Daily Poetry & Prose

Toss these heavy rocks up into the clouds. Understanding weight is how the obelisk was moved.

Time is satire He has me laughing Makes me move while standing still Time is a dancer Cheek to cheek We whisper of infinity He holds my hands and rocks me leading the way But oh, my feet! I have a few steps left. The band plays on Trumpets and saxophones  On the 1 On the 4 I'm counting  He says, "don't count" Just feel it.

Perched on the precipice of perfection hard to move an inch.

Every time I walk past it I called it the Blind Faith Cafe. I picture you sitting up there, at a table, behind the little miniature iron fence, on the cement, just high enough above the sidewalk to look down on everyone, Smelling their folly yet perched, silently, at a distance,  like a canary in a cage, crapping out all your self righteousness. Keeping your distance from me, as if I were anathema to your guilded lockets of longing, you fondle your pearls while I stand in my wet golashes  daring you to move. I have no idea how the coffee tastes at the Blind Faith Cafe, but I imagine it's bitter and in desperate need of cream.

I wrote a poem about the war for forty years, it changed then all the people were the same they just had different names. The long forgotten memories of trees and men who walked along. The strange winds blow now, around Christmas time, but I hear the Native song. The man he walks with a bow and arrow and sings with-- and does not shoot-- the sparrow.

It's amazing how small I am, like a bug, or a beetle, snug under the rug. It's almost noon and here I am, humming nonsensical symphonies between my teeth. I do not have the tap water enough to call Poseidon from the sea. When you tipped me down the drain, baby, bathwater and all, perhaps we should have thought that I might need a hairdryer.

It was a ribbon in the hair of a dragon by the sea Her missing teeth were all I saw as she called out to me A siren  screeching the car  pulled  away.

 You're so hot. You got the last shot. You crime, you dine, you shine, you swine. You're so cold. You've got the gold. You wake, you shake, you make, you create. You've got nothing on me You've only got  Something on yourself.

Cupid sat down and lit a candle, shining In his eyes was the flame, burning  In his heart was your name. Black eyelash, FLICKERING  It's just a LIGHT on a distant hill. Rubies glistened on her fingers Her rings told stories and whispered moons Rummaging their reflections On the waters of the tide.

The face in the window looked weary The reflection was yellow and thin The moon in the sky was hanging Plunged into place  Like a nail A nail in a wall Chilly and bright.  The train conductor was tired The train itself had a sparking fuse Its metal was dark, dead and dreaming As it clattered and squealed Screeching, quiet and loud Along the way A long, long way along the track. The point of arrival was taken The ticking of clocks became mute When the midnight rider walked the aisles In his giant leather boots The moon stayed there in the sky, firmly like a drum Silent until it was struck  struck with the edge the hard edge of a hammer.

I walk upon the street in sneakers which squeak and lead me to the lamppost where dim light shines and radiates its soft glow upon the black, flat and barren stretches on which looms out from underneath the shadows which creep like the dead rising from graves, their grey hands sprawled as they are crawling toward the light. Yet the light shines on, aloof to the calls of the darkness, deaf to the wild dogs and cats scurrying and lucky rats quickly escaping the fate of road kill pigeons  smashed to feathery dust under car tires creating odd, abstract art, next to road stripes and pieces of trash strewn next to the drain pipe. The light knows not these tragedies, but shines on, simply because it's time to shine.

The seeds you plant they tend to grow whether haphazard or in rows not caring where they've been thrown by hand or where the wind has blown shooting up their tiny leaves like hands reaching up to touch the air arriving clean, simple and bare but--it's not as if they dared or--as if they arrived scared it's just what they do! The lesson that they give is this, so I will make sure it is not missed, we can't control how tall it rises how many branches or leaves abound if the trunk is rough or round the only control we have, you see is where exactly it hits the ground

The hypotenuse of the many-headed hydra, as she stood at impossible heights. The muses are hypnotic. He filled my ears with constant radio static, about his past exploits and his changed nature. It was impossible to believe anything he said because my heart with breaking, with a thousand baby snakes rushing out. The sky scrapers, with their mirror-like windows, reflect the sky.

Breathtaking, what the night escapes from as the dawn runs down the street, rushing to the taxi and the stolen moments, before the lid of the jar is pried open and the butterflies escape.

The woods rush by the window of the train. The girl from Russia stopped me on the street. The coffee now has sugar but not cream. I need to stretch my tired aching feet. I'm taking a big trip to kill the dragon, a vacation to a deserted place, where wheels are still falling off the wagon, and scars from gravel sit upon my face. Where ticking clocks and melted remedies, are poured out in bottles on the table, where fate combines with jilted fantasy, and I burn the bridges if I'm able. My life is just a fable. And the murmers that I hear...just the people on the train, as they go through their own lives.  

Dear Dagger, I've held you long enough and need to let you go. You've been under my coat as I walk the street, on rainy nights when the train rushed by. I've gripped you tighter than I needed to, especially when I heard footsteps behind me, listening as I walked, to hear if they were drawing near.  I've placed you in the holster, muscle memory. I've kept you at my side even when I'm having tea, because I didn't completely trust my company. I've kept you when you're sharp, and kept you for years until you were dull. Yet I knew I would be able to use you effectively with extra muscle. Now, I want to drop you on the floor, hear it clatter and have nothing to defend myself with other than fists and feet. Moreso, to not live in constant battle mode. Farewell Dagger, thank you for being at my side.  Sincerely, Faith

Every memory mends itself into this hemline. Each thread of red silk pulled in the direction that best holds. Underneath the clean line there is a mess-- made of all the criss-crossing stitches of untold stories.

Flipping nets into the sea in the middle of a hurricane? over the sides of the boat, just off the coast--do it in a hurry! There she wobbles, her knees locking and eyes squinting to the spray She is the subconscious fisherwoman of your soul, eager to catch the day, join her! The raging winds and sea merge to make her vision blurry but she knows the ropes by heart she's been fishing here before every coarse thread, every move is memorized, and she will show you. Once memory is gone, then what? The winds die down and now you are in that raft, floating on the Trade Winds towards Cuba, with her, trying to remember why you pushed the boat from shore in the first place? Then a large colorful shadow moves under the boat and she jerks awake. You cry: Bait? Who needs it!  Let her use her hair as fishing twine. Rip open her chest and throw her heart on the line. There is no sense in missing the chance to make a big catch.

