There was more than once
that I tried to picture that guitar amplifier
with the thick carpet and reindstone studs
lined up so perfect. I never quite could.

Dad still has that old painted Gibson.
He brought it back from the dead.
It plays just like it should, but the pickup
still isn’t quite right. That’s okay, though.
The paintjob still looks wonderful.

Dad says that you visited that night,
and I understand that you couldn’t stay long.
We’ve all got places we’ve got to be,
and I think you understand that,
too.

Either way, I’ll play the next one for you.

more starfish than stardust, I’m
all limb and no magic,
bottom oceaned away from the moon.
even near the shore
I am more
sunken brig than fleet,
moored, now, and cleaning
off seamonkey cobwebs from
my stern,
with its eyebrows furrowed.
Encompassed, I face east
and play west on soft bells
just amber enough to hint
at stargazing, but
only secretly, and my
telescope is full of
fish anyways, so I
seasalt more brilliant
than those murky depths
and grasp at straw moons
that are already ablaze.
And here I am.
with all this water
but not a ship in sight
and so many miles away.

And then there are all those people
that come and go and kick and claw
for no real purpose but to agitate
and here you are with bruised shins
and scratched shoulders

You’ve been running a fever for
probably years, I would imagine,
but the people with the thermometers
are busy checking the boil on their
latest batches of poison
so you soldier on with that fire
burning out of your forehead*

(*fires, mind you, are not so bad
mostly; they warm the heart that
powers the spirit that drives the soul,
but it’s a bit like your carburetor
is putting the fuel in the wrong place,
and I’m sure you know all about that)

Despite it all, you do pretty well.
You cultivated your garden and you
made your spices and I wish that that
had been enough to make you better.
You perform movements now and again
and it moves you, too, even if no-
body is looking

You write. It is excellent.

As for me, I don’t have much for you
in the way of cure. I am no alchemist,
nor a nurse’s aid,
nor a real live Pharmacognosist.
I even put too much sugar in the tea
most times

I can wrap a bandage, though, and I
can get you cold water almost always.
I can even lay still, now and then,
just long enough for that throbbing
in your head to almost go away.

And I’ll do all of that,
just as much as you need me to.

I woke up this morning, to the light shining through my curtains.

The sun’s fresh beams blinding as my eyes first opened.

My waking thoughts racing,

turning corners folding back in on itself

all reflecting the water in the bay.

Crystal clear, cold and deep.

I go back to that place.

With unnerving clarity, I remember

it all.

and tears from the bay come rolling.

We held hands in this place

and dared tomorrow to come.

And it did.

And it swept us out into the sea.

while walking through a park, a feeble light peeked through
trembling branches, and like that
strange thoughts came to my mind
“if someone had believed in me would i
be less lacking, fragile, nervous,…

would I have the confidence to be
a woman
a wife or
a human being

[life is erasing me before I even get
to say “ah, I’m alive”]

would i be greedier or stronger
believing that there is a space for me to be,
a higher place to climb, a hand to reach out to

instead of fearfully catching my breath
throughout the day

would i be more loving
would i be more grounded”

[but mind and heart reason trying to assuage each other]

they were probably like me
busy in their thoughts
caught up in their…
Desires? Hopes? Problems?
but What about me?

[I do not wish to count the nails on my coffin or tally their faults to
justify my own failings.
But where does it leave me?
between the hammer and the anvil?
or am i the hand that pummels and plunders?]

who am I not seeing
who am i not believing in
who am i encouraging
who do i approve of
or are we forever teetering around the same spots,
giving and receiving scars, learning how to fall on our knees or
how to sweep our feet with someone’s else pride

[I’ve built myself inside empty rooms
I grew up cold
but more of snow than ice,
I am self aware]
***

Summary of thoughts:
is a full stomach a happy stomach?
Not according to scientists/doctors and other know-it-all
so always leave a little space
and remember the heart is just another organ
do you ever hear the brain complaining?
as for the metaphorical heart, well, …
oh never mind
i lost track again
i rarely know what i truly mean
i must be disingenuous at heart
or just scatterbrained or both
but as they aptly say/describe
cats meow
dogs bark
cows moo
lions roar
pigs grunt
etc…
but what do humans do?
they carry all different sounds
thus have no true sound
so i’m done hissing my truth,
and hence leave you with filtered untruths
or something like that

if you’re young and desire
to write beautiful words
for the majority of your life
i strongly encourage you to
seek perfection in a mate.

perfection will never come,
and thus you will never lack a
mythological muse. yes, whatever
you do, if you want to write
beautiful words, do not find
someone who makes you ridiculously
happy and sweep them off their feet.

for you’ll find your poetry
becomes shockingly drab. especially
over time when you realize the imperfect
can be overwhelmingly
beautiful, and overnight you
lack a muse.

you’ll only know contentedness
and being content will nourish
your soul but suck beauty from your pen.
you’ll lose the drive to seek perfection
and the myth itself will die a slow
death until you sit down to write
beautiful words, and find in their
place nothing beautiful; mere
words.

it is completely natural to hate oneself
and make arbitrary judgements of
morality based on one’s own relative
experiences and act as if the natural
world is somehow altruistic and not
being consumed by greed when in fact
biology itself is having it’s greatest
performance right now
and it is cement and steel
architecture
it is nuclear power and snuggies
and although we are not rutting around
in the ground and eating raw meat
and raping or fighting on a miniscule scale
we still are a species here
come from the same womb as our surroundings
we just do it big
we’re the best that has ever lived
our name is nature and we are greed
we are plastic and compounded metal
we are choking ourselves like it is our job
and it seems natural, to hate that.

