Daily Poetry & Prose

Earn a living helping others believe in the spirit of their syrupy soul when their pain departs and they start to grieve the pits of cherries left inside their bowl As you look at your million dollar hem and listen to their sob stories all day for you know the fault only lies with them you take their money then you go away

The bones inside my hand are turning loose like horses in their pens unblocked released rushing mad rampant tidal wave to truth and laughing like a secret mumbling thief I grab for the phone to dial a call a curtain lifting off the veil shroud to see myself as I can know it all beyond what's traditionally allowed I will learn the jazz, the jones, the hot meat and sweat inside a tiny club with lights the neon plate of silence that I eat the just dessert between the horse and hype

 If power lines could run across the moon--that's the phrase which is steering all of this as it's correct iambic pentameter (and a good line if I do say so myself). The prostitutes and rosaries align unhitched from their strings, rolling through the night the silhouettes of cigarettes and gin reflecting in the ugly neon light The hounds of Baskerville run through the fog he tightens the black tie around his neck the lipstick on the collar of the dog the hand around the fattened rooster's neck Behind the tall Cathedrals peeking through Forgiveness rushing like a waterfall the stained glass windows streaming azure blue and St. Therese is stoned among it all The sliver of blue sky I dare to cut Like Miro with scissors lying on the bed To create beauty from oh, God knows what (Not the best but there's some rhythm to certain lines)

If thinking men lay just beneath the sun with gods above and demons down below The hot air balloon rises just for fun just underneath the beak of the black crow-- It soars like an old witch across the moon that stretched pale skin is scarred from wall to wall below is the reflection of the spoon The mirror lake, I see the crystal ball The neon light is hanging in the night The sky itself seems to be taking flight.

If ribbons and the mermaids stopped to rise where Poseidon stops to overlook the waves and misfits wrapped in cellophane agreed that seaweed was the currency of fish Then I would want the clocks to all strike twelve so I could make my silent final wish.

A dim light shines from the street light  it has been covered by foggy glass a dim moment shines in my heart some memory of yesterday it has been covered by the soot of a fire I held the flame in my hand I held the flame long time coming in the rain oh train, gain, sane, mane.

The apples which I've been cracking haven't been through the smoke and haze lately why not procure a cherry bomb and throw it don't ask--it's a dumpster fire inside of a structure fire being hurled out the window with an old piano and crashing into a pit of flames.

A peculiar moon rose in the sky, the last night we were together, him and I. The black wolf sat in the corner, staring at everything with its blank yellow eyes I had miles to walk and it felt like years until the sunrise. I kept going, with a rose in my teeth, a pirate on a sea of soil The wolf came behind me, I could hear the patter of his feet but just barely because he is a hunter and is used to walking quietly. After some time had passed which I could tell by the angle of Orion in the sky I came upon a small stream and glanced into it and took a bath in my reflection my ego rising like the moon my face wet and stoic. The wolf stared at me, unmoving. I dried off and kept going through the brambles of the night when we came to thistles and swamp too thick to move through I closed my eyes and said a prayer and rode the wolf like a Pegasus into the darkest corners of your soul. There I held a mirror to you. Do you see your face? Your shoulder? Your jaw? I set the mirror down. I began t...

The wrapped up trap of crap stuck between the gaps in the teeth of the talker The grimace of the bear clawed man who didn't know nature was a stalker Pressurized tent kept me holy in the last days of my youth I sat inside the belly of a whale and wiggled my last baby tooth.

Banana peel slightly unreal go funk the bra of Lady Liberty Sensual garage tire iron went sideways on Loyalty's Holiday.

Blankets wrapped around my ankles, shackled in warmth  Hankering for the slow-cooked meals of home while under a muddy tarp Thickened ground from rain that will not stop, coming Sunshine is light years away sweet nothings whisper to me silent Famine is my friend, spook me sudden Dreams of graveyard ghosts with sunset eyes Dripping honey to the beehive mountain I've dropped my gun and fell for  your surprise

A burnt piece of art in a freestanding frame press me like a button on a gas tank A great work of art in a gold leafed frame turn me like a knob on a white door A sloppy work of art in a dumpster fire bleed me like a stone in a gravel pit A true work of art in the heart of God touch me like an apple in a garden, man

Basket case, string me together like a line of pearls You asked me to be mad but just for about five minutes: long enough to write a poem and then catch the elevator.  Long enough to catch a train long enough to hail a cab long enough to watch the storm from the 15th floor. 

As if the death masks on the walls could talk  a tiny beetle is crawling out of the eye socket of the skull The ska checkerboard takes a King wicked into the dawn she asks again and again for a light puffffffing slowly on a cigarette avoiding life. Avoiding life is not the same as suicide to jump in front of a train is not heroic but there's more action there than inside of her as she dances with delight rings a tiny bell I hear an echo of this chance at freedom boredom and ennui are her past times I picture her with opium  on a Friday night.

