Daily Poetry & Prose

The big screen door slapped in the summer wind, and a storm was coming over the Midwest. I went out on the back steps and talked to the cats, we had about 17 of them, and then went inside. I was totally alone and there was no sound, just the tall panes of glass in the old windows of this house which was from roughly 1904. 

Those bastards, she cried, as she held her side. She couldn't believe that she was just shot on set. Tie me down she thought to herself, as she turned cold. Days later, when she awoke from the coma she informed everyone that she had visited God and he had enough carpet tacks there for everyone and there would be no more television shows with guns, ever.

I will write a letter with black ink and let it run down the page. I will stop at a traffic light, and wait patiently for the green.

I'm going to Costa Rica I'm standing in the rain I am going to see my daughter I have three suitcases of pain I'm going to ride a horse I'm going to pet the mare I'm going to look death in the eye and not be scared. I will find the Voodoo Priestess and drink water from her well. I will know the stance of mercy, I know her very well. I will hold the baby in my arms and feel my heart skip a beat; long and languid tropics my cold and aching feet. Did I hear the parrot in the jungle, his cry echoing far and wide? It sounded like this: --------------  ----------- --------- --- - -- -    -     -            - I moved back a giant leaf, and there he is: Beckoning me with his big beak to take another look inside this forgotten cave, where the waterfall runs deep within.

The man from Japan stared at the moon for a moment, before turning his head and looking at the water to find a reflection of himself and the moon on the same plane.  His child threw a pebble                                                                                     the picture.            into the water,                          not realizing that the ripple                                                              would interrupt (go up)

I crashed into the mind of a sign made of neon glowing and softly glaring if there's such a thing as to softly glare.

Sometimes I am concerned. I am concerned that the coffee grinder, which I use to make my coffee, is too loud. It's on the counter, right next to the wall. The same wall  which is shared with my neighbor's apartment.  I sometimes wonder when I am whirring beans at 7:16 A.M. if it's not right next to his head in the bedroom. His pillow could be up against that very wall. His sleeping skull could be a mere foot from the crazy loud machine. I think this as I whir the beans. Then, I continue making coffee on the stove. The stove I am not so fond of. I had a wonderful, crummy old stove perfect for making sweet potatoes and then the landlord's goons came with a brand new stove  and insisted on changing it out. I protested, but lightly. But now, the stove just doesn't feel me. It's white like a spaceship, with bubbly black metal  and it just seems like a giant marshmallow with a bad case of eyeliner blues.

Take me home, sweet statue of stone, your smooth skin beckons my hand to rise from my side and strike your thousand-year-old cheek. The stripes from my human sweat leave a mark on the calm marble while my heart races. 

I finally figured myself out this whole shebang is an exercise in freestyling, or improvisation as the theater folks call it. I am gifted enough to know how to make a run-on sentence sound like I meant to do it, and it's truly a surprise to open the box and find out what I got. 

Plastic attitudes wrapped up in caustic milk Shank Hall Milwaukee ginger root Fade flipper fabulous gritty tooth Hillbilly history hip mystery silk Grease Fur Tumbler Fried Chicken Stumbler Preamble ashcan.

The sensual man is hot but even fire is slow to burn wet paper.

Jack Kerouac sat back ran his bony fingers through his black hair his body sober but his soul drunk, hung over a typewriter like a sheet on a clothes line drying under the sun madly dashing in the breeze gruff and grumbling gears spitting calculated ink tobacco juice aims thought pounds being weighed at market slaughtered and shipped wrapped up in packaging and stacked neatly in rows. The typewriter made each word important an architecture of black bone free-standing finite mechanical physical.

I pictured two people  behind my closed eyes. I hung out with them as they ate a nice dinner and stared into each other's vibe. I watched them take each other home, their reflections flashing in the big glass windows as they walked.

The way the guitar fits together a quilt of notes sewn together by gentle hands The way the frets turn  from one to two to twelve the synopsis of the octave growing to new heights that diminished chord hits me like a descending bell and crashes into the glass doll in my chest. The poem soaked in rusted water drenched in diamonds and dripping from dark room chemicals as it comes into being it slowly features a figure coming into being.

