Sit still.
Find a log in the woods,
a sun-warmed rock in a field.
Don’t hurry.
Let your eye rest on that small
part of the world before you.
Let it fill you,
sink into the blank page
like ink from a fine pen.
Even cold concrete
porch steps and a scrap
of a city front lawn will do.
My eyes delight
in dandelions, miniature suns
whose warmth summons bees.
My mind gathers
violets. Each sweet face gazes
at me with my mother’s smile.
When I look at you
I’m reminded of how men are from Mars.
And women?
Well they are from Venus
They are from anywhere else.
That doesn’t include you.
Do you remember what it felt like
To let your mind stray?
Do you remember the siren song I sang
All lonely and aloof
And you prayed, finally
For an open door.
But you forgot to pray for me
You forgot that I was finally set free
I’m here on Venus
Ruling like the godess I am
And you my dear?
Well you’re are covered in your own sweat and tears.
Covered in the dead carcass of your fears
I remember the face of God
Resembling the cry I heard from someone
Don’t let me go
But men are from Mars
And they prefer their pride and their
Ego.
Because I grew after the Death,
I was able to see
how right you were, so right for me,
for immortality.
We slowly grew; we knew no haste —
and you had put away
the other who had been with you
(availability!).
We passed the times of living alone;
we traveled well, and then —
you said, let’s buy a house; and so
we looked and found the one.
Or rather — we lucked out — to buy
this place first day of sale.
It’s nestled us and furry friends
like tadpoles are by pools.
We paused at a chapel, a place
in Liberace’s town —
the owner led the vows for us
(no Elvises around).
Since then, has been nearly two years —
and better every day —
as if we were destined to be
for eternity.
I woke Up On a Cloud Today
Eye in the Sky
Walked Up a Spiral Staircase in a Porcelain Palace.
To the Top
To See
Her
Forbidden Feelings
Are Still
Feelings
Sat in a Bath Tub Opposite Her Bath Tub
Heat Was the Main Attraction
Snuck Thru a Dream Neighborhood From the Past
On Christmas Morning
Avoiding the Step Dad.
Why
I didn’t know.
But It wasn’t a Nightmare
It was a Dream of Fleeing
Of
Feeling
Present Today
At Work
In the Humid House
House of Art and Lost Culture.
“Are they African?” I asked.
“No,” replies Johnny.
“They’ve got a lot of Masks”
The Homeowners Vacant.
Inside I was
(a) Stranger
Among
Strangers
Plus 1 friend
We
caught
up
Me:
Disillusionment with Work
Highlighted from Pandemic
At Breakfast, She asked, “What do you do?”
“In life, thats a big question”
‘DIRECT’
was on the tip
of my tongue
“In work?” she asks
‘DIRECT’
still
lingering
the
truth
“production work?” she spells it out, “movies, commercials, or what?”
“Commercials,” I answer
A hearty lie
But the lie they want
Karen asks me while masked, “What are you doing here?”
I laugh while masked.
“Your position?” She reiterates.
I smile, still masked,
and Answer
The
Answer
They
Want
‘Direct’ Still On My Tongue
In My Heart
A Secret
Among
Strangers
You can drink a healing potion
But it might be slightly intoxicating
You can stay in bed a little longer
Snag an extra hour of sleep
Or you can tell the sun to go fuck itself
And take the whole day off work
You can share a conversation with a close friend
Catching wisdom in their words
You can listen for hours to your favorite band
After all it’s why they do what they do
You can try your luck with God
Though it seems like a gamble nowadays
I guess you can cause another human being to suffer
Feeding off their blood and pain
You can lie cheat and steal
Just taking whatever you need
You can channel yourself into a hobby
I can attest to poetry’s power
You could engorge yourself in an auto-erotic kink
I…may have said too much
You can gravitate toward a kindred spirit
Who will fill you with their light
You can use another person for sex
Consuming laid bare soul
Or you could just sit alone in silence
Allowing your heart to work on itself.
There are thousands of things human beings
can and will do in an effort to heal
but a singular question should accompany them all.
Are you willing
or are you prepared
to be
how you heal?
These summery leaves like lion’s paws
compelled to but lazily sway about breathless breezes, so
the impatient churn of a string trimmer chewing at rallying grass
or a house marm mowing her mint in a bombazine bridal train
knotted in brambling rose shrubs—
What Orpheus heard in the din of old Otus’ elevator,
in the encyclopedic friction frobbed from a cordless phone,
in the crank of a gramophone lazily swiveling,
swimming through simmering seas of sound
and unsoundably miserable meanings mounting,
saddling sickened sturgeons,
winnowing wild whales from warmly warbling waters,
caparisoned orcas cast before battlements clashing with rallying grasses—
Cendrars no less than a cigarette
spinning its silvery serpents sacred,
emollient, stinging, and shapeless
scales of a shore-swoln sole some staggering
gull had arranged in a strangled cipher,
tracing its holiest moments hewn
by the gormless, grape-eyed golem’s grip,
an electric goddess yoked in a herringboned carpet,
milked from acerbic, tar-tough, inchoate crystal
cracked against fires invidious, craven
gods forgave in incessantly sucked and sutured organs,
folgerphones, korgs, and wheezing accordeons;
Silverstein’s succoring sallow sapped
to a stud, these crass and elastic surds
I’ve stripped from a street lamp’s stippling shadows,
as sweetly asemic as crackerjack ciphers
smoothed with a chittering band of purported
plastic plied with pinked and stickily
pinguid digits docked amid crackling
sockets sorely slanted across a dis-
figured horde of but sloppily cobbling
graphemes crunched in a babbling crick of il-
legible sentiment, cardamom pods like
bell buoys pitted in peppermint aspic
sprawled on a prickly bed of zesty
dolmas dredged with the sun-dried rinds of
buttery, sunken oranges’ gaunt and
glaucous cheeks and an army of ever more angular morsels
gnarled to the clinically tessellate face of an
ageless god among gods erased—
Our old neighbors didn’t use
their deck. Shame they never knew
this Eden’s quirky gifts. Now
lemon and lime trees, curry
plant, Mother’s-Day mums line deck—
its heart a baby cooing
bubbles, blessing deck’s next year.
I don’t belong anywhere
My presence is accounted for
Not craved or needed
These relationships exist only in ether
Dissipating like a summer shower
Without the resulting humidity
Where’s the proof it passed through at all?
I hope I leave things more colorful than I found them
That I water them in the same way
My cracked, charred soil craves, needs
A change of scenery, yet still
Ghosts always find their way back
Back by my side
Where they belong
Where they’re needed
Prior to school the girls would beg for French braids
My comb slid carefully through their golden locks
Dividing three separate strands afraid
to keep straight and even with twists and turns to lock
the braid neatly in place. Holly glanced at the back
of her hair through the gilded mirror, smiled and bounced
through her day. Heather, on the hand, scrutinized
carefully the braid in the mirror and 9 times out of 10
would undo my handiwork, stating it wasn’t perfect.
Angry since I wasted my time but later
felt remorse for her cause life for her
is confused to rigid lines of perfection.
Rigid lines that filled me with mother blunder
Perfection steals joy from her being.