There is a little staircase at the head of my bed, it runs from here to Mars. I run up it when I am dreaming to go sit at the bar, which is on Mars. I sit on the stool and dream of school and all the things I have to learn, while the atmosphere steams and the surface of the planet burns. I am in a bubble made of glass, I watch the planets spin and the constellations pass. Tiny green men with hammers work on spaceships and tell me things I need to know. Then I fall slowly, like a fog or a dreary day back into myself as I silently lay. I proceed to wake up,  and generally make some black coffee. I start running down the staircase at great speed to meet the day.

How have you been? Has any of the madness stopped? I felt the world stop turning when I hit the bottom of the river, my feet almost sinking into the muck. It was so cold, almost ice cold. I dare not think of what would happen if I got stuck. I raced up toward the surface.

If it looks like a writer and smells like a writer, it's a piece of paper. After I get about two or three thousand of these entries done, then I can start to find the real dinosaur bones. Let he or she who is free from ink, throw the first stone to shatter the fourth wall of the glass house.

I have a long road ahead of me. I do not have boots on, that would be too ambitious. I think I will stay in bare feet. Now, it's not meant to be tough, exactly. It's not like the Christians walking through the woods, hitting themselves with willow whips--can you imagine? But it's still a trek for the sake of trekking.

The tap dancer's billowing arms are floating up and down quickly, like a large canvas mast struck by the wind. The weight of his torso leans forward, almost bringing him down to the ground, before he springs up. A grasshopper is no country animal, although he lives in the wheat and the green grass on the prairie. He seems simple, yet is resolute in his hopping, scary almost, the way he reaches top speed like an aerodynamic machine within a short time. He becomes a blur, a blink of the eye. The big auditorium is empty, except for the tap dancer. I hear his feet echo in my mind.

Like a rabbit escaping from the thicker psychological bramble of the Salem witch trails, Halloween is sugary these days, full of chocolate and fake blood, laughing kids and miniature Snickers bars. 

People are moving to L.A. in their Volkswagens  in their cargo pants dreaming of being an actor dreaming of being a writer dreaming of being a waiter until the lights turn on. I can see the exhaust of their cars filtering up off of the deserts  in Nevada. I can see their odd smiles reflecting in the rear view mirrors. I suppose we all have a little twinge of ambition. I suppose we all are like Turner  ready to be strapped to the bow of a ship and feel the waves to get the sense and the timing of our own nature.  

6 days and 99 channels, nothing is on, except fear and misery, bottled up in a fashionable trend and sprayed like wildfire and Mountain Dew shook up all over the-- Did you hear that silence is golden? Let me bite the coin and return again tomorrow.

The lemon of her lips is making this sour kiss sweet. The sugar king is cradling her broken back.  He's back out on the street, sifting through the cans and the Coke bottles trying to find her feet. Dance again? These shoes are old.  Like ballet slippers from when she was a little girl. Who cares? Life is short. He remembers yellow taxi cabs and lemonade stands. She tried to sell homemade wine until she was called in for supper. The street lights were coming on, but she had a crinkled dollar bill. The transistor radio was sinking in the ocean. How did he ever think he would find the author of that lullaby he used to listen to as a child, hiding the music underneath his pillow pretending to snore when footsteps came? It takes so. much. strength. to make lemonade, twisting the half fruit and then pouring portion after portion into the jug. It takes so. much. combing. to make the hair straight, then smooth it out like Chinese paper before dividing it into three's.

She ripped the lamp shade, she flipped over playing cards. The Queen of Hearts stares across forever. It would have been better to work for weeks at crossword puzzles, in the newspaper, in the chair, where the light was bright and unnatural.

There is no good place for a wet hat. The books in the bag will get wet and we can't have that. I shake it off. I think of the guy from the East Coast talking about how the  kids toddle down the hallways as if they're drunk, because  the floors are warped as the wood and the joists  are from 1890. When he spills a drop of water in the kitchen it rolls towards the corner like liquid mercury. My sister has a better bathtub than I do, it's giant like a pool, you can almost go swimming. I was in a river once, deep enough to swim. I wore goggles and moved like a fish watching the rocks change under me. I wonder what it's like to be water. To be everywhere except in a stone. In the sky in a thunderhead suspended. In the eye of the lady at the edge of the valley throwing dirt on a pile of rocks. In the spit of a cow. On the sweat of a forehead. In the boiling water of soup. In the wine before it silences laughter.

Elastic radio boy meets girl traffic running into the cave Bite into the apple Gold is funky too Snapping fingers crawling past wires into glue Radiator helicopter restitution wonder hips fog and juxtapositions Atomic threats reap benefits television ceiling fixtures lead a final life pry it from your fingers pry it from your fingers pry it from your fingers Touching the cattle fence electrocuted into a dance too cute for silence zipper your mouth for crying out loud angelic xylophones are radiating bell tones summoning you to the call of duty

She sleeps so beautifully, your desire for truth, curled up and comatose while the wolves roam freely, sirens blaring to the call of freedom while wise men sit in shadows and count beans and rocks waiting for the return of the potters who will sit in rags and bare feet and make jugs. When they are dry from the kiln, and the fire has hardened them we still put them in the sun to bake they need to be extra strong to hold the water from the dam.

The world was not built by a string. It is rope.

It's time to make up for lost time it's cold outside of the door I scribbled a rhyme on the paper hoping you'd forget it on the floor but you swooped down like a hawk and stole the tail of the mouse I ran inside of the wall I was in my own house.

