Daily Poetry & Prose

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.