traveling song
This is one continuous story,
some of them real,
but all of them true.
Training towards a turning point
Run headlong from traveler towards transient.
Chasing the next into the nexus
of the air vent you thought you discovered.
A speaker silences the rooms next door.
You have not yet found a sense of home,
but you hold onto yet.
You tell yourself it is all one continuous motion:
A sweep of arm
One long and true sentence,
All the chaos kinetic energy
the pain just potential
And no effort is wasted,
No time is lost.
--------------
change
The subtle feeling,
That something is missing.
The scarier feeling,
That everything still carries on.
Who are you? You who
answers your name like an owl.
Threatening smiles that trellis their faces
halting the flights of the fowl.
And so Why kneels down
To “It just is, now”
A jester accepting
an ill-fitting crown.
And hails to this clown
from his spot on the ground.
Was it to myself, or to the sky,
I called out “please forget” at dawn?
But it’s the “as you wish” reply
I wish i’d lingered on.
Instead I drove aways intent
that freedom was the phrase:
Once I was from somewhere
now I belong only to myself.
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tectonics
Two saucers on a table, trembling ever so slightly As each stranger shifts towards or away from understanding the other. When tectonic plates go riding I hear they let their hair down Cracking open the proliferating parts Of the world they are sliding into creation.
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Caution!
Caution!
From the subway ad hymn book
A chorus chants “you can do”
The “it” gets forgotten.
Notice!
The map’s without writing
of how long you’ve be riding
when you pass by the big missing thing.
Listen!
Outtremble the car !
Outvoltage the track !
Listen until the girls’ chiclechocolate
Her mothers echoe ayudameayudame
Is a louder chant than
Wegenzyov gummies for erectile depression
Begone!
Uncancel your noise
Behold!
The opera of what is approaching.
Believe!
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A lovesick dictionary
Synonyms synonyms synonyms
Oh wherefore art thou synonyms?!!
Wear four are tao
(in what place) (to be) (you)
------
grey hairsToday i found a piece of your hair on the pillow
and noticed it was gray.
We are young,
and it made me think,
if lying there would be the same
if we were not.
Forgive me for the question, but is it true?
That later i will not be me, and you will not be you?
You must have been
Everything which lifted me,
Everything unseeable, unknowable, untouchable.
That’s where you must be
Otherwise I would know where to find you.
--------
the kicker
what yardstick might measure
the type of i am
against
that pull which you are.
out there
the wave tosses you around
here, i cough up
little girl, ashore.
the kicker is
inside, unsure,
a few feet tall.
what type of stick might cast a shadow at noon
what measure might i measure you by
what might i have lost at sea that day.
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river poem
There is a tiny river
On which I heard sails life
The river is the far-beyond
The boat has holes
Plugged up with strife.
But if you listen closely
You’ll hear its only mostly
Teeny tiny ghostly
Whispers in the night,
And all the rivers twisty-turns
Meander left
But wind up right.
-------------------------
Little love poem
oh sweet, kicking, thing,
sleeping.
the spillage, the molting,
the wet towel covers you
until dewy morning.
you are salted,
like a good almond.
------------
a game to play during panic attacks
Red 1 2 3
Is sitting quietly
Yellow knocking at the door
Green is coming quickly now
Blue is hurrying up the stairs and
Purple, so timid she is, hides in the attic.
Orange is waiting to boil over and watches
red, a horse, run through blue
Who is wide
And green,
who is always thirsty,
Rolls around and leaves a pasture in her wake.
Red (123)
Is sitting quietly
By the fire knitting
Blue is a beach
Yellow is an ocean
And green is blowing a wind into the fire, building a glass ship.
Purple creeps downstairs and fills its sails
And there is breath where there once was just wind.
---------
my grains
he da che won't go away a knee body in right mind can stay
--------
Smalltownstory
A car tire is rolling down a gravel road
which reminds you of leaving the things you were
and instead stalling
(as it is sitting at the bottom of the driveway now)
and recalling.
A story from someone old
Which was told to you
when it split down the center
Blink
And you’ll miss it,
all that persists in the mist
which divides the highway
but obscures the median.
The horses are running, let off a lead because they were lame
which was buried so far that there’s no one to blame.
And now you are looking, and looking’s the same
As hearing the ghost which you saw say your name.
---------
Winter poem
What folk songs would angels sing?
‘round campfires where ashen wings
Keep fanning lest the sky put out
with airless sigh, the song which wails below.
Grumbling past, two
agnostic mailmen deliver the wails
Of Two Black Dogs
ushering night time on their tails
One lamp howls back,
Warming the street for the promised pack
compelled to move their stalling legs,
struck by the grateful bell.
ringing this world,
this world, this world.
An orchestra of air
between the wool
texture and ear
the reminder of life which briskness brings
is not in it's stinging kiss,
but your survival of it.
-----
Certain circumstance
Breeds sincerity.
(Not to be confused
with hard-won clarity.)
Industrious spiders,
spin a web of parity,
To hopefully hold you
against the unbearably
-quickly approaching horizon
It spins, the ocean,
With your cards being down now
Are you cheating the motion?
And if, my love,
In the courtroom I’ve constructed
A bird in the rafters calls hope
But your honor obstructed.
------
you sighted yourself
in the closing doors
as a reference
you wandered
if distinctions could exist without categories.
as it takes off
the train calls over it's shoulder
i only approach and reply.
-------
reading sappho, and other atrocious clauses
I like this poem
(because)
I want to email it to you.
It seems i read
Unable to speak.
Full of holes
An editorial choice has left big chunks open
Put brackets where they couldn't find words
Or, some intern at the printing press
Unpaid, overworked,
Fell asleep on the keyboard.
I am reading it,
In translation,
Wanting to email you.
Something greek, english, printed, spoken,
zeros, ones,
old, new, then, now,
Sad papyrus,
a terrible font.
There are blank spaces on the page,
but none quite parce
What I am trying to.
It occurs to me,
I think I am looking for the word the worm ate.
I am looking for the fiber, and the old script,
and the hand of the genius that wrote it.
What i want to send you
Is some type of singular beauty
Some wholeness,
Some force acting on the mind
Felt in the body
And the euphoria of being the first to ever write it down.
But that is the word the worm ate.
-------
Faceplant
how is it you time have passed away? how is it every day has flopped backwards and ? I woke up and suddenly BAM the day was gone. Always lists and always things to be done. I roll out of bed and YOU the floor has met me. Slapped me on the back like a football coach. I've coughed up a wad of anxious dreams and run into the morning with cold water. This is how we are trying to live, feeling the wave hovering.