Where a mask is an embrace,
an open palm is a shelf for the cosmic,
a ripe strawberry is a long and tender meal,
a blade of grass is a meaningful conversation,
a barking dog is meditation,
a crack of lightning is a cool balm,
two palms pressed against glass is communion,
a blooming flower is a field of stars,
I ask: what room is there for dust?
Frank was a singer,
Frank was a swinger,
He made movies,
He ran with the Rat Pack.
But he was also a cowboy.
Remember the song “South of the Border”?
He also made a movie called JOHNNY CONCHO,
With cowboy hat, gun in holster,
Kind of like Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON,
Only with Frank as more of an anti-hero,
The cowardly brother of a feared gunfighter
Who has Johnny’s back–until he dies (the brother).
OK, he was no Roy Rogers,
But Roy Rogers was no Frank Sinatra.
Also, Roy Rogers wasn’t Roy Rogers,
He was Leonard Slye.
Frank was really Francis Albert Sinatra,
But that’s close enough.
Happy trails.
Just a reminder that some nights
just aren’t beautiful.
The air turns to boulders
settling at the bottom of your lungs.
The ground you walk on grows uneven
impossible to safely traverse
in danger of dark.
Cloud cover blocks
those little spots of hope,
weak as they may be from so far.
Simply seeing them can be enough
to drag us through
whatever storm ravages our heart,
making the stars the hardest to lose.
There’s no escaping those nights,
life’s cruel counter-balance to fortune,
but sometimes we need them.
Another night
all the elements will paint
serenity into our minds.
The occasional disorder is instead
an invitation for self-reflection
to find the beauty within ourselves
the world cannot give.
Santa wears a steel helmet as he makes his afternoon rounds of the orphan homes and hospitals on foot. It’s lined with metal foil to block the signals from the satellites, the ones that tell him to start drinking again while there’s time and to hell with the children. While the coded lies are silenced he can focus on what needs to be done so the kids can take over the world next weekend. It’s an odd looking hat he wears, olive green in color and shaped like the top half of a flying saucer. He could probably get the elves under the sidewalk to make a sportier one, bright red with white trim and pom perhaps, but they’re busy enough with the toys, with repairing the sleigh and trying to find new reindeer. And the children’s laughter tells him they don’t mind the current model, no matter the grown-up frowns.
I hate waking up in the morning
And closing my eyes again
I got plenty of sleep
Yet I’m exhausted
I roll out of bed feeling like
Today is starting just like yesterday
My motivation and my energy are low
I push myself to do something
And get on to myself when I don’t do enough
I start to feel lonely and numb
And resort back to my bed sheets
I’ll tell myself to go on a drive
To let whatever this is out
And when I park my car back outside my house
It feels like I did nothing except waste gas
I hate these days because I’ve yet to figure out how to fix them
I want to wake up tomorrow with a crazy amount of energy
And purpose
I want to live and I want more than this feeling
What if I wrote like you?
What if my poems pose as prose?
What if I hide intentions in entendres?
What if my lines happen to rhyme?
What if you don’t relate to those?
What if they bury your goals?
What if they say poetry is dead?
I say I’m a blooming rose
The Kentucky campfire spirits
emerged
while the cold crept into
and out of
my fridge.
County lines convert to conversation.
Clips later, clicks orbit.
I tap. I send. I ask how they are.
“Some cold” is all the galaxy asks for.
Here, the kitchen cold
done took command:
endless growls within
my fridge. Done
froze my cheeses
the cherries
the rice-cabbage-radish-mint-chickpea salad
the smoked salmon
the unopened hummus.
Not the ciders, of course.
Or thankfully, the package of abundant bacon.
New territory. Am I installed,
ready to answer the call?
I promised to learn how to turn the cool loose.
I tell the galaxy I am curious:
what’s at the heart of elemental vortexes?
I wonder which is easier to contain:
fires or frigidaires.
At my table, the fridge shut off and quiet,
the temperature tamed but unright and unlucky,
I drank inadvertent iced coffee.
LARKSPUR
(for Grey)
He holds the words in his hand.
Letter by letter he forms
them into coherent language,
readable sentences,
paragraphs and
pages.
He taps the lead images
gently with his mallet
giving them exact space and
reason.
He stands over them
looking down
with loving eye
measuring, by vision,
he next line…
imagining the entire page.
His hands smooth the paper.
he knows the texture
the smell…
he knows because
it is his art
his expertise
his life.
It is there, at the press,
where he creates the words of a lifetime,
the books we cherish
the relics of literature.
He holds the words in his hands and t
the hope of reason
for all the world to read.
Tony Sexton
The leaves have turned
Often since I left the garden
His absence held me
Too long to that land
I remained a bottomless well
A foot stuck in concrete
Until the delicious moon
Told me a secret one night
And I rolled off the mountain
Like a rabid pebble
My journal with its slobbering
Testimony followed me to this city
Where I sit at a polished wood desk
And try to write the rigid skyline
So foreign from my familiar pen
Of bendy willow and rebellious hills
Daily sirens now intrusive as a fly
In the next room who eventually
Finds an open window
And goes about its business
Car horns, some drunken couple in the street
The background music of my new night life
No more the questing owl
Or tree frog serenade
No distant coyote heralding kits
Or corn stalks wrestling the wind
No man coming along the river trail
Smiling with fish in hand
During the dark drug of sleep
The mind forgets such folly
But in the ramp of dream
The whippoorwill calls me
To the edge
Of almost there