I was smoking and knew I shouldn't be, sheepishly on the porch trying to act casual, when I see two women and a stroller which doesn't have a baby in it. Their thick hair was dark brown reddish color, and dusty blond, respectively, and they stood in sweats, meandering around the speed bump in the alley, pausing to adjust the load, arguing quietly but respectively, probably homeless, saw me looking. One looks at me and asks if she can please have a cigarette, and says she'll pay me for it. I shudder and say I rolled it and could roll one, and she again insists on paying me. Thinking better of furthering the interaction, I hand her the cigarette from the first story porch and you'd think it was the hand off between God and Adam in the Sistene chapel. She thanks me profusely for the used item and goes so far as to say God Bless You. One person's trash is another's treasure. I got rid of guilt and got a blessing on top of it. She did me a favor saving me from cancer...

He says he doesn't deserve his problems and I suggested that regardless, he has to solve them. Listening endlessly to the playback reel of every challenge he has faced is giving me heartache. I need a dose of medicine. He is blind to the wild dove which is awaiting entry into his soul, sitting quietly on the wires, waiting for a creeping smile to start. On the edge, he will fly in.

It's a good problem to have, I mused internally, practicing my pleasant attitude. It is my job to be polite and courteous when declining the demon and reclaiming my sense of intelligence and righteousness, reserved only for myself. It's a table for one, and if I am unclear, it's because I still can't decide if I have enough meat on my bones. I've been licking your spoons and waiting for you to drop science in my lap. However, I've been changed, my blue jeans are dress slacks now. I will choose my own problems, and if you give me yours, I will offer you my decoder ring, so you too can see the forest through the trees and build your own life. It's not about independence, that would be too simple, and it's a theory from a document written by slave owners anyways, so I am not giving salt to that Roman Army, not today, and not ever. Nope, it's a clean line from impressionism to the daylight in your eyes.

The difference between the pursuit of the hobbyist and the call of the professional is a wild distance not unlike the length a crow flies, or geese when they are going South for the Winter. It is no small step, no curb jump. It is no distance between the car door when it is opened or closed, not a short distance like the edge of the coffee cup to your mouth as you take a morning sip. No, the distance is much greater. It's the distance of the clouds as they spill across the sky across the lake seeming to go on forever, stretching their bones in their hands fingers tingling toward the horizon. If I don't make it, and you put a coin in my mouth when I am buried low, so be it. When the cold stone sits above my head I will at least have known that it was no short distance from here to there.

The panic set in and petals of roses began flying around, poltergeist style through the wet air.  The frantic energy of power lines started inside the generator then remained in control, until the final moment. I don't know what that was like, to completely lose balance. Only the birds, dropping one by one off the power lines, really know for sure. Electricity itself is panic, we've only recently simply learned to control it. Plug in a toaster, flip a light switch. For the bird, he sits there and doesn't turn into Frankenstein soup when the lighting strikes. He is not connected to the ground. If his beak was copper, it still wouldn't matter. He could not peck his way with Morse code back to the source  of the rain.

Fast and moving, slow yet going, these are the sands in the jar, turn me sideways, how far, tip me over and stand me on my head, now time is moving backwards. The linear haunts of doves stuck in the rafters, let them fly free when the tornado rips the roof off. Destruction is such an odd lullaby. Let me get my mandolin, I will strum it quickly, and the heart of the matter will be resolved.

Battered, black and blue, it's just some pancake batter with some blueberries, what did you think it was? I am not injured, I am just a Sunday monring. Punked out and smoking, it's just a stick of incense, what did you think it was? I am not smoking out by the lake, staring at the stars, judging how close the lighter can get to my nose to catch the last hair of tobacco. Yes, when the choir starts to sing. No, when the quiet sets in. Where do you find it? Between which pages?

I am sipping coffee, it is luke warm. Listening to Paul Simon and realizing it's been 20 years since I lent him an ear. Outside there is an orange cone, standing on a pile of rocks, next to a building in the alley. I suppose the cone is there so that no one will back into the rocks. There's a puddle stretching out, a little lake, a sliver of nature, creeping across the blacktop. I wonder if the orange cone can see his reflection there. I won't suspend disbelief today. She is such a trapeze artist, always stretching high and flying and flipping above the safety net. I suppose my ribs can only take so much spinning, sometimes the roller coaster is bound to topple apart, screws are bound to fall out, the grease is bound to stop working, and the screeching cart will come to a halt. I will put my hands down.

The meadow lark painting... the one where the woman is looking up and the sun is bright, burning orange and the rest of it is brown and muted. I learned that this dark color was called raw umber. There's also burnt umber, and yellow ochre. Whoever painted that one knows at the end of the day there's a moment when time stops. The color of the day then, is muted. Not known. The sun's light is the last strong glimmer.

Three days and I haven't eaten any bread, haven't looked in any mirrors, and haven't moved in any shocking way. I've been so busy dreaming that my aluminum foil helmet fell off in the wind.

When night is strung like black cloaks hanging between the lamp posts daylight is like white towels and their pristine clean rectangles.

The median age for mediocrity is about to come up, panting across the finish line as the hands of the clock tip to 3:45. The fine toothed comb used to brush your hair has found numerous animals living there, and I am going to seize them and take them as pets. The rushing waters of divinity somehow missed me, I was standing there in my bathing suit next to the waterfall, but completely missed the chance to be doused in holy water. I've taken my beach towel and strewn it over the mountain like a Christo. I inhaled deeply to sense the rain, it was almost sliding off of the tar roofs and plastered wet stains to the brick walls of the buildings. The power lines were wrapped up, choreographed, it seemed, by pure chance, as they swarmed the pole in a game of hand over hand on the bat to see who goes first. All I smelled was the bark of the nearby trees, the piss from the train station steps. I also heard a few birds chirping. The power fan I purchased from the hardware store was keeping m...

I sat on the wing of an airplane, looking at the night sky. The plane was a WWII bomber which was parked, permanently, in a park, on the edge of town, where the grass was home to bronze statues and a plaque. The wind blew through the trees. As they started to sway, and I closed my eyes. Opening them again I saw the Milky Way, impossibly bright. My heart grew heavy and I jumped off the wing of the plane, and landed in the darkness, careful not to break an ankle. 

