To find yourself at home at night
wishing you were elsewhere
is to hope to sleep, to hope
to dream of another place

To recall
for a moment
the absolute
Power
of a storm

the absolute
Terror
as it rips the sky
in half,
and it fools
the street-lights
into thinking that it’s
morning.

the absolute
Beauty
while the world,
for one split second,
is in perfect,
clarified
focus.

The absolute
Sense that,
as senseless as
it would be,
the thought of
dying
on the hood of
a ’91 Bronco
in the middle of a
school-yard,
with your best friend,

Doesn’t seem so bad
when you think about it

It feels dis-correct
that is, it’s probably
incorrect, but I’m
sure I misused at least
one prefix somewhere
but I digress

Something feels like
it should feel right
but it doesn’t,
does it?

Is it time to take a
wrench to these fine works
and hope that
in the process of
dismantling this thing
we find the bit that
made me switch
the ‘in’ with ‘dis’
and switch it back?

Or maybe someone
will just come out
and say something,
like they should have done
a long, long time ago

Yesterday I played a song
that someone else had wrote
about an owl at the nature center,
really freaked him out
and then tonight I spent
an hour on the phone
with my instructor as I
lept upon the tables
and I hoped I didn’t hurt
myself and now,

My legs are tired
and my ear’s a little sore
and my eyes are drooping
despite the POP I
picked up at the store
and I feel a whole lot better
than I did a bit before

But tonight,
I really wish I knew
the owl in the song
that someone else had
wrote, that I had played
last night

Despise
is such a strong word
yet I like it in this instance
no, I love it in this instance
as you’ve created for yourself
an enemy, and I insist
that if you make one more mistake
you’ll make a meeting with my fists

so please be wary
as I despise you
very much

there’s something simply perfect
about the cold kiss of cut blades of grass
on bare but caloused feet
around a country fire ring
in the middle of the night

How it cuts,
but doesn’t cut you;
how it chills you just enough
so you remember just exactly
how alive you felt that morning
when the sun rose up above your bed
and ice cold water sprayed down
like a demon from the shower-head
incititing,
nay,
demanding,
that you rise.

You didn’t like it then,
and you’re not quite fond right now,
but you must admit,
the main effect was
perfect.

Sultry, almost plentiful
the star-specked sky sits,
becoming,
only partly blurred from the
toxic city lights beneath it

We lay on the concrete
pretending we know which
sets of stars have names
and which stars are just
stars

The air moves slowly over us,
cool for one,
cold for another,
and thin, webbed clouds cover,
just for a moment,
the sultry, almost-plentiful
star-specked sky

In those moments I miss you

sitting, watching
ephemeral vapors
rise from the pores
of the long, dark
stretch of road
that we see in
our headlights

Two dogs bark
more than one dog barks
but they still both bark,
just one barks less than two.

the little one chides
the big one chastises
the little one bites
and the big one… tries to kill him

but it all works out
for the sweet bliss
(that’s made that much sweeter)
when they both stop barking

…for a second anyway

When asked about
sandwiches
I replied
that I
had not the time
nor frame of mind
to do a single bit
of word-smithing

But seeing as
that frame of mind
has
(supposedly)
been found,
I’ll meintion, again,
sandwiches,
and quote:

“Best when
dressed with mustard,
fried with oil,
and shared with friends”

addendum:

“Especially
at One-Aye-Emm”

When drawing
in the study
it becomes the drawing room
im-promp-tu

And the music room
when someone grabs the
a-cous-tic
and drags it in by
the strings

So now there’s a
drawing-music room
and some jackass
is writing
some po
-e
-try
just to -really-
complicate things

…but, I suppose,

everyone is studying.

Teeth

Your teeth are
glistening

Your teeth are
smiling through your
smile at me

Dripping, nearly
drooling all their own

Please
Don’t
Bite
Too
Hard

Your teeth
are smiling through
your smile at me

Smile at me
Please,
It
Makes
The
Bite
Less
Hard

I want to
spend the night with you
on someone else’s furniture
and wake up early
because we both have work in the morning

and I want to drive down the highway
on fumes
and I want to drive down the country road
on the same fumes

I want to
sit and listen to you
almost but not quite
crying
over anything,
everything,
that makes you almost
but not quite
cry

And I want to
FIGHT
I mean I really want to
FIGHT
for anything there is
to fight for

and I want to drive down the highway
on fumes
and I want to drive down the country road
on the same fumes

Though I’m really happy for them
and I’m constantly excited by
the thought of infinite potential
I can only hope that everything
goes wrong

It’ll be that much more
satisfying
when they finally
pull everything
together.

Impetuously, the sun seems
to enjoy it’s early rising
with what appears, to me, to be
absolutely
no consideration

Impetuously, I return to
my ever-too-slight-of-a-slumber
with the hopes that
perhaps,
impetuously,
the sun may decide
to hide a while
before it rises again

It’s the simple things
like
sipping cold milk from a
Collins
or
knowing what a Collins
even is.

Like an open stage format
at a local bar
with
a man and his
5-string
and a man
and his 6-string
and two (count ’em two)
saxophones.

It’s
one more
cliche
free-verse
po-em
written
at the
end of
a long
, long
, day.

but mostly,
it’s
the cold milk
in a Collins

I’ve never even seen
such a sight as a
volcano in the
back yard.

And the smoke
and the fire did
consume all of the
unprecious fuel we
fed it.

And I’m sure we shouldn’t
burn old tires and oil
but sir, I must admit
that it was cool, and
you can’t prove a
god damn thing
anyway.

when it feels like all communication
has broken down and every station
lost it’s transmitting power, we are
left to wait and wonder, staring at
a blank screen, listening to a
dead line, hoping for
a single word or whisper,
for a single note to sound,
for a single piece of proof that
we are not the only ones that
have been suffering from
mis-communication

but we always get so antsy
with the dials left where they should be
and no good thing to fix the thing but
time.

alas, at least
time isn’t cheap, but is,
in these such circumstances,
plentiful.

I can’t
accomplish
much
when there’s
nothing
to
accomplish.

Alternatively
I’m at least
half-
way
lying

The urge to wander
SWELLS
within one’s being, pushing,
coaxing one to tarry
just behind the line of
automatic people
that they
MUST
follow.

But, the urge to wander
SWELLS
so great, sometimes
it is impossible
to resist, despite
one’s own automatic
gearing.

The urge has
SWOLLEN
now. Throbbing just beneath
my breast, oh-so-near the
SOUL,

which I hold oh-so-dear.

I’ve since begun to tarry.
I’ve since gone to the shop.
It’s expensive, but they’re
changing my transmission
to a manual.