Thinking of things right now
compared to everything else
I’m calm
and it’s nice like this.
Not severed by the pressure of perception from peers
Or pals that did exist.
Things are so good.
It’s almost as if something is wrong,
like all regard has fallen,
but like my favorite band-
I am Sublime –
and Love is what I got
I walked into the darkness of canopy,
so lush this year with record rain.
At first, contrast clouded my lens,
so slow these days to open for low light.
But once my aperture reckoned,
a silver glaze glistened on every leaf,
Catchlight puddled up from the path,
diffused by humid mist.
And here, I thought, is how
we capture epochs, one
incremental focus at a time.
Expecting the world
of what was never supposed to go this far.
Cause in our summer sleepless nights
you’re the one who raised the bar.
Call me, darling, call me your home,
but we know at the end you’ll never say so.
No one ever tells ya
there’s freedom in the failure.
Dying in a dream feels like home,
no one ever seems to say so.
Take me home tonight,
and leave your key when you go
cause today is the last time
you’ll make me feel alone.
When you kneel at the alter
your prayers don’t know
they reach deaf ears
while your voice hits home.
No one ever tells ya
there’s freedom in the failure.
Dying in a dream feels like home,
no one ever seems to say so.
This dies in California
when you go back to hell
and despite all that’s happened
I kind of wish you well
I died in your dreams
so I’ll stay in California.
in the dark that approaches now after nine,
i, hearing the sounds of a temporary jungle
– sounds without a semblance of modesty,
nakedly sit beneath the canopy of my old
man’s lust. i rest beside a mighty oak
whose sap flow i can feel, then doze
among the milkweed, gift of the monarch,
and dream that i’m tarred in its sticky
latex and feathered with its sweet blossom.
in the creek bed everything drips,
and i smell the scum of its stagnant pools.
words are pointless here but flora and fauna
snake up to my arm pits and whisper
in my ear “your time is coming, your
time is coming”
i stand and piss on ordovician rock,
call out: rock of ages, rock & roll,
rock and a hard place, off my rocker…
at last, down on my knees
i see with glee
all this unnecessary life
You came and you went
I stayed
Stationary
You are free to do anything
Yet you see me as a constant reoccurrence
No one owes me any pity
You are the one who keeps returning
I remain
A reminder that
We all want what we can’t have
Fear
is a running mouse across the kitchen floor.
Sad
is the long goodbye of loved ones at the door.
Anger
is the slowest car that I can’t stand today.
Joy
is a red balloon that quietly floats away.
My despair grows tall, my shadow long,
yet my bones sing and my body moves.
My greatest desire—to be strong.
My despair grows tall; my shadow longs.
My greatest weakness—choosing wrong.
As though the cardinal’s song could soothe
my despair! I grow weary, my shadow long.
Yet my bones sing; my body continues to move.
I encounter the angriest tree I have ever seen,
all chapped bark and rigid bone,
bloomless, thorns hugging the trunk
like a declaration of war.
Spiked with railroad ties
sure to blossom into bayonets,
SCUD missiles, rockets, Supreme Court
decisions, barbed wire nooses,
Molotov cocktails, fields on fire.
I take a drink from my water bottle
then pour a little at the tree’s base.
A thorn catches my finger,
stings like hell, draws blood.
I turn the bottle again, pour
a little more into the chalky earth
at its roots, suck the pain from my finger.
That is how the conversation starts.