There is a history to the city which I never knew About the highway that went right through  Neighborhoods and leveled the barber shops About the buildings which grew up from the ground Thirty stories high To temporarily contain  The possibilities Spraypaint on the wall doesn't do justice To the missed time in school The blackboard awaits the chalk But it's I who walks To school today 

I long to introduce you to your better self. Your artist, your apothecary, your alchemist. Your architect, your drawer, your painter, your prophet. I long to help you unlock your treaure chest  on the desolate beach and run your hand over all your hidden gems and pearls like a rosary until you pray to yourself when you are weak. I long to introduce you to your stronger self. The one that is tough as boot leather, yet welcoming. I long for you to find kittens in the empty boxes of your soul and play with them, running yarn as long as your arm and smiling which each tottering step. I long for you to feel the sun on your face, every day. I long for you to wake up happy, held for a moment in an embrace just before you wake up, whether I am there or not. I long to introduce you to your better self, the one that smirks at magic tricks and is amused but has the real thing in the back pocket. I long to shake your hands free of the false things  that comfort you Shake them out like gra...

The passionate words I hear from mouths that are not my own hit my ears differently. Instead of a cold crack of a bat hitting a ball out to center field, it feels warmer, like a pitch perfectly landing in a huge catcher's mit.

When Eve took the apple from the tree, after the serpent told her to, on that first bite, didn't she think to herself, this should have been a radish, or perhaps raw ginger, to better reflect the sour gravity of the situation? Apples are far too sweet, too tasty, too succulent, to refreshing to be part of such a calamity. The snake smiles and slithers away, perhaps thinking of oranges and lemons. Oh no you don't, thought Eve, why not bring me sour grapes instead? She threw the apple up to the Gods who held it, waiting centuries to drop it and hit Newton on the head. 

I have no where to go, I am waiting for you to speak. Then I can move through the room, bouncing off of the walls.  In prudent silence I exist for all time until my moment arrives.

 Belong. 

The ice is slippery,  I fell into another dimension winter of the soul freedom of the mind. The earth is dusty, I stepped onto the prairie burning summer of the heart freedom of the mind. The stone is sleek and polished I glanced at it under the rushing waters of the river spring of the vision freedom of the mind. The leaves are red and orange I quivered floating like a piano melody rise of the spirit freedom of the mind.

I've often made up my mind at just the wrong time Busy bee with honey lips Seeing the signs and laughing at the guns.

His black beard was the color of the sky without stars. Her pen was broken and ink was spilling on the oak desk. Their rough elements were caught in the door as they started the car. One's work is never done not even at dusk. People have a way of loking down the well. She didn't know the difference between the sun and a flash. He stopped the train with a loud yell. It didn't matter when it crashed. So long to Louisiana with its cypress trees. If time was a string and I was a bell, and I make a sound I cannot tell.

The chunky hunk of ravaged bone left after the vultures desceneded from their airy throne was thrown, haphazardly by a buzzard, near a hyena, a paw, a beak, a tuft of fur. This is what had become of the zebra which had been running fast, desperate even, in his final moments. When I try to find a balance, like the zebra's fur, a black and a white, a yin and yang, I can just be, because I am like a tree, rooted in place. I do not run, therefore I cannot be chased.

A woman was jogging in the graveyard  The blacktop paths were clean beneath her feet Perhaps she felt safer away from cars While the quiet there gave her some relief It was still an odd choice to say the least She huffed and puffed among the grey tombstones While the skeletons laid there fast asleep She like them, dedicated and all alone Her arms moved as she took another breath More than anyone I have ever seen She must be at peace with both life and death Who knew it was in a fitness routine  It still struck me as a little crazy 

Speech is speeding by I see the bits and pieces of it, like tornado shrapnel out of Dorothy's window. Why do I even mutter? The Tin Man knows all my worries which stir my beating heart to speak. The Lion nudges me to get off the ledge. The Scare Crow he is long gone. I miss him as he is running through the field. Make me a big black crow, make me an apple tree, make me the flat face of the emerald, as it gleams.

The tear expands just before  it falls. The cello tells my story better than my words. Sisyphus has great calf muscles  by now. My tear is merely the same as the sweat on his face.

We laughed at the exact same time. I could tell you were about to tell a joke. You said it was told to you by a mime. Sign language doesn't have to rhyme. We were deaf, both of us, when we lived inside the drum. I surfed on the cymbals, screaming to a halt and falling headfirst into the sand as the waves threw me up like Jonas and I hit the cliffs. The pebbles started to fall like rain.

Way back in space time, blind to the pigs and the slaughtered rhymes I found myself slipping into your black holes, wanting to go where I can't go walking on the piano keys, hitting every black note. Whispering through the trumpet tones when it blurted out the misanthropic radio optics of my frequency frequently freeing me from my distress you thought it was over I was reeling spilling red thread from my retro dress you had me so figured out every line in the sand every moment of my life was a glass tower but your dreams now are flattery nothing no more power. It's a future missle now, a plan of attack a steroid pumping attitude to get your life back I never meant to hurt you or cause you pain why did you have to lock me up in this glass case? I will burst out break the glass I will see you back in class. I'll be in the back with a sharpened pencil, hanging on every word before launching skyward.

Miles of the madness drawn down threads spinning on the wheel lengthening dreads petals of the flowers fixtures on the scene syllabalic majesty on tough streets lean People and the papers peeking at the news nosy to the neighbors sitting on the roof binoculars and frying pans shocking to the teeth the minds of madness grinning while the bankers and thiefs keep on  taking quarters from the pockets of the jeans the shocking gestures meant a lot of caught the attention of  the money changers at the temple funky in their dance The wedding of the credit cards and the marriage of the damned I stopped you just before  you got  blood on  your hands tipping on the mysteries I drank the secret juice and plotting my demise and jumped and opened up  my corresponding parachute. This prose was written in the fashion of a drum solo.

