Friend Rockstar,
            Listen, yield to a robust think-tank,
            earlobes skidding against wheat and grain.
Terrible story, yes, what happened to that little girl.
Sterile teddy nightgowns weeping in the squad car windows.
Teacher – Teacher, do you harken my yodels for grace?
            I’ve never been maternal.
            Put the game on. Abortion.
            That’s what I’m about.
            Grab a bra. Sling some weight.
            That’s what I’m about.
Some housefly wings on a weathered corn cob.
Some downhome, homegrown twang for those fancy, fussy britches.
            Muddy workboots. Sweat-soaked collars.
            That’s what I’m about.
Him done made me read, sir.
What sacraments did we write today?
            I can still remember my first broken bone.
            I can still remember my first broken *****.
                        That could be what this is all about.
Mary, Mary, you can be contrite,
            so knife – so critter – so laze – so stalked.
    Who fertilized your seeds? Who reared your sprouts?
            Cockle shells and silver bells, honey,
            can’t grow up
            to be pretty little maids all in a row.
Sterile teddy nightgowns – green bells in gaseous gardens.
Friend Rockstar, you may have to sleep.
This restless harbor is a shivering anecdote spilled from a belly,
            a vast, deep cavern with love notes written in milk.
Your fried, stern smile was a flaking fingernail adjacent to the crack in the flowerpot.
Some garden, I say.

Such sweet songs
Fall from faces full
Of open
Hearts holding hands.
Generally great groups gather
Quixotic questions,
Ponder personal perceptions,
Emulating ever entranced emotions.
Love loses leaps, leaves
Broad bruises bypassing
Catastrophically closed creations.
What wonder, what wildly whimsical
Rejoice remains?
In individualistic idioms.
As all allowed anatomical
Differences deal dictations,
Juxtaposed jesters join
Monstrous masterminds
Trivially tinkering, tryingly,
Near non-subjective nothingness
Under unusual
Vectors. Vivisecting voracious,
Zeppelin-esque, zygotes,
Xenophobic
Yodels yell,
"****! **** kindheartedness!"

It was midday and the clouds loitered around the edges of the sky as if they were suspicious of the sun. Beams of light ricocheted off of goggles and snow and beads of sweat that were caught in my oldest brother's beard.  The hike up was our way of earning our run. The hard work and constant determination to get what was important to us made the view and the ridge taste so much sweeter. Finally able to rest, I planted a granola bar in my mouth and squinted through a frame of icy eyelashes to see a sight I had seen before, every day for the past week, but still punched the air out of my lungs. The powder was up to my thighs and the snow lovingly seeped its way into my boots just to kiss my toes with painful numbing. I wiggled them to try tickling some sanity and warmth into them. I only hoped that my toenails wouldn't fall off, but they would inevitably be purple. I pulled up my balaclava to dodge the lunges of frostbite's ravenous teeth. Each nip of cold, the company of my brothers, the view, and the raw interaction with the mountain created a moment that reeked of a dream: a seemingly perfect balance between pain and pleasure.
      The hype of the day kept us from settling our thoughts and quickly my siblings were bounding down the mountain on tele-skis, skis, snowboards, and giddiness. My mind was simultaneously crowded and opened by the superfluous love shared between myself and the people I shared this moment with, the people I look up to, the people who raised me.  My four brothers' elated screams echoed off the mountain ranges that boxed-in the valley below. I joined their chorus of "Shred the Gnar!" and yodels, knowingly embracing the carefree and somewhat foolish mindset of Mother Nature's glee. My skis led the way and found fresh tracks. The lines of the songs that blasted into my ears were translated into the lines that I skied. The music shuffled from Wu-Tang Clan to the Tibetan Monks Of Gaden Sharste & Corciolli but the abrupt change of pace did not hinder my contentedness. I have gained a knack for happily going with the flow, knowing that what the universe hands me is often what I need. The peaceful bellowing of the monks allowed me to take a moment to appreciate that my life is this one on top of this mountain not limited by my economic state with this physically fit and capable body and this working mind. While just minutes before, the fearlessness of Wu-Tang's hip-hop allowed me to bring an angst and stoke for life into my current experience, while also finding the gangster within me. The random shuffling of songs only fed my innate addiction to change and let my enthusiasm multiply and blossom.
Although childish in our hearts and in our unpracticed aerials, we were not childish in our perspective. We had a shared mature understanding of the bigger picture. This was a vast understanding of the world that comes with being a small, overrated mammal sliding on some sticks down the biggest thing it could get its hands on. Each of us took our fair share of tumbles and we iced them each with cacophonous laughter that got muffled by mouthfuls of snow. To be atop a mountain, to go almost unnoticed by a mountain really teaches the skill of not taking things too seriously. In one instance, I grabbed some air and landed scattered into a disorganized pile of all my gear. But my commitment to the bettering of my skills, my world, and myself, let me rise from even my greatest wrecks and the most deadly of wreckage, not unscathed but changed and always for the better. With such a brutal fall, I gained the experience necessary for landing it next time...and the next time, I did.
         After reaching the bottom, without hesitancy, we followed our spontaneous urges to pursue more. Every run I took and every moment spent on that mountain came from a drive to experience and learn. It was based off of my ceaseless search for something new...or for the rad or for the gnar or for swagger or for living a life that could inspire. The seed of this search was planted in me by my five older siblings who all held within their bellies a fire of the same breed. And we sewed that common thread together on ridge lines and in powdered fields where nature is in perfect harmony with man and my head is in perfect harmony with my heart...where my intelligence and ambition trust one another and I trust them because they have gotten me this far and I know they are not tired yet.

