born to run

poetry

i wear my feet down as though
sandpapered through pebbled
ground to rebuild the skin in
thicker measure and learn to
run as my great great great
grandfathers did because some
guy in a book somewhere told
me it would change my life

it has.

one year ago today

poetry

the sun shone bright,
making a most unfitting spectacle
of itself and of us all,
refusing to cooperate,
refusing to mirror our despair.

today it rained;
today it poured;
today drenched us to the core
quenching our inner light yet again
in memories and past remorse.

Absolutely (cruel) Fiction

poetry

He requests the sound of her voice
to pacify him; there is no peace this winter.
She makes to speak but falters.
It is not her place, if you ask her,
to bring her love to bear against his demons.

Perhaps he will plead his case.
Perhaps her ears will be deaf.
There is no justice, they have both
come to know. There is only what
little they can scratch out
of the rocks and trees and dirt,
before the eyes of the universe,
and hope no-one is watching.

Once, they would share their scratchings.
Once is rarely always. In her eyes
there is no exception here. In her eyes
his are but a pittance. Hardly worth
the time to cast away.

He waits.
She will dismiss.
There is no peace in this winter.

Weekend orbit

poetry

You spend the first
twenty minutes of
the party sipping a
warm beer
and reading comics
in the kitchen

In the Solar System
the Sun and celestial
objects are bound to
one another by
gravity

You finally detach yourself
and roam through
the living room,
squinting just a little
bit through the
lingering
smoke

In the Solar System
small bodies such as
comets, dust and
centaurs travel
freely between
regions

You stroll around the
backyard for a while,
kicking abandoned bottles
and exploring the
sad looking vegetable
garden

The area beyond Neptune
is still largely unexplored
It appears to consist of
small planets composed
of rock and ice.

You return to the living
room and walk directly over
to where I’m standing
We nod for a bit to some
alt-rock track I don’t know the
name of then
leave together
immediately

The Sun is the
Solar System’s star
and produces temperatures
great enough to
sustain nuclear
fusion.

C E O

poetry

you should be concerned
about the grapes drying up
in your orchard as the heat-
wave creeps towards your
summer home

you should be concerned
about not remembering the
science behind convection
as the particles around you
start to accelerate

and when your stupid old a/c
finally needs replacement
and your help draws their
pentions, you’ll find no-one
around to sell you new models

you’ll sit between the rows
of brittle grape vines, a beacon
of passivity, greed, and
ignorance; dry bones for
the archaelogist of 2mrw

The protection of pretending you’re making some things up on the spot is a glorious falsehood, and one that everyone wishes were true all of the time even though it’s it’s hardly true at all (hence, ‘falsehood’, I suppose).

poetry

If ‘expository’ is a shield of sorts
than I wish that I could
see you hold you feel you
every day every god damn day
with your smile (the real smile)
and your laugh (when you’re not
trying to make an ass of me)
and the strange sort of feeling
that plagues guys like me
about girls like you
but still behind a shield
they call ‘expository’,
so all things said and done
you’re not allowed to
know you know
even if you read it

summer home

poetry

you woke up and ate eggs at
the bar in your summer home

on the beach
the sun pouring in and bouncing
off of your white sheets

and you must think it mad
the things i think to think
about,
and purely so

but those babies in the garbage
why,
they’re all miles away
outside of your bubble,
anyway.

it’s finally happening

poetry

i never thought i’d live to see the day i drove from clouds to sun through 13 hours of straight misery pass graveyards in fields still growing grain and corn in first, second, third, and fifth gear because fourth broke down somewhere along the way and we had to stop and pull a crazy maneuver in the hills of some asian country we could swear looks just like the baja to turn around roll down the hill 10 kilometers to a guy who said he could fix it, couldn’t, and then promised he could in three days, or we could simply continue without a fourth gear.

never thought i’d see the day where i moved to my dream home in my dream country doing my dream job and getting friggin paid to dream of growing a kingdom that’s not my own, of which i’m only a citizen trying to be faithful to something more than dream.

the day came
and praise my heavenly father
my Lord and God Jesus Christ
He brought me here to dream
dreams far too big for one man
alone and pray for change in
the lives of 9 million people

and the future of this country.

Sidelong

poetry

If I am ever to look sidelong again
I shall need a pair of glasses with
little mirrors on them, and a bit of
extra cash, as the word on the street is
the current administration
is not long from taxing these sidelong
glances of ours. But then, I’m all
for tax evasion in some regards,
so tell me,
Do these glasses make me look
sophisticated or
silly or
what?

Creeping Octopuses

poetry

it seems to wrap around the parts
that would best help to get away
the throat
the legs
the wrists
and covered eyes
but careful to avoid the teeth
people-bites can be pretty nasty

And so
the chance of self-exorcising slip
but if you don’t owe no money
you don’t need no money
and the tentacles loosen
just enough to move a wrist
and an eye peeks out
and a slip
and that people bite is pretty nasty

But it screams from anger
not from pain
escape is all it tried to stop
and there you go
but now you’re leaving
all the other folks behind

Family Reunion Subtext

poetry

Come in!
Come in!

It’s so good to see you
(and you are)?
Oh, yes, Carol’s son
(You don’t look like her,
but I’ll take your word).
So where do you live
(will i approve)?
Oh, do you know so and so
(the drunk!)?
No? Do you know so and so
(the bastard!)!
Now that’s too bad
(I guess you’re alright after all);
go get some pie before it’s all gone dear
(off to test someone else).

Errata

poetry

I can not fathom
Do you take short steps on your long walks?
How shallowly do you cut
when you cut the hairs on your scalp?
What of the grass out back?
or the weeds?

I scarcely hear a word in tune
but I’ve brought with, a pitchfork,
though perhaps better a tuning-pipe,
but that doesn’t make sense either

Walk faster