Equally efficient in separating the high from the low her atoms spin silently beneath her crown growling in the morning light her sun fighting its way through the forest of her mind as she chooses which book to read. She is sufficiently undressed enough to know that the heart stuck to her sleeve was not attached with superglue and can be removed, like an errant leaf in the autumn, stuck to her sweater. A pile of books makes for a good thing to jump into she rakes them together with her fingers she gathers them from the lawns of bookstores and pulls them from the shelves. They sit here in a pile of many colors, fighting their way into the forest of her mind. Trees make paper of course, and paper makes words where her thoughts grow, like oak trees or raspberry bushes, knotty pines and maple trees swaying silently in the breeze. The wind is motion and the trees are caught between stillness and flight. The decision comes down, the choice is made, her thoughts are split by an axe. It flows ...

I thought all of this black ink was going to dry clean that the paper would remain white. I thought all of this white paint would splatter perfectly on the black canvas and I would be here,  some angel, some inverse Jackson Pollock standing on the edge of the Empire State building waiting to swan dive into traffic and rising like a phoenix with scrapes and bruises but still fully functioning and heart fully beating. It started then with this black ink--mightier than the sword. Here with this ink I lay into humanity, I lay into posterity I write the dream into fruition I shape desperate boredom  with my bare hands into a clay like man. I write words which state my point of view, my mind, my brand. I am almost delierious with the drunk power each tiny speck of black has, becuase together they become greater than the sum of their parts whether I like it or not they become a legacy if to no one else but me so I judge myself  because the critics are out to lunch and if I come ...

The roses grew in rows along the road we picked them up and stuck them in our shoes The fragrance was strong, the sun shone like gold we climbed the hill and hummed a honey tune A tiny speck of red among the green told us that the artist's brush had painted A scene of glory not unlike a dream A summer's day so fine we then fainted We slept like puppies next to the roses Oblivious to what time supposes as if we found a sleepy poppy field where all wounds of war can now be healed What a find! Soldier of fortune spin the wheel and rest here where your bones and your heavy boots are wrapped up in the rose's roots that slip around your souls like eels running to the ocean underground may your hands rise like a hammer to hear a thousand birds stammering as they sing a joyful tune the roses are in bloom

The seance started slowly, building up steam until it fed the demons and the everlasting dreams the sunsets and the lullabies never heard again the night that the waters won and stole our only friend His turtles and his salamanders now will run astray with no one to care for them and nowhere to play Everyone's heart is saddened, and heavy here tonight to watch the boy as his soul silently takes flight

The pine tree hangs over the garden, its long green boughs falling like curtains while a hummingbird whirs dangerously close to my ear and sticks its long beak into my brain to take out some sugar water. Why not let the alphabet take a break and just write poems with mud today? I would like my hands to be covered in the clay that made Adam, and for lunch I'll have the apple that caught the eye of Eve. It's all water over the damn now, anyways. The Sistine Chapel has already been built, Thoreau has already lived by the pond, what shall I do to find some spiritual corner? Tilt my head and let the hummingbird in?

I've got twin invisible eyes I see the past and the present at the same time They meld into one perspective two halves of one sea I've got long strong arms that swing like a pendulum time no longer holds my face to the floor. Instead I fly on the trapeeze back and forth like the tides each side of the coin shines in its own way.

I fell in love with a blue man. He was wearing a black hat. The brim of the hat was custom made. I had a goldfish named Linda at the time and she moved with flowing orange flags, waving her fins to say hello when I came home. It had been a long week, I had travelled everywhere in my mind. Everywhere except Canada. The forests there were too pure, the rivers too clean. Instead I had spent time at Miami's coldest beaches, waiting for the seaweed to be untangled from my feet. I was barefoot as I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, silent as I walked through James Baldwin's black and white San Fransisco, separate from those lonely South Dakota nights that Cowboy Jake used to tell me about. I was riding in a blue car, thinking all these black thoughts, the orange traffic lights were flashing as I made my way away.

Her heavy voice sunk down like a stone into the sea or a riverbed on the edge of the Mississippi Where toil and trouble was not Macbeth it was the life that many led So many hands on so many drums have made these rhythms which are now at the jazz club. Every conga drum and every cajon every burst of laughter that bubbles up.

The bobby pin was bent, it looked like two fingers making a peace sign. It fell from her black hair, and landed on the blacktop in the hot sun. That is why it glistened. My shoe stuck to some gum, which had also landed on the sidewalk. It was less glamorous, but evidence of human life nonetheless. Gravity does not wait for me to finish my ambitious errand. The sweating summer street today is full of fragile life glistening.

I try to keep my cynic in a cage I guild each bar so she stays her mouth is foaming with the lies fed by silver spoons gleaming like war planes in the sky Sometimes her mind is buzzing like multitudes of preachers and popes on Sunday morning muttering and shouting and searching like a distant click clack of a train car humming like a motor, a truck, or powerlines Other times it is quiet and dark as black as the inside of a coffin of a small child killed by an American bomb. Sometimes she lays there not knowing what to do sometimes the sadness is so heavy it's not the weight of the world  but the difference between worlds that has her down. Then she awakes in the morning like a bird but doesn't sing. She's mad but it's not the mad hatter mad from being stoned on the lead of American boredom. It's a sinking mad, feeling the weight of the darkness of the caves in Afghanistan. She rattles the cage. If she wasn't in the cage, we might not hear her at all. She tremble...

It was not red paint but the light of the fire  which splashed when the embers moved. The Devil himself sometimes makes appearances. Stoking the fire brings him out of the coals. Stirring the salt and pepper of the ashes one loose stream of light ventured forth disappearing into the air as he swallowed it.

Eighteen minutes left before we leave. Didn't you set the car keys where I would remember them? The earth is moving and I can't see the sun. Not with these sunglasses on. Where is your other ear? Did you hear what I was saying? This window is not going to go down. I had it fixed last week. Are you kidding me? We're halfway there. Are you going to get the keys or did you leave them by the gas pump? Didn't you believe me when I told you? No I wouldn't have known. How would I have known that you need shades to see? No, this isn't a time to argue. But I heard you say... One chance to go down to New Mexico in black leather jackets high on the night air, fixing to die on torn blue jeans that hug our knees like the riddles of ancient days. Slapping our thighs in time to jazz, wondering if our feet are too loud as we tap morse code lullabies in time to the pounding piano, heaving and sighing like a whale thrown onto a beach while the ocean roars out with its clattering ...

