John Scalla remembers
plain–clothed white coiffed nuns
in sunday school classes
who were the sweetest things
you’ve ever seen with a razors edge
carried proudly from an emerald isle

John Scalla spent his sundays digging
through big soft Bibles discovering
a father who loved everyone
as equally as he was thorough
a son born to wear a crown of blood
but never lost his most sacred heart
and a universal spirit’s open-armed
quiet embrace of your trembling frame

John Scalla was born to hold a communion
with something far more complex or
precise then our poor sweaty coils
wondering how bread could be body
and blood so eagerly consumed

John Scalla stole from complex pages buried
deep beneath outdated expressions
and miscommunicated messages
a simple cypher that condenses
all the rhetoric down to it’s square root
love

John Scalla locked the cypher
in that secret spot between heart
and stomach holding it close
dreaming on distant playgrounds
where it was slowly worn away
by bullies still casting long shadows
like limestone sphinxes now noseless

John Scalla’s distant playground dreaming
of a personal relationship with God are gone
because if He was there then that makes him
a single string of an infinitely intricate
vast woven narrative where he is only aware
of adjacent pieces unable to take a firm grasp
of the situation continuing to grow

John Scalla weaves narratives through
his prayers sending them nowhere
because they wouldn’t know where to go
with so many far-off stars dead and leaving
cosmic vibrations both here and everywhere
making it hard for them to escape with
their best intentions unmolested

Burnt-out sitting over
a plate of waffles.
What happened to the
horizons of
the broken, meek
and wingless?

Ah,
the days when we would
run and frolic and
not hide from the sun.
When our silent, unknown
motto was "melanoma be ******!"
I enjoyed those carefree,
ignorant summer days.
They will never be back.

Eyes that give
half recognitions
with almost
audible clicks
and the universal
amp that is
the human
ivory smile,
drives it home.
Deaf hands moving
with blunt precision,
fumbling for alarm
clocks, bra hooks,
chem notes and
silent red cups.
Doing essential jobs
that essentially
involve doing
nothing.

After a quest spent moralizing his point all the way home
After leaving lance, buckler, and steed at the door
After a few hefty flagons of old school mead
A Sir Lancelot turns to an empty bar stool
And decrees:

Whether ***** or damsel
It matters not to me.
Luckily I never have to choose.
They’re similar ***** you see.
Coins or courage to open
The velvet doors between legs.
Towers of ******
Which isn’t saying
Only ****** reside in towers
Just why the ones I free?
Oh bards sing unto me
A song fit for my misery.
For no one’s figured the secret
That it’s only the armor they need to see.

There’s this 4th grader brushing his teeth
slowly on the living room couch confused
contemplating the consequences of mom
turning on the TV to talking heads spinning
anxious talking points while shock rage revenge
unilateral retaliation is considered in executive bunkers
and everyone else watches desperate people leap out windows
through airwaves broadcasting what we couldn’t comprehend
looping those heavenly bodies those two burning buildings
still falling still burning before school starts:

“Does this mean I get to stay home?”

There’s this red head
sitting next to me
hiding a blue koi fish
tattooed behind her left ear.

My thoughts turn back to falling
******* dropping hanging off some
errant lotus foot bouncing those ****.

Now subconsciously desperate
trying to censor what’s been encoded ******
or too much or even sexist even though
natural impulses have been programmed
to fire automatically.

Blameless and constant
silent and don’t you worry
*they’ll call you.

***** like a child
The candy-house of your mind
Sugar-coated doors
Pulling farther further away
Into endless rooms
Where the gumdrop roof leaks
And the gingerbread walls crumble

Shaking skinny finger
bones
Running snot-bubble percolating
noses
Giving silent prayers and requests
to the pillows and
ceilings of the world

They go unanswered

and these silently sobbing
confused, misplaced
souls are stuck
in this churning void
that's called
ACCEPTING THE HAND YOU'RE DEALT
and
a juxtaposition of WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN,
WHAT WILL HAPPEN, and
a "**** it" attitude.

Grasping to understand books, shows,
cups, lost cigarettes, missed calls, silent
brooding benches, and unusual (discarded)
poems.

Pretty girls in the rain.
Little, insignificant
drops
that cling to the
lips, lashes, and
cheekbones of the world.
A fine day for
nothing.
Unfortunately
the powers that be
have decreed there are
things to do.

Rusted, locking up
adrift in oceans
of bodies.
******* bike!
Leaving me alone and
immobile
with only an awkward smile
and quiet apologizes.

Hard, featureless faces
judging without being
caught.
Looking down noses
with no purpose
seeing only their
predisposed inclinations
on who we are.

