Playing Cards and Crosswords

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.

Liquid

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.

Super Girl

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

The Red Herring

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.

Rope

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

It's Time

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.

Double Duty

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. Even after the light goes out the strange torch of karma burns.

Paradise Found

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.

Good Problems

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 Distance

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.

For the Birds

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.

Resolutions

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.

Sunday Morning

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?

Slipping and Sliding, and Sipping

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.

Ashes at Dusk

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

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.

The Cloth

When night is strung like black cloaks

hanging between the lamp posts

daylight is like white towels and their pristine

clean rectangles.

Like a Christo

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 my computer cool, it was overheating with each video project I did for the church choir, somehow, despite all odds, I ended up helping make songs for the Big Source. It looked like a throwback from the 1940s where there were machines and appliances that looked like space aliens. I had lately been thinking of how the story of Eve completely undermined the whole idea of knowledge.

Sipping on coffee was a bitter pursuit, but while looking at the veins on the leaves of the houseplant, I groaned with the morning and came awake. Tiny sticks of burned incense littered the flowerpot like soldiers or scarecrows. I tried like hell to imagine a bird, flying out of the center of my heart.

The Wing of A War

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. 

Getting Schooled

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