I changed from chugging to channeling, from changing to cooking I gleefully found the doorknob when it was time to go I have been rocked into the timestamp sideways far gone conclusion. I have been provided restitution by the State. The name Pete came off my lips yesterday and I don't know why, must have been the Saint. I worked hard until I worked smarter. I dug a hole for myself, shot myself in the foot, then buried my shoe. I drained my bathtub of all my dreams and all that is left is the silt. I have dreamed of a thousand dreams, oh God, I need to read the KEATS.

The Earth is hot and full of air my hair is wrapped around my stem my flowers find the sky in desperate time the clouds are not the painter's touch but the blast of the furnace of the universe where the plastic cups and roughed up packages find their way into landfills and somewhere deep in our chests is the black hole it all gets sucked into What is this electricity this tiny heat inside of us the furnace of the Universe burns in us In three million years when Elon Musk is on a spaceship tweeting to the Gods and the no one in particular cares my star dust will be wrapped up in yours for eternity.

There may come a time when the rhymes on these pixels are forgotten and left to dust when the cars in Cuba even begin to rust when the Great Wall of China is barren and cold summer is fresh  only in the tropics and the world is sold.

He couldn't take the cold, and couldn't find parking spots. He drank heavily but that was in the 70s He graveled and growled his way into Betsy's heart. He sang Stevie Ray Vaughan covers in Texas. He came back and still could hardly pay rent. Him and the stoners, always short. He went to the beach one day on acid, he took it in the morning the same way you and I brush our teeth. 

 The world is full of tiny cirlces smoke rings and coffee stains coins for the laundry slot rings on the fingers of the haves and have nots The world is full of tiny cirlces spinning the spoon in the coffee cup to stir in the sugar and the cream going around and around like an eclipse The world is full of tiny circles pebbles on the beach too numerous to count the tiny holes where the bolts go on all of the machines The world is full of tiny circles I came back to a place I used to live I swore I'd never return  I was young and full of vigor I knew I was right and the world was wrong I just wanted to hide away and sing my songs Decades later I return Looking in the windows of the empty cafe where I used to play the world is full of tiny circles and I can't escape Can I jump through them like hoops Tiny hop scotch game is it like ripples on a pond if I walk across the two-dimensional water and skip over can I jump through?

The state of confusion The state of the union The state of the separation The state of the delusion

Joy is boring the calmness you need to have once you get it is so underwhelming compared to the ego blast from challenge and conflict joy is boring as you walk in the morning near the stones and the cold Earth as men hand you fliers for the candidate as you climb the stone steps with gang graffiti spraypaint and just see them as colorful designs joy is boring You walk the circle at the top of the hill you climb down as your stomach sinks with the sensation of loss of elevation and you see more spraypaint this time it says Defend the Forest in capital black letters and you walk the wrong way  and you can't get through because of the ravine joy is boring as you walk home with Green Tea and look at the old cop sitting like Buddha with a yellowed beard and smelly nostrils in his oily black jacket on the porch  smoking you had smelled the smoke  a house away and didn't know where it was coming from until you looked down thinking that's a good place to sit and saw him glaring a...

Oh God I am not static I am radio I am reborn I am the electrical impulse of the city in the morn I shake with each ion and charged belief to keep my pulses on the brink of shaking leaves I rock each tattered wire with canary song Lifting the AC/DC as fast as steam in bongs Carried like ghost ships on the wired sea These black strings hanging from buildings are home to me Electricity Electricity count my shaking fingers 1,2,3 Bring me into being Electricity But I shall not worry  I will simply take flight if you choose instead to live by candlelight Keep your own fire in your heart and flame I was far from having a name Look instead to the meadow you will find me there in the purple haze of yesteryear It's too easy to fill the book page after page with rage let us seek a quieter moment within the cage Align, align! Shapes and colors unite Let it all be simple  with a ball of positive light Glowing Growing to heights.

Pressing pause on the ego to wake up in a humble state of mind a bumble bee honey hive of gratitude forming flowers in the mind

My words are going to come out in increments, like a jazz solo from the horn of a saxophone. I waited with my eyes glued shut to hear the sounds of the angels: playing piano and finding their muses in unforeseen circumstances.

A costume shop has a distinct smell.  The costumes hang in rows, with cheap fabric, mocking me. God knows where they've been. I try on a hat, or two or three. I look at the outfits, the genie, the cowboy, the native, the milkmaid. I appreciate the heavy, three-way mirror near the dressing rooms, waiting for someone to truly see themselves.