraigned as one below
the wild heights of soaring things, with pointed, cackling heads
who mocked him at his every turn (which stegosauri dread)

And so as this terrestrial life was bound to suffer so
The pterodactyls found great fun to drive them all to woe
They drove them off, by day and night, until they were defunct,
the primal victims of a craft; the first to e’er be punk’d”

Look me in the eyes
Look deep into my soul
because underneath the new plaster where all the cracks used to be
that where your fingerprints lie
Tell me what is keeping us together
because when walk in the door
the butterflies of excitement turn into pterodactyls of anger
Because your unwillingness to pull your soul out into the light
So that we can re-plaster the walls
And harness the power of what you hold within
It's lonely on this side of the fence
Look me in the eyes
Look deep into my soul
Do you see all the work I've put in
The clutter is gone now
The power is in my hands now
you can do it to if you just try
we can harness your pterodactyls too

Come every morning you're up with the sun
with hundreds of questions before breakfasts done
like what is a rainbow and where is the dark?
what's that? and why's? can we go to the park?
the beach? the woods? as I sit here and dream
must we have cereal? I want ice cream!
You sit at the table, eyes wide, mine half shut
and chat to the cat about dinosaur stuff
how you like pterodactyls but school, not so much
you rummage through cereal in hope of a toy
one way to amuse such a curious boy
the cat swipes  the box, makes it fall to the floor
"there goes our breakfast!" as sweet laughter roars
you slurp at your juice as I sip at my tea
so it's ice cream for breakfast for you and for me.

Since the day I met You I knew You were no ordinary girl. It's not because your hair was more colourful than the northern lights or because your smile was so dorkishly adourable.

You see I would never really get nervous around girls, and I already knew you for a couple of years so the thought of there ever being something died a long time ago.

so I still cannot understand why when our hands interlocked that Wednesday morning, in that empty feild with nothing but us and the crickets, You managed to transform the butterflies in my stomach to pterodactyls, the frog that was once in my throat has been swallowed by a tyrannosaurus.

You made the feelings of a first crush come back to life, I relived it over and over until first crush was changed to first love.

But when you kissed me, when you kiss me the creatures in me became prehistoric. Their bodies burnt away with nothing but remains left behind, And their bones were used to build the foundation of the feeling that I still have today.

You know most people say when they have a special kiss they see fireworks, but girl when I first kissed you I saw a meteor shower.

recollecting collections projecting selections injecting protection infection dejection
dyslexic narcoleptic rejecting dejections ******* complexion complicating interjections
perplexed inspectors intercept pterodactyls relaxing in backpacks extracting disillusion
contortionist philanthropist dejected transgression implementing eradications of moss buying patrons
eclectic perfectionist rests limp-wristed whispering disparaging remarks to the wait staff
trombone percussionist impressed and impoverished gravelling wistfully mimicking Rickles
I sit half disheveled grinding my wisdom teeth feeling the fleeting muse sitting in disbelief –

The sun had not even risen when
Delaney opened his eyes,
To colours, bent through a prism, and
Rotating there in the skies.
He thought it might be the Northern Lights
But they’re not seen that far south,
And with them came a crackling sound
To sow the first seeds of doubt.

He rose and walked to the window,
To stand by the sliding door
That led to his private balcony
On the hundred and twentieth floor,
The world below was in darkness and
In shock, he began to shout:
‘Hey Mary, get up and look at this,
The lights of the city are out!’

The lights of the city were out, all right,
There wasn’t a glimmer of light,
In all the teeming metropolis
Not even a car’s headlight.
Mary sleepily rose from bed
And joined him there by the door,
‘It isn’t the dark that does my head,
What’s that on the balcony floor?’

And there in the shade of the balcony
Was standing a monstrous beast,
Its talons several inches long,
Its beak was a foot, at least,
It suddenly opened enormous wings
Then steadily folded them back,
With eyes that promised a thousand things
And one, the threat of attack.

It saw them there through the plated glass
And rushed across for its prey,
Hit the glass and it looked surprised
The two were backing away.
‘Call the firemen, call the police,
That thing will need to be shot.’
‘The signal seems to have gone astray,
And the cell phone’s all we’ve got!’

The sun came up through the morning mist
And it lit the city square,
Delaney got his binoculars,
Nothing was moving there.
The power was out, so there was no doubt
They were locked in their flat, for sure,
The door to the stairwell wouldn’t budge
On the hundred and twentieth floor.

No light, no heat, and down in the street
No cars that streamed that day,
It was just as if electricity
Had suddenly gone away.
Their door had a pin, and powered lock
As did every door below,
A hundred and twenty floors locked in
With nowhere they could go.