Joy is not muddy. It is a vibrant river, fresh from the mountain tops. When you're feeling cold, could you be my snow? All I ask is that you melt and run to me, wearing down every haggard rock in my brain until it is fine sand. Let's walk on the beach, shall we? Take my hand. Let's skip stones and talk of old times. I will pick up a stick and we will draw in the sand. Dragging it closer to the water, the sand becomes mud-like. The stick drags, and each new design is erased, as quickly as it is drawn, by the constant lapping of the waters. What then? Will you look at me with wide searching eyes, and say I told you so?

The pigeons and I under the viaduct see the faded colors of the mural I touch my hands to the paint The trains don't come here anymore, the last train to pass here was 1,000 Tuesdays ago. It raced there on the way to a black coffee boardroom I was commuting in blue jeans to the last creative ramp to board the arc not realizing I was a unicorn and that there are often free tickets to the Titanic. It's hard to explain if it was a sense of ambition or just a sense of purpose which drove me then but I know it's something else now. The color is deeper, even the black of the mural although faded, is more opaque than the coffee ever was.

(3) Flip a dime, the world itself is a gamble. It took decades to meet you  now that you're here I hardly know you. Let us talk over tea, my consciousness and I. I will wager that the wheel is round and you will say just wait, you'll come around. (2) Flip a dime, you're bound to win. It took decades to meet you again now that you're here I hardly know you. Let us meet again, as if for tea, I can talk with you, and you with me. Let the sunshine fall into the window and give us the stillness of the day you, my consciousness and I. (1) Basking in the warm glow of the unknown betting my last dollars that wheels were indeed round and all I had to do was spin. The minimum wager was the whole of existence and the funny part is that once you're in you're bound to win. It took decades to meet you again now that you're here I hardly know you. Let us meet again, as if for tea, I can talk with you, and you with me. Let the sunshine fall into the window and give us the s...

When cupid begins to play the cello and art becomes a sky of rising suns clouds of color soft as feather pillows stretch up like fingers reaching for a drum The humming of the birds and crickets too join in this joyful melody we sing The steady hands begin to strum the lute and Cupid's bow goes deep into the strings Composer's notes, nah, he doesn't bring it He follows closely the rise of each kiss What sheet music does Cupid use for this? None I've ever seen, I think he wings it.

I live on Exodus Street. Things are always moving. Last night I saw the Northern Lights richocheting off of the lamposts and hovering silently above the clouds, their rainbow fireshow heaving glowing darts higher than the sky could hold. The light seemed not to run out, but to simply go towards infinity. We were in the tenement buildings, pasted to the walls were the cut-out pictures of fashion girls and stock market reports which we had painstakingly removed from the magazines and newspapers with the sharp, tart taste of temptation and then cut with the dull scissors of addiction. The office boys had circled the word "Sell" in red pen, and we had picked up all the extras in the mail room, back when messages reached their destinations and when radios had knobs and rock stars had hair and--what? Where are you going? Not you, too? It seems things had just been waiting to fall off the ledge. The lemmings were out, the zoos were full of politicians and their tiny feet were creati...

I read a poem that made me think, I cannot write a poem at all. It made my words just birds ramming into windows, it made my ideas just fists busting into walls. No, seriously, it was quite good. It was thought out in metaphor and each piece lead to the next I realized I have a far way to go to lift the sideways steam engine from the Kansas plains and remove the debris from the prairie  and find beaty in the sundrenched metal and find soul in the tipped over coal in this  train wreck.

Basking in the glow, the ember rolls and falls into the cool water and goes out. I suppose that this is the way of things.

Skirting the issue, sifting through tissues, tamping the coffee grounds before making cappucino. Sucking the life out of the balloon, mangling the mud before the monsoon. Crimping the hair before the big dance, stamping the letter and taking the chance. Her odd choice of clothes echo and fold, she is wearing the mask on her head. Why not put it on her face? Instead she lifted the sheath of papers, stuck between the pages of the books she was constantly rubbing the ink talking about how it smelled. I wonder if in her mind is a series of bells, hanging on strings, and she never knows which one to pull.

At the cafe, all the corners of the napkin were upside down. A girl with orange hair placed a steaming cup of tea on the table while above me I heard a bird rustling, then taking flight. Later, in the dark, almost asleep, my mind was counting the shadows and the thieves. When I read a book in private later, on the train, the musty smell of the bookstore rushed into my nostrils. The clerk laughed, which stirred his short beard, when I asked if the book was fiction or non-fiction. The letters on the side of it read "Titian." I wrote my number on the napkin, in ballpoint pen, next to the incense. Love was a 10-sided dice. I hoped he would call, yet I didn't want to talk. I wanted to hear the radio frequency in the bookstore again, to undress my intellect and bathe in the static of a thousand minds humming on the shelves. With the pictures stored in my mind, even with my eyes closed, I could write an entire novel on a napkin, if the light was right.

The tender time to test my fate has come The pirate ship has sunk and I'm adrift The jug of rum is unstuck from my thumb the world still wiggles underneath my ship The Earth in all her curves looks flat to me Perhaps I've spent too much time on the sea Looking at the far-off curved horizon Each slip and swell taking me ever near... yet I can't reach what I have my eyes on The harbor of my home she will miss She's in Hades with her cape of chaos The monks in saphron robes are not so far eyes glisten as I listen to the stars my elbows perched on the crow's nest up high I almost hear the Heavens start to sigh So close am I when tunderstorms let go torrential rains then chill us to the bone we are safe just by the skin of our teeth when skies clear and sunlight offer relief yet the moment I feel like I'm alive is when I listen and I hear the storm. Her and I speak through some ancient channel A conch shell to the ear the static calls Mysteries of the sirens and ston...