Electric lit
beetle winged angles buzzing
in the luminescence
of late-night golden glowing
corner store street light.

John Scalla inexorably finds himself
again
navel gazing awkwardly at chair legs
girls legs
this guy named Greg face down
passed out
in someone else’s kitchen where
multiple eyes
glimmer, glazed visibly with
half-recognition
and the amp that human ivory smile
plays on
where deaf hands moving with
blunt precision
fumbling for alarm clocks bra hooks
silent red cups
doing essential jobs that essentially involve
doing nothing

Kerouacian musings and thoughts
that drive the brain cells
       soul cells and heart cells
into a frenetic state.

Hiding the starving poems of my psyche
stuffing them down fragile green necked
aluminum mouths foaming up over
jaded cries for intelligence lingering
and are loathed
personally.

Tasted fire, blue Kool-Aid, tryptamine
in my drink finding a seat while on the bumper
someone hung from a smoking cigarette
gesticulating  in a foreign rhythm
lips sync
out of.

Highway headlight twinkling with
gasoline drive-shaft incandescence
going buzzed backwards sitting
on a bed of thorns; a truck
dreading the pitiful holes
of an untended freeway.

Afterwards
victories to despair
bound to tender purging
supposing red cups
will release us all to
blacked-out porcelain heavens.

The shock of being
moved from tank
to toilet.
Oh!
Poor fish.
They couldn't keep
it, so
they had to flush
it.

A cold night
looking at stars
looking at me
watching them.

I wrote a poem for
you.
I wrote a poem for
me.
I wrote a poem for
desk jockeys and cash
register fanatics.
I wrote a poem for
all the benches of
the world
and all their inhabitants.
I wrote a poem for
Allen Ginsberg
and his secret loving
soul, now made public
for mass consumption.
I wrote a poem for
King Buddha and his
promise to enlighten
us all;
sending us
to Pure Land personal
heavens.
I wrote a poem for
the alarm clock
cold morning, cold feet
warm sheets
blues.
I wrote a poem for
everyone everywhere
always because
work is boring.
I wrote a poem for
the void. Never having
seen it, no way
to describe.
I wrote a poem for
crosswalks hallucinating
***** looks within
blank, staring headlights
threading smoke rings
through needles.

Your name is my name
in that we both have one
containing letters stretched
over unrelated faces in time
until syllables are pulled from
intentions turned to antiques.

Does the reader see the labyrinth
each word holds to craft meaning
depending on what comes first
waiting for what happens next.

Searching for a pretty shape
the pattern to break a mold
set in stone before each writer
whittling away their minutes
minds blind to the situation
trying to hide its fearful symmetry;
each form crafted creates it’s own mold.

Snow on the ground
tears in your eyes
Late Thanksgivings trimmings
being made with a
bit of melancholy
Bittersweet
but bittersweet
is sometimes best.
The sweet is all
the more
        well,
sweet.

Head my words
Read my lips.
The snow is falling
for someone.
I didn't know him
well, and I
could tell
he didn't know me
either.
Alas,
no more;
a quiet death.

Halfway towards the midpoint
On my journey through life
I find an impasse shaped by love:
Love of words
The intimacy of bookshelves
Sitting in the back rows
Classrooms of right words wrong words
A trillion others between an answer
A lesson too subtle to learn

John Scalla’s multi-geared aluminum pony
saddled up in the corner of a studio apartment
quietly rusts it’s best years away
watching him take another **** rip
pass it to a friend who passes it
to another friend who passes it to
another who passes it back to him
who is now wondering if that last hit
was necessary and whether the aluminum
pony’s quiet crying in the corner
is any cause for alarm.

A night like no
other.
I can focus
but
too long and
it won't seem
real.
The cat
with its swish-
swoosh,
tick-tock,
long flicks
of its tail.
There's only rain
out there
fat cat.
There is
a movie on
but none
of what I'm
seeing
is my thing.
There's a name
that keeps
coming up,
somewhere on the
internet
and in my
head.
I can see it;
details about
the person,
the kind we
don't
think we
notice.
It builds
an incomplete picture.
The kind that's
biased.
You don't know
how you
feel
or
think.

What is poetry?
Beyond words and structure
isn't it just you?

Quiet day at work.
Sadly, the fire alarm
was over quickly

Hand prints on
sliding glass doors.
You don't realize
how many
there really
are.
Makes me want
to turn out
all the lights
and watch
the moon play
off the lake.

Focusing on the now instead of the
past or future.
Hoping naked, heavenly women fall into my
bed.
Egad,
they could never have existed anyway.

Look!
There I go
once again
stumbling for the
words.