The day wore on in the morning sun
And the birds had multiplied,
Looking like pterodactyls they
Swooped over the countryside,
And five came down on the balcony
Of Delaney and Mary’s flat,
The food in the fridge was spoiling as
The ice dripped out on the mat.

They couldn’t cook, they couldn’t eat,
They couldn’t open a can,
The electric opener wouldn’t work
Nor the cleverer works of man,
And the pterodactyls sat in a row
Out on the balcony floor,
With eyes of hate they would sit and wait
Til someone slid open the door!

David Lewis Paget

The ideosyncrasies of the cities are not
found in the small towns,
the dirt poor brown towns,
the twitching of curtains and dressing gown towns,
but the **** pulls us out of the towns and into the city where the
sewers are home to the rats and the mountains built up on
the streets are a home for the cats,the fat cats,the purring cats, the sharing caring who am I kidding cats,
they are the leeches
weekdays in suits and the weekends in knickerbockers,breech loaders,the feeding free loaders,the gum boot brigade,tea,toast and marmalade,raid the pension accounts and they get an accolade brigade.
The small town mentality will be the death of me,I can see this is wrong but go along with it,up to my neck in it,with paddles I row in it,
the city is full of ****..


The cranes,
new age pterodactyls, chomping their way through the last of the daffodils,sending them downstream to a landfill in East Cheam,sometimes if I dream,I dream in black and white and the city then looks alright but in my heart I know it's crumbling,falling apart at the seams,held together by nightmares and more dreams from the townies,cub scouts and brownies,I don't dream a lot anymore.

he gives me butterflies the size of pterodactyls.
he makes me feel as if my name is safe within his lungs.
I don't know how to explain it, but there's something about him.
how cliche, I know.
but I love the way he breathes.
the way he holds his cigarette.

it didn't scare me when he told me he loved me after barely 3 weeks.
he was 16 drinks in, babbling, slurring.
but when he said it, he spoke so clearly.
sober thoughts.

I've never seen someone look at me like they've been waiting for me their whole life.

but his eyes have a certain innocence in them, and he can't hide from it.

his laughter whispers love letters.
the wind picks up his scent.

just how crazy young love can be.

somehow, I wish he were my first.
I wish I had never had feelings for anyone else,
because I have wasted feelings on other men when he deserves all of it.
all of me.

when I die, I want them I dust off my heart.
and only find his fingerprints.

Sea shell, sea shell,
By the stegosaur,
Millions of years prior to dinos
So often pictured together.

Why must it be so easy to
Break.

Pterosaurs are not all
Pterodactyls,
******.
And they are less bird
Than the monster you call T. rex,
Which was actually a scavenger.

Velociraptors don't exist as you think they do,
The closest thing you speak of are turkey sized
pack runners from Mongolia and China.
Or the Utah Raptor, over 6 meters long, from my native home land,
Utah.

You can't comprehend how much time
This Earth has been through.

We are less than the one percent.

The loneliness gets to me every once and a while. I actually do fine without anyone, but of course taking the time to think about it changes everything, scrolling through my dash on Tumblr, or just feeling the floating aura that radiates off of someone who’s in love…makes you feel the empty pit right below your sternum. And you wonder what it’s like to feel butterflies there…true butterflies. For me, they’d be pterodactyls; I don’t know what it’s like to truly feel for someone on that level and for the feeling to be returned in the same magnitude. This makes me wonder how people rush things. A touch should be cherished, and one should pull every bit of tingle from it that they can before he/she takes her hands away. I long for that, but I've done a fantastic job at convincing myself that I don’t. I can’t see myself being loved that way, so much that he would slow down, be serene and stoic with me, share all his thoughts and vibrations, and not be a total **** that falls into the stereotype of an attractive guy who can’t keep up a conversation. I feel no attachments to the people I've dated. None. Their faces and voices do not phase me like I once pretended they did. I’m drawn in by their ability to intrigue me and stimulate my mind, and then they stop doing it because they don’t understand how it satisfies me.

we both liked pterodactyls.
that much we knew for sure.
in between the what's your favorite band
and how long can you hold your breath
i fell in love with him.
we fit together like two puzzle pieces, he told me,
carefully crafted by somebody somewhere,
overlapping,
maintaining the symmetry we so beautifully created.
never have i seen another so clearly as when i looked in his eyes.
the paw prints tattooed on his back were from where an angel landed,
he said.
he asked to take a picture of my lips, he wanted to remember them.
every morning he wakes up and prays.
he loves god more than he loves man, and he believes in tibet and monks and the wu tang clan,
and a whole lot of other things i know nothing about.
he understands the world.
i only met him once,
but i havent stopped thinking about him since.

