You are not the mountain
Or the trail
But you footprint cliff face
With such pride
Like Jesus of three minutes
Before you’re wind washed away
As dandelion pod
Make no mistake
The mountain will forget you
And the rocks you threw will roll back in to place
Remember
In this cavern
You are the echo

an island bypassed
on foot we continue on
mud betwixt our toes

there it goes

That Moment

The one marked with a

big red circle

on the family calendar

is over.

It came and went

And all that

Anticipation

Anxiety

Excitement

fizzles out

Leaving behind

echoes of silence

accentuated by the sound of

One pair of lungs

Maintaining

One heart beating on,

For some reason

so much louder than

two.

As we sit down and wonder

Where all that time went

That we’d been counting down

Months that fell apart

into days that clicked down to

seconds

That dragged

-like puppy claws on a shag rug

When it’s time for the vet-

The lead up is always eternal

but the moment is already passed.

 

the lost boys danced,
danced with their feet.
beat a path in the dirt
they needed no music
only the dull thud
of naked feet on bare soil.
their pitter patter
became thunder
as boys turned to men
round and round
they spun in wide circles
dancing for the harvest
for the gods
their thunder
became a pitter patter
as men grow old
and soon silence followed.

At a gas station
That after a brief look over is decidedly not a rest stop
The car breaks down

The dog is shivering like he always does on road trips
And no one knows why
So I go inside
To buy stale chips and weird tea
That I drink on a stone wall in noon’s oven sun

Relief comes
In the form of a glaring skull tattoo
On the scarred arm of a too old man
Mustached
Like the 1940s factory hand
I imagine his father to have been

He speaks in broken engine
More rasp and growl than I can comprehend
I don’t speak this kind of poetry
And cannot gesture calluses as eternal as his fingertips
His sandpaper handshake with tooth enough
For the few missing from his easy smile

He puts one arm up on his open car door so casually
I know he’s told this story before
He met his wife a lifetime ago
Towing her broken down car
“Now, men always going after women is bullshit,”
He tells us
“She
invited me in for the drink

And it’s been 24 years
And she won’t let me get a third dog
And you know what?
I think I’d rather trade her for the third dog

You know”
His smile suggests that he wants for less sincerity
“I’ve put two kids through college
Step kids

And I still never got my drink”

Where’s the line for Santa?
Oh where, oh where could he be?

This Chistmess
This is Christmiss
Christmaze
Christmaddness
Christmustness
Christmastide
Christmaswaves
Christmaslines

But surely this isn’t Christmas?

Mass
Masses
Mass introdus
Mass exodus

The malls have opened.
We have been commissioned:
Ite, missa est.

I have too much love,

It’s time for some hate.

Hate for others and myelf,

hate for the lovers who walk

down main streets blanketed in alcoholic frenzies,

walking down main streets oblivious to us lost souls.

Walking, walking, forever walking,

while loveless bums scrabble for cigarettes,

for booze, for freedom, for the lives they’ve left.

I envy the homeless, the vagabonds on skid row.

They have nothing and are free.

Free from the capitalistic dreams forced on the masses.

Their minds may be riddled with escapisms,

but they made it,

jumped the iron bars of society,

leapt from the shackles that hold us all down.

Who but the mindless masses hold us back,

from what we as humans can achieve,

Who but the mindless masses are high,

on the fumes of progress.

Drunk on propaganda, opium, and poppy seed bagels.

Hallucinating on black gold dreams.

Eating mushrooms to find their God or Gods,

that answer no prayers, indian givers.

This is for the lost,

who hold my envy, at least they have set out

on the trail of life with nothing but their souls.

The feathers on their wings may be sparse,

but at least their wings are spread.

A butterfly is reborn,

woken from the cocoon,

risen from the ashes,

like the phoenix of New Orleans.

Drunken dreams, inebriated souls.

Kiss me on the mouth,

kiss my eyes, and inhale my soul.

I sold it to Satan, 30% off.

But I don’t need it.

I have no need for useless things.

I have no need for useless things,

I have no need for things.