the unnatural
drunk of a random breeze
clings to the broken chimes in busted windows
and sings no yes among the grunge swollen -
dandelions, however the candor yodels
or the pools swoon bleakly
beneath our mutual
demise.

penalty has no flowers in the lips of the moon
like a matador. Only the bull grievance of a bout of ravens
and a blood red cape of herrings.
a juke and box and a square to circle...
and nothing so much as a peep
from a fog.

Doubled over with glee
Extinguishing the flaming escorts
Then taking off to Alphabet city
To meet the escape artist
He's nutty
And has asked me to accompany him to his thirty four acre plot of land
Somewhere out in East *******
He wants to film a blockbuster
It's top secret, only we know
There will be a scene where the protagonist yodels for his father
And erects a windmill with his honest hands
I found this pony-tailed guy in the classifieds
He was looking for an accordion player and I replied
He called me The Flavor of the Week
He had boxes and boxes of wigs and toupees
And every time he put new one on, he was a different person
He would go upstairs and leave me in the den
I'd hear thuds, thumps and screaming
Some kind of emotional turbulence
He said he bit the bullet when Houdini made it big
But when Houdini bit the dust, he went rapping at the door of his estate and gnawed at the door handle
And would not stop ringing the bell
Laughing and laughing
It was his chance to get the rebound
And get down to the nitty gritty
But I couldn't bring myself to tell him this was going to be a box-office bomb
He tried incessantly to revive his dreams
He went mad and ran a square mile
He still writes me, and tells me I never call
The phone works both ways buddy
And I do not see you coming in today's forecast
So I'll come to you, you *******

1.

I will baptize the sky
with new waters,
washing the Birger Sandzen pink
from the clouds.

Cattle reject their reflection in farm ponds.
Trees turn their backs to the horizon and bow.

Indigo night. Angular lights in the distance:
Freight train roars. Empty cars
headed northward.

       2.

I will baptize the Earth
with new fire,
scorching stubble and sod
from the Plains.

Cattle nudge clods of dirt for sweet tendrils.
Trees shape words, but can no longer spell.

Charcoal cairns point the way to deep furrows.
Growing pains. Orange flames
headed nowhere.

       3.

I will baptize my heart
with new poetry,
spilling villanelles
into my veins.

Cattle low for soft yodels from cowboys.
Trees sashay to the solos of birds.