The meek will inherit the Earth.  The sleek and slender fashion model will inherit the stares, when she is tilted on the magazine rack as I am buying brass tacks.  I speak like a fish out of water, bubbling to the surface I argue with the cashier about coupons. Capitalism lives to see another day. Keep me posted when the ruthless don't win. Keep me posted when your postcards show flowers and not strange fruit. Keep me up to date, I want to see the world that is behind the sunglasses of the blind piano player.

The bird of paradise stopped on a tree, hung out on a branch, then flew away from me. I watched him as he flew, and disappeared into the sky. I wonder if that is paradise, whatever is out there. Wherever he is flying to.

They said to read Shakespeare, Milton and Freud,  and for life I would be better prepared. I could go into Accounting or Law, and slay boredom with a sword made of glass. My friends were dressed in black and sulked a lot, they were hip to the culture of changes. I was caught in a dream of Cubism, on the edge of perspective, awaiting hue.

  Sometimes I grab an egg that I think is hard boiled, and it's not.

Bent metal rusted scraped the blacktop with a fist Busking for the coins I dropped inside the well Did I blow my fortune just to trade it for a kiss? Only time knows and only time will tell. The rats in the alley are smashed under wheels of trucks Their bones completely flat they end up like bear skin rugs underneath my shoes Am I roadkill on your alley boots?

(2) Stars are tiny shards of glass, thrown from the windows of a tall building in the sky. Many stars together make up a window, and there are many windows in this giant black skyscraper we know as space. The word skyscraper is ironic as it doesn't scrape the sky, it covers the sky, and bends with the arc of the universe to cover it entirely.  What is more is that each window glows with an office light. There are many many beings who make up the workings of the Universe, and they work here. Each window of stars, or galaxy, has an office behind it. Beings works there, on their computer, drinking moon coffee, for Infinity Corp.  We can't see them during the day becuase of the blue curtain with the clouds on it. This is where the beings work, making the meaning behind the curtain. During what we call night, they take a rest and sleep, yet the office lights are on. The cleaning crew is there, running the vaccuums, which sounds like thunder. Once in a while, the vaccuumers see the ...

When the stranger looks at you strangely, for he is a stranger, as he passes, you catch a spark of light. The shield on his blue-eyed cornea, the concave lens, brimming at his eyeball's edge, glistening. It was just a sideways glance but now your mind is choking like a bent garden hose, then a faucet runs clean, and there is an undercurrent of thought rivers, polluted by his sympathy. You feel a pull as the ego magnet is multiplying, a sunrise above a lake, the sliver blossoms into the fat sun of fire then dips down like a roller coaster into an ember when he looks away. When was that moment, when you thought he knew you?

There's no standard handbook for heroics. You climb the building and sit on the ledge, looking out over the land below.  Simmering butterflies line your stomach. Calm your nerves with nicotine, when they start to fray... No one wants to clean up this crazy mess. "Jumping is not an option!" the birds say, the clouds mutter, "put your heart back in your chest." Sew up your sternum and just sit, for no war was ever won in one day. Justice seems to move, but move just a little bit, like when the clouds move over the sun,  the day is grey but who notices? Your vision is behind your closed eyelids. You see sun spots. You stand on the ledge, stoic. Up here, your feet are as planted and firm as if they were on the earth.

Plastic Marjorie, you live your life in a jelly jar never looking at the stars you're always in the cupboard laying bare Plastic Marjorie you are destined to be full of vinegar at  inopportune times and say the wrong thing at cocktail parties. Plastic Marjorie, won't you let me take you to the dance, one more time? Let your black dresses flow, your silk hats taper into the windstorm up on Broadway street where the rats and the tapdancers step in time to gravel  Hurtle across my space time, ok Marjorie? Put your hair in curlers, trip out while staring at the wall many dinosaurs died to make you even...plausible.

The smooth circle has haunted men since Leonardo's time as they tried to draw it and divide it and make it square inside How will I believe the sun is merely an echo of the top of my coffee cup? This circular line, the orbit of us all. Did you feel the heat of the sun today, cascading down your back? Burning your skin with its piercing, as if jealous of you down here on Earth while she is stuck in the sky hanging there like a chandelier, burning for all time, do you ever think of how SHE feels? No I just crept into the shade to dream and inhale the darkness The corners were all so sharp there the sidewalk, the curb, the edge of the buildings The power lines, now those were a mess strewn up on the pole like my Aunt Jenny's jet black hair as she piled it up with giant sea shell clips How did electricity ever get through that yarnball to power the refrigerators and the washers or start the day when someone plugs in a toaster? It comes down from the pole in a straight line.

A girl plops down next to me,  then shuffles           to the side,  A stone gangster glances no  glances, he is staring straight ahead    while  the train is zipping by  the background blurrrrrs, silly chatter fills the train car tonight the elevated train in Chicago...  For now, the stakes are low  it is early--there is no cigarette smoke or rowdy boys wanting to make it into a dance The homeless men who will sleep here at 2 a.m. have not yet boarded. It's because they are on the streets yet with their old coats, which they will use as pillows when they come. Photo by Hannah Frank: Photo of unidentified commuter  

The circuit board was cracked and splintered, there on the steps by the alley where the lit cigarette was thrown before the car drove by with the package in the trunk bumping. It was a bomb from the planet of Mars with the whole thing ticking...waiting to blow. The cops were hovering around like bees their tan raincoats flapping as they looked down surveying the scene and writing in books. The grime on the foot print near the tire track was going to crack the case wide open-- if only they could see it.  Infared glasses might help, or x ray vision to determine it was brought here by a man who was just a travelling alien. He was here from Mars, fresh from Mercury, carrying a bomb that would blow up, proving the aliens are just a mob and they saw us here on earth and they thought us humans are not doing a great job. People are dying underneath the tanks factories are blowing out the black smoke we've had all this opportunity... Let's not make our chance at beauty a joke.

