The Art of Closure

Walk
Don't run when you see the signs:
eyes that never really look at you
a luminous body that does not glow
words that speak of nothing

If you are young it will be hard
to see and read these signs

Age can help define
and justify the leaving

Walk
slow but deliberate;
if you run you will get away
too fast and wont learn the lesson

On the other side is
light and sound and air

The Dark

It is dark as I slip my way up the isle
sliding and sticking to the old linoleum
I see albino ankles and arthritic knees
(just keep grabbing onto the light)
as I look up it is there like a crack
in the darkness guiding me to someplace else
anyplace but here will do
why am I here—how can I get free

Someone cranks their leg out
I slide back a few paces and land next to
a naked lady who is suffocating from the fumes
another lady who is scantily dressed laughs at us
I abandon them both and continue to go up
and am now covered in the sticky sickeningly sweet
fluid that continues to flow down the isle
will it never end—how can I get free

From just outside the door I see him
blood red and dressed to kill
he waves to me and I make a final jump
out of the dark and the things that cling to me
(bits of bad thoughts and fragments of love carcasses)
dry up and fall off of me onto the sidewalk
I take his hand and we walk for miles into sunshine
Reddleman blazes singsongy: Free from one is slave to another

Salmagundi

Sleep until the sun shuts down the night
with baby like eyes turn to the velvet dark
roll back the years and be still
while magicians plow your future

All the What Ifs are in a box
to be taken to sea and set adrift
with the other What Ifs and Happenstance
the dispensary is now closed to thoughts

When you awaken and shake the vaporous sand
off your bed and take the first wooly step
look careful to joy and inquisitive natures
as the salmagundi has now been served

wee wee wee all the way home

when I went to ask him
who loved you as a child
his back was already to me

heart black
genetics pressed in on him
a blanket of coal
to warm him frigid

"momma did"
mementos arrive quickly
flicker older brain cells
that rush together with
pictures of stained glass hugs

he is agile yet aged
pretends the neglect
is tolerable and normal
for the times

when he thinks of love
it is empty as empty
as the old trinket box
he keeps on his shelf

Slowly

 

Up the side of the hill

you walk not trudge

it is hot you are tired

flies bite....

down below they doubt

point and laugh

as high as the moon baby,

who do you think you are?

Slowly slowly

you find your footing

slowly slowly

you are high as the moon

slowly slowly

you are untouchable

Slowly slowly

I was not mad

 

I was not mad

I was furious

a furnace of heat 

made mad

by love

Barbs

The bee lifted off

from the flower

taking all the sweetness

that it had to offer

and her voice flowed

words of warm honey

a sad, sad song

as she pulled at

the barbs that he

left in her heart

Treacle

In the forest, in the trees

stirs the early morning breeze

small animals begin to stir,

fluttering wings

and the hum of bees

the owls their calls do cease

as the sun in the sky does climb

we whisper to our selves

how can anyone write

such treacly rhyme

 

Breath

From the first yowl of outrage

at being cast onto this

bright white shore

to that last silent exhale,

we breathe, our life

In and out

In and out

So routine

It steps back from center stage.

Our life a drama

suffering and delight

mostly suffering

and all the while

air comes in, goes out

this cool breeze of our being.

Personal Bouquet

Don't tell me you don't remember
I was a flower
An impossibly delicate
budding flower
I was such a dulcet rose
God would have plucked me
for her own personal bouquet
until you came along
with your mutton chop sideburns
and faded blue paisley shirt

Born on the Fourth of July

ratty red curtains

ratty red chair

pink patterned dress

a growing belly

camera! please go away

let me be

no guitar, no song today

un-happy birthday

twenty-one

born on the fourth of July

Sparkley Surrender

Ratty red curtains sparkley
with surrender light up
the room you came to 
live in.

Prelude to you, my
life was squashed
and picked clean
bone dry by
kinfolk and lineage —
ostensibly with care.

Now you arrive
with gleaming photographs
and pink bubble gum
lustful thoughts
and honeyed kisses
that drive us together
and forevermore crush 
The Arbor of Blue Inertia.