I am casting of my worldly possesions.

My Sermon on the Mount.

This is for the lost,

who hold my envy,

who I will join soon, in my dreams,

in my waking.

If I could make your name
Mean anything more than stranger
I would do it
And I would own it
If I could memorize your shapeless face
Any harder

I would paint it on every wall

Lest any one not see it
You would be


World
famous


And if my hand was a mountain 

I would crush you

The American Dream has settled
in the bottom of the basin of
a low-flow toilet somewhere in
White Suburbia and we’re all
up to our ankles in water that
seems clean enough until we
see the stain on the bowl
that hasn’t been scrubbed yet
and we’d try to flush it away
to start fresh but the handle
is just too damn far up the
tank and even if we could there
wouldn’t be enough water to
move this shit down-river
unless we can maybe hit it
a couple dozen times just like
you had to do two Christmases
ago when you ate too much pie
and you didn’t want to make
a terrible mess at your grandma’s
but you couldn’t find the
god damn plunger but oh
it would have been so much
easier if you had.

a birth bore with choice to stoop so low
we’d believe He understood
humility unmatched

thanks eh.
though we don’t often show it
we mean it

Like oil on the pavement,
the truth lies silently and waiting
for a body to put the wrong foot forward

It expects that the gent will slide
and possibly topple
(to one knee, or do a sort of
split that may just rip his trousers)
letting his briefcase fly
and crack and
let go of all his secrets

It will stain his knee so
everyone knows he fell and
it will paint his shoes
to leave a trail so
everybody knows where he
came from

It will keep eyes on him
just long enough to make him
feel like he
did something wrong
and most importantly

it will remain after he’s
come and gone
laying in wait to
catch another care-
less liar unawares

I heard they were runnin’ a sale down to the river
on absolution but I didn’t pick none up for me
or you either ‘cuz the car’s battery died and
I still owe money for a whole mess of things
and that Chinese dinner was a fine expenditure
just like the picture and the gasoline and
I’d say you should grab a little bit for the
pair of us but you’d probably buy a bottle
or a couple good pies instead and that’s just
fine with me what with the economy like it’s
been we don’t need to spend no money we don’t
have to

My cat merlot sings when I’m not around
she calls me names
her heinous gaze reminds me of you
and like a beaten child I quiver in a corner
where you left echoes of your solistices
slowly I bury myself in visions of you
your voice resonates
you’re like a hyphen between the piles of my small-fry years
keeping my soul afloat

While I was looking fey and shuttered
longing for cobblestone streets and
lanterns of warm orangey hues
you fed on ashes and brumes
eyeing everybody else
squashed torn up and hateful
but stars kept getting brighter
and the night darker
you screamed, I drank rhum
you cried, I scratched your skin
I couldn’t prove that I love you
or knew any worthwhile trade

On my way to a different place
you snacked on my will instead
I felt your hand breaking me
down into domino pieces
[but was love such a terror
that it should send me rolling down on the ground
piece by piece]
so I grabbed my luck and ran
only to later find myself holding you up like
an oriflamme of love and hate
[no wonder my cat merlot sings when I’m not around]

for want of a pant line he had hip injections
for want of a butt crack he trained to be a plumber
for want of reason he played sudoku
then for want of friends
he purchased gift cards to his wonderful hip-injection doctor gave them to his acquaintances
then for want of acquaintances he moved, ran for president, and claimed stupidity

the hiding place survives
between
the fibers of loose leaf
and the prick of graphite pigment

He is a simple man on the inside
and a martyr and a legend
and he loves the people that reject him
but he does not touch them, for fear
that they’ll melt
and he’s got enough messes to clean
I swear

He moves with impunity
down any city street he chooses
and he does not show his passport
and he has no homeland, at least
not in this universe,
but he wanders among us and he
wonders at us anyway

He speaks to children, sometimes
he whispers in their ears to tell them
all the things that their moms
and dads are doing wrong
and sometimes the children listen
so they try to do the right thing
but sometimes they
just run

And maybe you would to, I mean
he did kill all those people
all those years ago.