You were so loud
So proud
Untested shield and microphone against the world
Big ideas and faith of what was right
What was wrong
Silly plans of president from a country song
Unaware of the clockwork of America
Sweet child.
If only I could tell you to keep running
To keep getting on stage and not look into the audience
Their whispers, their hate from the dinner table
Are not for you.
Find your light, hit your mark, ready your que
the world is yours.
Im sorry I lost you for a bit.
The vase of creamy, dreamy peonies posed
a series of scenarios she tried
to track and trace across his face
so she would know what her she should supply.
She chose the sweet, submissive her she knows
will keep his ruthless rage and fists away.
A smile complete across her bitten lips,
she tests a touch to gauge his mood and if
he’ll let her leave the cage. “Are these for me?”
Lowered lashes, reading the room, she knows
the ways to weave herself to keep him calm.
Her tiny finger brushed the velvet blooms,
“I made your favorite, chocolate almond tart,”
She served dessert with freedom in her heart.
When we were still Virginians
I aimed to manifest my destiny to the western lands
Eager to speculate
I laid down four logs and called it a cabin
I planted three stalks and called it a corn patch
I never got my 400 acres
And I never left Kentucky
(1969)
skid marks
kid sparks
bed race lost
along central avenue,
do what you have to,
mute the love
making up for it
with teeth so tiny
your bite’s a mere bark.
at the river park
trees without roots
& suits spilling beer
with someone’s hot
rod lincoln
down in its water bed
amid the jazz jump
of the old duke boys,
eight on eight
way better
than the other way
where the upside
is downtown,
be what you be
see what you see
flush when you finish,
start at the end
’cause
around here
there is no street
called helsinki
“dead bird hit the window.”
“huh? excuse me?”
“dead bird hit the window.”
he was right.
there it laid on
our concrete sidewalk.
poor bastard must’ve
not noticed the glass
in front of him, and
broke his neck
in the process.
or maybe,
he saw something he wanted,
that made the risk worth it.
or maybe,
he just didn’t care,
and did it on purpose.
I don’t know.
dead birds can’t tell truths.
what I know is,
I picked him up,
and at least gave him the right
of lying dead on the grass.
and I hope
that when I go,
someone at least
has the decency
to do me the same.
Live from the underground
Laying all up on your pavement
I’m gon spread my wings and fly
On my haters I’m gon’ spray shit
We gon’ roll in mobs and hordes
Ain’t nothing to play with
My brood get in the mood
You’re doomed
And we came here to mate, bitch
Most of y’all afraid of us
Say we make your skin itch
Say we get all in your hair
Say our noises make you scared
Say that we show up in large numbers
Every couple years
Cause chaos, nightmares, and then we
Disappear
Can’t imagine a group that you treat like us
Remove another nuisance, just
Pests and bugs
Meanwhile we are a part of this Earth and We belong
And we were here before you and will be here
After you’re gone
So excuse me for the next couple weeks
While I get my life cycle on and
Die in your grass or on your sidewalk
As I give chase
To all of the things that make life great
And if I die
Three more will take
My place
No. Not through. Never.
Over, as a boiling sea.
Underneath, pounding
my hawkish heart through thermal
pistons. Around, but never through.
Call from my sister
before she died in July
She said,
“I have changed my will.
Will you honor my wishes?”
” Yes,” I answered.
You are my sister
and I love you.”
There was a long pause,
with nothing else said,
so she hung up.
Mount Etna erupts today.
Lava flows down the mountain ridges
like sands through the hourglass;
so are the graves of our wives…
Hephaestus has blown the roof off
his workshop again, his fragile
masculinity turned fire geyser,
and the edges of Sicily are singed.
He has lived millenia entangled
in his parents’ drama, desiring their approval,
he once freed Athena from his father’s skull
with his ax, heroic with tools in hand.
Still, his sister refused his hand,
for as a newborn goddess,
she envisioned a wisdom-forward life,
(she probably owned cats).
Cast off Olympus for his deformity
(or was it the fall that left him lame?)
he became a recluse,
hammered at a mountain from within.
He found peace making
objects of beauty to be admired,
armor for warriors to be feared,
in his sanctuary sauna and forge, until
His cousin Dionysus visits, gets him drunk,
drags him back up to the family compound,
Hephaestus chains his mother to an enchanted throne
(symbolic much?) which he handcrafted, of course
To free Hera, the gods coerce Aphrodite
to give herself to him. If he can’t be beautiful,
he can sure as hell own her beauty,
but what he cannot do is force her to love him.
As sure as the scissors of the Fates need sharpening
after a cleansing rain, the magma of anger
just under the crust of the rejected man
will bubble over and burn all of humanity.