My springtime's never ending suns
I carry sunglow from window to bed,
planning, when the next day has come,
just as soon as the pets are fed,
and I've tidied up my empty head,
walked the dog, give cat the cream,
to run and jump and skip and play
not laze around and sleep and dream...
Too late! my pet's wet chomping jaws
send my dreams to damp moist earthy days
of screaming pterodactyls & dinosaurs...

My summer sun's they always shone
so brightly that they hurt my eyes,
and I hid and wished it, Begone!
with my false exasperated sighs...
I lazed around and fantasied,
conjured darkness for my needs,
and willed self toy for troglodytes
so dreamily these beasts use my hands on me
on dark cave floor's breed in me, such dreams...
Of Hekate's hounds entering... in my mind
behind the private door's of my eyes.

Now my Autumn comes crashing down
there's earlier settings of darker suns,
troglodytes and hell's hounds keep me bound
on stiff stalking legs ***** one-eyed proud
as creeping winters begin to run...
My pale face mirrored as I count my sum,
of my omniverse to find it finally means,
of my dreams this whole world wide,
dream leads to this... Whereof? I cannot dream...

The ocean spills
on a Thursday night
congested in between these four
skinned-down, off-white walls.
You're veering into retrograde,
obsidian and spiraling,
heavy and unsettling --
a plethora of pterodactyls gnawing their way
out of you
except on days like this,
they've grown too comfortable inside
and that is worse.

Here is to nights when pain screams your name
and misses your body
too much.
Pain,
whose unmapped origins,
make you loathe yourself
and everyone else.
Pain,
like maps to places
you don't want to revisit.
Pain,
like an abandoned amusement park
consumed by tall grass,
infested with pests
and memories
the past was never too kind
to make you forget.

LET SLEEPING PTERODACTYLS LIE

rusted scythe
perched on a nail
high up on a wall

a sleeping pterodactyl
I can't stop myself touching
it to see if it is - real

smacks its lips
laps up my blood
from my foolish fingertip

deceived by shadows
it's grin glinting
the smile come alive

the ghost of a horse
whinnies in the stable
that's gone long gone

the then
merging into
the now

or maybe
Mr. Death
too tired to go on

hangs up
the instrument of his trade
time to retire the old bones

“No way
to make a living!”
I hear him say

I back slowly away
blinded by the sunlight
that screams. . ."Run!"

I see dinosaurs down below
on the valley floor where
in the faunasphere
eggs are lain and
strange things grow.

It's easy in the aeroplane
to sit back with a gin and
explain it all away
with a,
'it's been a hard day, a funny week'
but I
take another peek
and they're still there
plus
four pterodactyls in the air.

This holiday
is home from home
my body and my mind will
roam.

Oh a Stegosaurus
pour us out another gin
one more and I'll
fit right in
to
the straitjacket.

In dreams we are
to become by far

a better version.

a state of bliss?

what update can this be.

certainly not Windows 93.

Through the shattered pane
again
outside in and strain my eyes
to see the same old view

nothing's new nor second hand
nothing's nothing
and that's a brand.

The intro's been and gone
to the end of time and
then

so long
Marianne

a song by Leonard Cohen
now why mention him?

Sorry 'bout that, but  
the name cropped up
so I slipped it in.

I see fractures in the fractals
candelabras on the ironing board
creases in which these words are stored
and pterodactyls overhead

the only thing certain is a prediction
and I have yet to believe in those.

Time flies by in the animated flashes between
the silver frames of the train’s windows,
moving as fast as each perceived thought,
a time machine rattling between future-past:
egg sandwiches downed with blue electrolytes,
rustling newsprint coexisting with touch phones,  
the woman in black journeying to a funeral
across from the discretely breast feeding mom,
a heart broken teen laughing at her exes
first TikTok dance she liked and saved.

A track repair forced a two hour timeout
for the executive in the gray suit
to the Natural History Museum, forcing
admiration of things greater than himself-
pterodactyls swinging on steel wires,
T-Rexes corseted in titanium tendons all
coexisting  with their extinction meteorite-
a flying blue whale finishing the diorama
of him ignoring his ancestors in ancient skins
around a dwindling fire pit as he exits.

The train rattles on slightly lurching
back and forth in a stasis of motion
that passes the upturned prairie grass
that transitions towards the end stop
and its final suburban destination.
The executive doodles a Buffalo
on his phone app, one that is obscured
by the barely drawn coal stoking locomotive
belching smoke like a cellophane flame
far from the small screen frame.