There is no sense in firing him, it's been a long distance relationship between the Sun and the Moon for many years now, anyways. No sense in asking the Janitor for cash.  The film in the camera and the film on that old dusty piano have all become the same thing. It's his attempt to go back in time and call the music back to life. In those old bars, the Grey Ghost played shapeshifter each key whether black or white and howled into some bitter majesty in the pitch black night. Prostitutes and war veterans with prosthetic legs hobbled together as rats scurried between the fences and the cans the sharp edges of aluminum and the dirty nylon stockings wrapped up into balls on wash day and the bright white linens slapping the sky on the clotheslines between the tenement houses 1939. Fantastic story, really had me going there.

Testify to my magic eye I got the apple pie and the war bride I got the taste test and the steel vest I got the insect and the butterfly Genuflect to my intellect I got the right suspect I am lost in pain up to my neck the sea shatters me underneath my glass feet sandy toes drowning Capture my rapture I am done speeding by I am slow train coming I am what you can't deny I am found in the hallway the mission bells and monks walking I am dust on a mirror car salesman fast talking I am ripe like a cherry from the long lost tree I am lost in the seance I am calling me.

If silence was as golden as they say her dancing lips were lead and alchemy

 I often walk under this particular overpass of steel beams where the train rides above and there's a mural and shadows and pigeons so I know the stickers and the graffiti well I had seen the black marker that said FREE GAZA and weeks later I saw  where someone wrote it FROM HAMAS This particular morning I saw a Streets and Sanitation worker with a power wash water sprayer spraying water at such a high force that the graffiti and stickers were going to be removed the spray from the water gun dispersed into the air making a rainbow in the sunlight on a Monday morning Removal by force is ironic here Isn't there a better way like writing in-- FREE GAZA FROM HAMAS AND THEN FROM PAIN --or something. The rainbow told a story I wanted to capture it in this poem and not on my phone. As I write I don't know who the rainbow was for. 

There's some kid named Liam who wore a shirt, and it said there are only two genders and it's this serious issue and I'm asked to #standwithLiam. Language is real. You can't teach someone that the sky is blue-- and then talk about how actually, when it's night, it's black and expect them not to be confused.

The manic stamp of my poetry will not go unnoticed. It started with the ego and then it turned into empathy. I saw the photo of the children crying, their eyes wild with confusion. I repeat: their eyes wild with confusion. Holding, each other and bloody small arms. What was my problem again? Do you really think I care if your art organization gets funding? Do you think I care about your branding racket on NPR? No, I do not. I care about the moon, spinning in space. Half dreaming and stupid as it hangs in the air. I had a thought like a basketball, suspended in time. The panthers that Delacroix drew still haunt my mind. The river of the Old West is spinning too through the canyon of my heart in a late night text LOL was I really to be the angry bride bent like a fender on an old Ford crying and moaning with curlers in my hair and a frying pan to boot with leather pants and a sword trying to take back your heart? OH, hardly. Again, the moon in me shifts. Was the well-timed turd that Ambe...

Her earrings fly through the space from the moon to the landing on Jupiter when I turned and missed the call I found a fallen angel shattered in the mirror Did I ache to ask her a question? Echoing the shadows against the muddy walls of the well I had a cave inside my heart and a small temporary tattoo of a bicycle in my hand.  I had tea with my grandmother, two bags worth, and wondered what my Dad would think if he saw me smoking with hoodlums. I longed to taste the cool night air on the back of a Camel and walk through the pinhole of Africa into the Blues-soaked rags of the Sahara wake up in Egypt with eyelashes longer than power lines, full of soot and chalk and nail polish in the realm of a frozen tundra, where Russia meets the West.

 Hell, isn't it all alchemy?

The old man with the wide nose covered in hard red warts oversized and awkward blind with thick rimmed glasses yet talking quietly shuffling while pushing an empty wheelchair there's suddenly water all over the floor at Jewel right by the flower section  I stand in line at the bank teller, artfully placing a cup of delicate, delicious, expensive espresso in my hoodie pocket daring myself to place it, with the lid, in my pocket, upright while I do my transaction As I wait in line the man brushes me The man with the wide nose covered in hard red warts oversized and awkward blind with thick rimmed glasses yet talking quietly shuffling while pushing an empty wheelchair and I look and see he has oranges under his chair a bag of oranges surely and I step aside so he can get by I catch myself acting like he is a leper but I steady myself as I hold no ill will I just didn't want to be touched by a passerby and of course I then see that the oranges are not oranges they are orange roses,...