Rosy-fingered dawns in my songs? I sail elsewhere.
Orange, blue. Twilight hues
headed homeward.

Mariachi tunes trumpet into the air
harmonized by guitar chords
dipping and dashing
on the day of the dead
Dia de todos los santos

A young rising tenor
stridles up
and yodels
a valiant rooster crow!
fingers crawl on guitar strings
as he opens his mouth
singing in a soft graceful voice
“Remember me”

Night swells with the sweet soarings of tenors.
Beauty floats lightly across the airwaves.
Santa Croce looms as Spirit’s center.
Dante’s Commedia he gave away.
Today he reigns as Italy’s mentor.
Great art leads the way out of Plato’s cave.
Michelangelo falters and splinters
His sculptures. Bright poems to young men he saves.
David stands tall through the chills of winter.
With Goliath’s cold head in hand, he raves.
Florence ferments like wine from a vintner.
It tastes of an angelic chardonnay.
Remember the city’s ancient cantor.
He yodels and chants of its marbled fame.

Particularly, when voicing and/or
writing bon mots doth betake
chuckling clownlike me
rumbled stilled skin,
and e'en rouses
this mummified corpse
(asleep for bajillion years)
among sleepers awake,
where mine inside belly
doth pleasantly ache

jollity the best medicine
most thus spoke Zarathustra,
asper nonpareil persona
American radio broadcaster
Doctor Demento would attest,
one need not buy,
nor spend real or "FAKE"
money, yet brilliant come
back (as averred by
unnamed modest chap)
sweeter than New York cheesecake

moist definitely more
delectable than grubstake
jamming gobstopper with
yodels, ring dings,
or mouth size edible
chocolate candied drake,
a propensity for parrying
thrusts humorously recently
adopted, though occasionally
embarrass self,

and perhaps I might
momentarily even forsake
such wordplay, but
honing humorous turns
of phrases come roaring
back to partake, and
appease simple pleasure
inexplicably to satiate
passion with English
Language and slake

unquenchable thirst
experiencing euphoria,
vis a vis yours truly
melding, jump/kick starting,
forging, distilling
reasonable rhyme
(albeit short lived) giddy
as if I won sweepstake
this newfound affinity
with whittling words

manifested during opaque
throes of fatherhood,
when ceaseless parental
demands sought fast break
from learning to
accommodate lest stressful
overwhelming anguish
found me undertake
king oft times frazzled state,
where among great

anonymous dead poets
society, posthumous renown
would be small consolation
for widowed missus,
whose then two little girls,
(now grown to womanhood)
would inconsolably shake
for ever and anon drowning
their sweet sorrows,
where profuse tears
engender lachrymose lake.

https://youtu.be/gVjBzkWDRiw?si=6kQ97nS23zVvdFkz


The Minstrel Lord Haw Haw yodels from the isles
boring echoes stirring daily twisted dark homilies
In town the lames are kissing lies and warm deciets
deluded **** blocking is a full time job in secrets

Ah see the rampant misogynists dealing their trump card
he's not like us why should he show us up
His sincerity and genuine passion destablizing for us lads
we must do all to ban him and tie him down

From high to low they drink hate from mothers milk
in sour heads love is made cheesy by menchilds' will
Stunted rods and emotionally stunted they breed Eve
and Eves beds endowed serpents with love bereaved

Ah see the rampant misogynists dealing their trump card
he's not like us why should he show us up
His sincerity and genuine passion destablizing for us lads
we must do all to ban him and tie him down

So each with one another in cool hatred they fake liaisons
in impermanence they make vows in forked tongues
Abound they decieve **** and dump all raw sugar glazed
the mostly menchilds who like the boys and young gals

Ah see the rampant misogynists dealing their trump card
he's not like us why should he show us up
His sincerity and genuine passion destablizing for us lads
we must do all to ban him and tie him down

So see the misogynists ban the real Man from pure loving
why should a good woman be truely loved and respected
why should a woman be a Queen and a sincere consort
when they are merely objects for our objectifications