The smoke unravels to a vets wife
wearing a Navajo smock,
pearling and unpearling
the mistakes in the weave
of powder blue baby socks.
In the upheld light of her vision
the quartz bison teams the bluing
vista caught in the indigenous hunt,
red faces obscured in the herky-jerky
of horsed riders and hurling arrows.

She imagines her bright face boy
staring unblinkingly at the sky,
free of the stuttering window’s glare,
reveling in the glint of hooves and dust,
unaware of the rain and flies to come.

Lost inside my mind
There is no self to find
So I fragment into fractals
And I fly with pterodactyls
The colors overtake me
As the chemicals unmake me
Inside my mind’s eye, the mind’s sky is a firefly
No rhyme nor reason
No time or season
There is only here and now
There is no where or how
There is an untouched galaxy
There is no air or gravity
There is only cosmic unity
And perhaps a rainbow manatee

We may as well do it,
give them a treat,
throw them a bone
let them eat
something sweet.

I used to think they'd all gone
became extinct
after the meteorite bomb
how wrong was I?

everywhere we look
there's  diplodocus
eyeing us,

(is the plural of diplodocus, diplodocii?)
if not, why?

Pterodactyls **** on window sills
worse than pigeons ever were
and ain't it the truth that I'm scared of the
sabre tooth
(or should that be sabre teeth?)
tiger.

feed them popcorn anyway
until the day has worn away
and say your prayers.

I DREAMPT THAT I DWELT

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side"

my father would hum or sing
or da da dah'd as he sawed.

"And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride."

A shining smile of nails
as he hammered the tune home.

Carpentry was for me
songs and words and stories.

Tall tales and wood shavings
from my father's "reminiscings'".

Saw dust floating in a summer
were to me atoms made visible.

I played with wood instead
of planning it.

The various tools transformed
with one imaginative leap.

Hand drill and spirit level
became Star Trek ships

attacked by a fleet
of tape measures.

Hacksaws...jigsaws were
all the one to me really.

And yes I knew that tooth spacing
and tooth shape were important in a saw.

A wavy set and milled teeth for plastic and metals.
A side set and ground tooth  for a fast clean cut with wood.

But to me they were merely the teeth
of various pterodactyls in my Harryhausen mood.

And yes I planed wood
but only to release the genie of the pine.

The scent a magic
carpet ride.

And I planed and planed
until there was nothing left

but the graceful curl of
a sea of wood shavings.

Later he would laugh
when I brought him Carroll's parody.

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
went wobble-wobble on the walls..."

Or an Orwell even...

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?"

Or auld Jimmy the Joist
and his warping words

"When you dreamt that you'd wealth
in marble arch do you ever think of pool beg slowe."

Cracking up when
Finnegans Wake'd

"... at this passing moment
by localoption in the birds' lodging,

me pheasants among,
where I'll dreamt that I'll dwealth

mid warblers' walls when throstles and choughs
to my sigh hiehied,..."

"Ahhh Dónall lad yer a great one
for the books but

ya never took to the wood
it was always words words words!"

"But I also dreamt, which charmed me most
That you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same"

I DREAMPT THAT I DWELT

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side"

my father would hum or sing
or da da dah'd as he sawed.

"And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride."

A shining smile of nails
as he hammered the tune home.

Carpentry was for me
songs and words and stories.

Tall tales and wood shavings
from my father's "reminiscings'".

Saw dust floating in a summer
were to me atoms made visible.

I played with wood instead
of planning it.

The various tools transformed
with one imaginative leap.

Hand drill and spirit level
became Star Trek ships

attacked by a fleet
of tape measures.

Hacksaws...jigsaws were
all the one to me really.

And yes I knew that tooth spacing
and tooth shape were important in a saw.

A wavy set and milled teeth for plastic and metals.
A side set and ground tooth  for a fast clean cut with wood.

But to me they were merely the teeth
of various pterodactyls in my Harryhausen mood.

And yes I planed wood
but only to release the genie of the pine.

The scent a magic
carpet ride.

And I planed and planed
until there was nothing left

but the graceful curl of
a sea of wood shavings.

Later he would laugh
when I brought him Carroll's parody.

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
went wobble-wobble on the walls..."

Or an Orwell even...

"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?"

Or auld Jimmy the Joist
and his warping words

"When you dreamt that you'd wealth
in marble arch do you ever think of pool beg slowe."

Cracking up when
Finnegans Wake'd

"... at this passing moment
by localoption in the birds' lodging,

me pheasants among,
where I'll dreamt that I'll dwealth

mid warblers' walls when throstles and choughs
to my sigh hiehied,..."

"Ahhh Dónall lad yer a great one
for the books but

ya never took to the wood
it was always words words words!"

"But I also dreamt, which charmed me most
That you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same
That you loved me, you loved me still the same"