having had enough warmth
i welcome winter’s arresting breath
let me leave the windows open
go to sleep shivering
wake up beneath covers soft as God’s lips
having held the one i love throughout the night.

every day in this magnificent place
and i put on my shoes and took them off
and ran much too far in the rain
but how can i turn around when the
cold spatters against my face
and i know you’re doing it for me
(as vain as that sounds)
but i must keep running and enjoying your
joy and wondering of those who miss it
and pushing farther and farther knowing
every step forward means one step back
and ignoring it for 50 minutes or so

To plant a kiss on the hood of an idling car
and pray it makes the next rest stop
because that’s all the more you have to drive
so Triple ‘A’ will cover the tow
while your child is in the back seat
crying because the heater’s broken
and the Air Conditioner is on in dead of winter
just to keep the windows half-transparent
is a blessing in disguise:

Your ride has 3 “A’s on the side,
not one, that ends in ‘Mbulance’.

i’ven’t a moment to reflect on the trees passing
by my window for merely keeping this thing on
the road is requiring all my focus. they’ve told
me the world at 300mph is fundamentally different
and i’m finding it’s even more complicated when
every moment the wheels, engine, or at least
air conditioning may give out due to lack of funds
for proper maintenance, and i know what passes
each moment is a travesty to have missed but the
finish line is in view, and if this thing can
hold it together just a little longer there’ll be
more than enough time to stop and smell the roses
for this thing will be put to rest. maintenance
no longer necessary as i’ll be mounting a two wheeled
man-powered beauty and cruising for the foreseeable
future

Across the hills and things
we discovered a derelict power station
with no lines connected to anything
and a concrete driveway that’d been
halfway milled back to dust and I thought
that a power station with no lines
was a sorry sort of power station indeed
and the way time moves there’s no saving it
and the way things go we can’t hook it back up
so there it’s going to sit and rot and things
and I’ll go back and try to be nothing like it
but goodness knows I probably will be.

It’s a wreck.
A downright disaster.
The floorboards creak – speak out of turn, forget to apologize.
New insulation is a necessity; heat escapes the second floor too often.
The sewer’s unpredictable, doesn’t work right as soon as you need it to.
The electricity shuts off just when you’re in the middle of an important project—
Stutters, stops, acquiesces—needs a moment.
No doubt there are more cobwebs in the attic than you could shake a stick at—
Termites seem to have infiltrated the woodwork and they’re tenacious to get out.
It’s possible there’s water damage in the basement, the structure might be unsound.
I’ve been looking into insurance, but I’d settle for assurance if you’re interested.
Yeah, that’s me. I’m a fixer-upper and I need some Tender Loving Care.
I’m looking for someone who knows a thing or two about restoration—
A carpenter, perhaps?—but his son would do.

It’s a good felt hat
come all the way from Germany
and yea, you look pretty good in it
but I can’t say that out loud,
if only because that’s what you want
and sister, I can’t have none of it.

Your smile’s nice, too,
and body language is careless
and were I but another man
or a lesser man, you’d have me
and hook and line too
(sinkers are for bottom-feeders)

But my leg muscles are strong
when riding a bar stool
and my body does not always speak
when spoken to
and you can keep smiling
but when you finally give my hat back,
you won’t get anything in return.

Sorry.

sometimes just to feel the life inside of me
i like to bust open the doors of the retirement home and
with my pants off i make a break for it in my chair
wheeling down the street in the snow i
slip and slide like a youth on drugs
except I’m old and on heart medication

but the wind is in my hair.

i gathered up rocks on a beach
i put them in order and began
the inquiry

which of you will kill me?

these rocks being people, though
after the inquisition i
ran up a hill

lost my foothold and fell

passing through the void
i knew i knew i knew i’d
been right

but i could never know which

and this is how it always goes

Let me be like Thomas
that I would say,
I have felt his wounds.

Put your finger here,
see my hands.

He has awakened me
from the dead.

Reach out our hand
and put it into my side.
Stop doubting and believe.

i pick up the phone and give it the old
english try

but there is something distinctly
un-english
about my bad english
my lack of manners
and general confusion about social
norms in the country i’m supposed to identify
with

because here the clouds nearly reflect the sunshine like the moon at night
the air is perfectly thin
and the grass,
the attitude
knowing why I left is not regretting.
but then, ignorance would be blissful

There haven’t been colors in the sky
like there were that day. He remembers it solemnly.
Red and gray on blue and purple
recalling both beauty and dying flesh
like the world had got the shit beat out of it.

He had cried a bit that morning. No wonder,
with all those bodies on the news like that.
Somebody’s kids weren’t coming home.
Someone else had lost a caregiver.
Nobody was cooking family dinner that night.

Oh, but had it been a Russian bomb!
Had it been a bombardment from China or Taiwan!
It was so much worse, that God had done it.
There was nobody to blame this time around.

I didn’t live so close to the epicenter
so the pictures on the news were only pictures to me.
I went to work that day just the same,
on account of the world was still turning,
and all there was for us, was
one more thing to talk about at lunchtime.

Motherland

A string of pathos
loathing
sadness
irreality/absurdity
On the up hand
tenderness
humor
empathy

Introspection

I have been on a voyage (and slowly coming through)
searching for a place to be and fly higher
longing for reprieve and harmony
while feeling toyed with invisible forces
stranded without direction
falling into the narrow
losing sight of what is
with only a fiery energy within calling me back to myself
So, I have been away
in between worlds
in between jobs
but this time I might just come into being
hummer my ego and expand
build a home of true embrace and connectedness

Gratitude

Opening myself
to a landscape so pure [gratitude]
[a silencing kick to the ego]
realizing that we all have our own gifts
energy and enthusiastic beauty
[Praise to the universe
May we all be blessed, and radiate joy
and hope for others]

I have read of the gullibility of Castillians
and the sanctity your martyrs hold:
these are points that do not escape me,
but I let them moulder all the same.

I have taken note of Caesar and his armies,
of Napoleon and his broken nose.
I swam deep once, to find Atlantis
but it is a fairytale and Plato said so too.

So I wonder what the truth is in these histories.
I am drawn to think that none of it is so.
I am pressed, I think, to try and make my own,
and though there is no difficulty, these days,
in the publishing,
the caring is another matter.

a String of Thoughts I

Porn:
under the bed
a stack of cathodic whores and stallions
with cataclysmic charms and vices
to propel his sail into minutes of sulfurous lonely passions

shamelessness:
Friday night club
Huddled together
Pain shimmers
and If Jesus had been Jesusina
he’d wipe his tears and snots with Jesusina’s skirt

Redemption:
she is so rough she doesn’t mind
when fate calls on her
she does not rally around trust
someone got away with her innocence
she breaks
she hates
she leaves trails
exhaling in a fog
regrets that aren’t hers
a contagious distress
aftershocks from a childhood poison
her light is done and gone
but she sings right
right to everything she has
true to the sounds in her soul
she bends and screams
pushing pain back an inch
she can hear her own voice
brimming with rage
she feels powerful under
the same sky she breaks
and hates under
and that’s how she knows that someday she’ll hold herself up
roll down the valley
pick up a stone
and defeat that giant on top of her world