The mosquito is useless
As he grows fat to grow fatter
So his children can do the same
And there isn’t anything he can say
To excuse himself, with that strange
Stinging probiscis of his

His only redemption is found in the colder months;
In those days he can, at least,
Not be bothered to come around.

He sins again though,
come springtime.

My breath is carbon monoxide sometimes
It wilts plants and poisons me too

on those mornings I just try
not to breathe

there are some people out there,
the kind of folk who never
complain about the spiciness of
food.

or hershey-squirts their brains
out after mouth-melting burning
caused by peppers of the hot assortment.

and those people are my friends.

the bugs try and get in
my cat rests lazily on the windowsill
i am cement on the floor

the longer i sit here
the harder it gets to move

wish i had important things to say
or some motivation
to knock the bugs off the screen

cuz the longer i sit here
well, you know.

i saw my future in a dark pit
of a cesspool and knew i could
not deny it.

thankfully, a few years out
i don’t yet have to face the music.

but when that day comes
(should it come indeed)
i’ll close my eyes and run forward
with all my might into that
life-sucking haze, because
if that’s where i’m supposed
to be, i refuse to be anywhere else.

For Tara 

even when our kisses 
are as brief and hard to catch 
as the sparrow landing on the branch
the bird song will whistle my heart beat. 

Sometimes I am
the drunken sunrise painting of a man
yelling, blue fisted, in cigarette cheap beer knock-off ecstasy
at the parking lot of my stasis
even my well-rehearsed rooftop sermons
are somehow forgotten. I
have spent all my years trying to learn
to exalt and still struggle
to the sing the finish phrases of
hallelujah. I force out

Hallelujah,
for man-kind
Hallelujah
for beauty
Hallelujah
for love

I am gritting my teeth
on the precipice of an understanding
where I’ve stood for the bulk of
my elephantine lifetime
and lips parted been

BLOWN

back to the in-between a thousand times
Only to claw through the desert
back to the mountain
And still find no answers
No war calls, no prayers

And man-kind
sings in me
And beauty
sings in me
And love
sings in me
I still have not learned how to sing.

I would burn both my hands
and forswear all future holiness
to speak fully, once, and gut myself
just to meet the fire inside me,
fire of love, bellowing

HALLELUJAH

from the empty space
behind my impotent tongue.

Writhe tongue.

writhe,

writhe,

writhe unholy terror
behind tongue and clear out
with ash blockage clotting
the throat and lungs and
writhe blood clots stopping the
finger tips until

the fire, holy fire of love,
is clear of smock excrement
and can be released freely
and barrel forward at the
breakneck of intention
without burning
Intention of

Hallelujah
all man-kind
Hallelujah
all beauty
Hallelujah
all love, truth, holiness, hallelujah

I am the dirt of mankind,
but I sing praises to the faces
on mountaintops and statues,
hallelujah, from the rooftops,
exaltation and ecstasy
from the vagabond unshaved in
dying towers, hallelujah,
until we shout ourselves hoarse
and attain holiness
even just before death
And in dying holy, exhale,
truthfully
hallelujah
from our open mouths
before swallowing the rain
and drowning holy hallelujah
for the drowning of man-kind

Just to remember
Not to forget
The Fire.

i like to hold congress
with my past selves
i have them frozen in time
to help me debate on what to do
even if their opinions are
naive
i still value them
but these days there is more silence
and, i do value silence, too
but i’m uneasy here
because either they are dying
or i’m really lost,
now.

the maggot is disgusting for it feeds on the dead and turns it to nothing.
as such i can figure no more perfect a representation of our own perceived wisdom. that which is reducing us slowly to nothing, gnawing on us as though already decaying.

i need me a mood to compliment
my choice of words, to give rhythm
to my meter and bring a background
to my poetry. but i lack a mood.
altogether feeling-less perhaps due
to the busy. perhaps due to the
grind, where i’ve grown comfortable
and rather enjoy myself. feeling very
little other than a longing to continue
and perhaps have a few minutes for
a smoke in the process.

the climate drove me in
i read books about the climate
i knew the author in a dream
i science the scene
testing it with bookly intent
just like my ol friend
i go outside when it’s sunny.

Deep breaths and
a particular sense of dread
that the parts are all breaking
are typical in these situations
though you’ll find
that the breaths will get
shorter
and if you’re lucky
the dread won’t spill over
in to reality but
alas,
that’s just usually
how these things end
up