Apron Strings

How thin

spindly, frayed they

have become whipped

by time bleached

by the sun found

dangling in the far

off reclusive corners of

my memory bank where

these fingers now older

than yours reach

out to grab to

deftly check our bond

to tighten the knot to

tether us together

forever in time

"I want someone to tie to my lonely apron strings" Everything But The Girl

float away

When I was 20 years old I had a dream. In the dream I am in front of the family church. A church I had attended my entire life.
I was familiar with every aspect of it. From the choir above where I used to kiss the occasional boy and sing the occasional "Michael row your boat ashore", to the pew below where my older sister would pinch my arms and pull off tiny bits of my skin while I was not supposed to scream out in pain, I knew this church.
In the dream I am in front of the church.  The Seuss like tree that I had played in and around for years is standing tall and prominent. My family is gathered about in front of this tree. I suddenly notice my Mother. She is standing next to me. She reaches her arm up and takes hold of a balloon. She ascends into the blue sky. She goes up so high I can no longer see her. She disappears.
I realize this is not a happy occurrence and wake up. I think: my Mother is going to die. In a few months I turned 21 and 6 days later she died. It was sudden and unexpected. The last time I saw her was on my birthday. As my gift, she gave me a coffee mug monogrammed with my initial. I kept the mug for years until the handle fell off and finally the entire thing disintegrated.   When I see balloons that have been set free in the sky with the thought to set free the spirits of the dead, I think of my Mother.

It can happen

It can happen
what you dream
can peel off from
your Corpus callosum
and differentiate.

The famous men
do it and live to feather
pillows with new wives.

Phil Spector did it by
mistake Robert Blake no
excuse Burroughs admits
to bad aim O.J. guilty
as sin Norma Mailer failed.

Observation Participation

10 names for Bed

1. Pink Raw Twin
2. Lonely Conscription Shikibuton
3. Sleep No More Pillow Top
4. Rosebud Airbed
5. Faraway Trundle
6. Slip In Quietly Foam
7. Baby Now Futon
8. Nobody Cares Olympic Queen
9. Equilux Delux
10. Possibility Canopy

Lets go Crazy tonight

"We talk about being able to control ourselves. But self control is a rare and remarkable virtue"

Carl Jung  1875 ~ 1961

Lets go crazy tonight

throw away our virtue

run over our self controll

drink to excess and have

hangovers that last all week

Lets go crazy tonight

ruin our reputations

scream in the halls of justice

hunt down and kill the

meddling back fence talkers

We are humans

we are animals

we are turning over cars

and abandoning sickly jaundiced babies

so we can drink till we puke

Bed Slide

Jose and Jon had tied it down good. The ropes went through the windows and around and around again. No one could accuse them of laziness.  Stupid yes, lazy no. The 1977 Hornet was way past its prime by 20 years and a total rust bucket. They had just enough gas to get there and get back. Home was a shadowy thing at best for these two grifters, so anyplace that offered a flop for the night was taken seriously, even if they had to bring their own bed. In the morning they could worry about how they would get the gas money to return to La Casa Encendida and win the Grand Prize for Best Poem of 1999.
Jose was not nervous as he knew La Toya and she was in charge of ballot counting. Lovely La Toya, servile and deferential to his every whim, she would help him win and bring home the trophy, not to mention the cash prize of five thousand dollars. Jose and Jon could live a few good months on it.
And home? That could wait. For now they had to concentrate on just getting there with the bed. The ropes they had found were old and degraded from the sun. These ropes were almost dust. Jose had noticed this but did not want to hurt Jon's fragile feelings so he did his best to wench down the mattress to the roof and now it was starting to slip down the back of the ancient Hornet. It was a perfect slide just made for the bed to slip out onto the freeway. Jon sighed, "We lost another one".  At this rate they would never get to sleep.

The Collective Unconscious

The Collective Unconscious exists

in the pinky finger of an infant.

Wind sways through the eyebrows

of Frida Kahlo and

it is there too,

waiting to jump on the

next passing train and pollinate

our sleeping conductor who

brings those dreams we want to forget

those dreams we want to remember,

depending upon who 

shares our bed.

Bugs

• bed bugs
• big bugs
• red bugs
• bugs