The storm is coming, it will start to rain We will bathe ourselves in the new rivers The sparrows know the secrets of the clouds they whisper words that fish and turles hear We bubble up not knowing where to go Gurgling like babes fresh out of the womb These drips will drop down to the hard, dry soil Our time on earth is over far too soon

He walked through the woods, through the alley in the city, through the dreams of his mind, down the tunnel of where she was. He was in the subway tunnel but felt displaced, unknown. The late night train would be rolling through soon, and the rats would scatter and the billboards would shake for an instant, before the magazine ready models went back to their plastic gazes, staring at nothing for eternity. His lips felt dry and wanted a cigarette, a taste of a salty kiss, but it was no more. He grasped the leather strap of his bag and slung it across his shoulder, harder than he needed to, and waited for the train.

The rim around the coffee cup tipped up then down I took a sip It stung like bees criss crossing on my fingertips like a hush up to my lips what was this silence? Dark and mellow strange but never bitter the pitter patter of tiny feet, these long lost demons running down the hall I stopped and counted them all I scooped them up like stars in my hand and shouted to the wind as I released the sand Now, now, NOW! Do I understand?  Do I unfetter? I do understand. I do unfetter. I lose my better half to become whole.

He is in Katmandu sending me letters about the colorful trash I thought we might reconnect like on a rotary dial phone The way time has passed has been less like a banana peel slipping under my foot and like a hood around people kissing in that one Magritte painting She is in China, explainning the training to the people there she said they live in shacks and the sunrise coming up through the smog is other worldly. I meanwhile took a trip to the grocery store. Later in the rain I walked by it again, soaking wet, and bought a poncho made of plastic from a homeless man named Alvin for $6. It was a good purchase and I got what I needed, and he would get supper later.

  The polite way to freak out  The silly way to speak up The bright way to stick up for a friend The old way to drop a line Did we stop doing those things we used to do because a trend came?

  Happenstance was the way things used to be, they danced then set me free.

(2) Hot water makes tea, you steam up with soliloquies ghostly moving through the locked gates you spill suddenly, I am standing on the ground pondering the make-up of your soap box Why do you talk so fast? Rivers always get where they are going. (1) Hot water makes tea, I am so sick of your soliloquies as you reverberate through the locked gates Oil makes black top, I am standing on the ground pondering the make-up of your soap box Why do you talk so fast? Rivers always get where they are going.

Careless carpal tunnel tips my hat to the hedonistic viewpoints of my feral  cats, drawn like sticky tar spooled into spider webs careening cars down the alley don't slow down for speed bumps. Geese flying laps to the powerlines, drink the destitution like its wine on a spiral day, sling your arm into a trumpet and play rock, scissors paper at least twice keep it going until you win. Typing into the computer, I felt flat. The day had just started to wear on me. I squinted at the sun and felt the birds singing. Where was the crystal ball? Persistent people pleasing will launch your lurching soul into haywire radio static, muscles make a myraid of strong singing voices airplanes flipping through the sky like flapjacks cooking on the air. Inside of my wrists was the secret to the universe. I just had to pull the cord on the parachute.

Somehow Horace Silver is connected to this. I threw away the shirt I was wearing, as if I could throw away the mistakes I made while wearing it. Hopefully the hype will take your high heels and throw them over the hills. Hard work will be waiting for you in the valley of your visions. I will not be the one that freezes.

(2)  The orange fire raged inside the barrel its heat competing with sunrise (1) The new nomad shook her feet the dust settled into the metal scraps the wild dogs sniffed her robes the rags started falling off as she ran The old man shuffled the cards the joker peeked out from behind the clubs his hands were covered in rings which started coming off as he slept The orange fire raged inside the barrel the homeless warmed their gloves the odd smell of factories covered the air but the smog began to roll away with sunrise The blue guitar played a lonesome jig in the small cafe next to the tourist trap the passports and the wallets wailed the money started at the fingertips and fell into the tip jar as they listened The man at the casino grew intense he had never met anyone that made as much sense the journalist kept explaining that the rage was real but like a dream  all these stories would never connect the nomad, the man and the fire I awoke with the sun in my eyelashes thinkin...

I thought I'd write dark poetry to take all my darkness and put it into line but I didn't want my actual self to be dark, just the words. I thought I'd take my cynicism and lay it out bare but I didn't want to actually be cynical I didn't want to actually not care. Yet here I am brooding like a fool. I thought I'd tell a white lie to take all my darkness and cover it with a sheet but I didn't want it to be the undertaker of my word, just a shield. I thought I'd take my honesty and stir it in a pot but I didn't want to cook it completely, I would not be able to eat it. So here I sit and nibble on the truth. I thought I'd get a blue mood to take all my rhythms and groove them into the dawn but I didn't want to get a hangover, just to hang out. I thought I'd sit by the window with my hand in my chin but not let myself go completely. I thought I'd let my imagination run but I wasn't going for Olympic gold.

(2) The jugular falls in a triangular way, on that window sill where my elbows sit and they make  a triangle hands on my chin. An A flipped upsidedown. A V waiting to be redrawn.  Lines are boundaries, lullabies Lure me to my dreamstate sleepwalking foggy down the hallway. Perspective merges then radiates the doorways and the staircase windows are now stained with color they used to be clear we could see each other. (1) The jugular falls in a triangular way the plans we made when the stars were bright flipped upsidedown  Lines were drawn boundaries Crossed eyes and lullabies lured me to my dreamstate sleepwalking foggy down the hallway messed up with guns and the occult felt squares and grandma's quilts lit cigarettes on the edges of the ledge that window sill it's such a small thing it's no big deal it's just chipped paint that window sill where my elbows sit and they make  a triangle hands on my chin.

 The junk      truck     is coming     I can HEar it     it is              coming. The side doors are beat up and the bed of the truck is full and the gleaming metal in the  avant garde stack looks like robot parts. The copper and the magnets in the old refrigerators and washing machines will be traded... perhaps the mattresses will be sold and the other things melted or smelted--but for now they are a mountain he is carrying. It is definitely epic. The frame of  the truck is bent yet it towers proudly up like the first skyscraper this rolling testament that trash is treasure he looks in dumpsters and is patrolling  now he is not just looking  for  wooden pallets. He keeps on. I see him time and       time again     usually it is              the same stuff in the truck but I  hope he hits     pay ...