Daily Poetry & Prose

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.