Bare Feet and Feathers

No outstanding warrants on me I need to commit a crime Because no one knows me Somebody has always done worse Dad never missed knowing I could have done better Five friends at his funeral Never heard of me.  I was the smoke in the censer Shook over his casket Every morning shower, I make plans To change the course of history Every evening home,  I’m shattered Seeking the glue of vodka I can’t sow peace in my garden Without killing seedlings And mutating every myth of life Somewhere between skin and muscle Is the malignant cancer of a lie Somewhere between eye and sole Is the expanse of hope. 

We've got bone We've got muscle and feet on the earth.  Arms that reach Eyes that see and hearts to bleed.  Infect us with magic.  Irradiate us with light.  Expel us from a planet.  Enervate the vigilante. Crack every chrysalis Let the mutant emerge.  Celebrate mutation in unique dance Spread your cape over the earth Spin your web and fly Conceive of every device against evil. Get drunk on the possibilities of becoming.  Explode into solitary martial violence.  Bam! You'll slam against a wall of evil.  Crash! You'll bash the body of your villain.  Wham! Your heart and hate will jam your soul. Smash! Love will slash itself from within Whoosh! All that is you will fly into space And your feet will stand on the earth.  We lost you when you left to become  Muscle and bone beyond your suit.  You rose above us for us to reach A spot in heaven for us to aim...

Apprehending the Atlas, Pondering its problems. Its all wrong. Stay calm world, I've got this. Got a box of Crayolas. Look from the box to the map. Is sixty-four enough? There's a lot of work to do. Colored wax to the rescue! Where to start? Where to start? Where to start? Big problems. That's it. Hot spots. Get them fixed. Jerusalem. Everyone wants it. Jews. Muslims. Christians. We take complex toys from toddlers and shelve them So, out goes Jerusalem. (I'm going to need the Holy Blue Uh, Cerulean? Close enough) Where to put it? Greenland! Perfect. Plop it down. The Dome of the Rock. The Wailing Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre resting on glaciers and Inuit bones. Denmark controls Greenland? Whoops, sorry about that Danes. Think of the tourism A hundred million pilgrims are pointed your way. You might want to put on the coffee. Australia catches my eye. It looks suspicious loitering down there in the corner All of th...

Charisma don't matter It don't matter a damn Whilst my blood Pour through your hands You gonna tell me I'm ugly Or, you gonna tell me I'm pretty When I'm a-holding your heart In the palm of my hand Yeah, that 's what I thought You're soft, You might be a poet But you ain't no preacher And you got no charisma Pick up your arms Step in line Shoulder up Get some blood on your hands We got a world to build

The Pacific pitches a fit behind me as if someone in Japan snapped their end of the sheet and fired a rolling riot of wet over the earth to crash into the edge of Laguna. Laguna splays out from the sand between my toes It seeps and spreads and the piles and agglomerates from the beach to the boardwalk into the streets and through the shops up, up over the steep hills and out through the canyon road. I'm stretching my eyeballs I'm trying to see through it all Straight, right on through, across the continent all the way home to Connecticut. That's when Laguna stops being Laguna and I see it for what it is... the edge of America. Coming back toward me, from the east, and beating back my sight right into my eye sockets, is the whole of history. An impenetrable phalanx A phalanx of hominids but its not a parade. There's no order to it. Just the chaos of America. All of it. The Chumash, Pomo and Salinan bleed right through the Navaho and Apache....

The cat bathes with gravity in a taffy of light pulled from our star and knotted to a home made afghan, a hand-knit event horizon. A cat bath is an infinite Sunday condensed into a self-absorbed mass of luxury and fur.

(inspired by two poems. The first is "Memo from the Desk of X" by Donald Justice. The second is "Like Gods" by John Koethe) God, make this desk bleed the consubstantiation of me. What Divinity I might have, make its stain spill out in letters in words, in imagery, in faith, in raspberries, in feathers, in heaven. I'm crying citrus to an aluminum ceiling Hard rain splatters back. Silence. Mine is a desk of flat packed pressed wood. My shoe is as real as my sole. It walks on earth, on concrete, on asphalt in rain, in snow, in heat, in gloom of night. This is a field divided the poetry of possibilities versus the prose of facts. My soles stamping out rhythm My soul exiled into night A stanza as vivid as a crow in the snow. Good night to dreams no night for dreams Let wine be for forgetting. Step over the wire and embrace the facts. The Justice Memo received let poems go extinct.  

Step up and out of the stream into your authentic chair leave the banquet behind your eyelids acquiesce to the universe, every pore. Tie a string on your thought this thread of sincerity Tie it quick to the fringes of time pregnant with the helium of hope. Three feathers of a wing  fly straight through heaven into the heart of God.  Your truth, your humility, your freedom.  You paid no tax for a moment No one loved what you knew or hated what you need For a second, you were nothing but free. 

Some embers catch  a tailwind to conflagration Some embers fade like memories of the womb Jesus and his seed, the sower of truth.  Save one seed he forgot; the seed in stasis.       The seed            in                   stasis. It was the comfort  that became uncomfortable. It was the money  that became a liability. It was the sacrifice  that      that became nothing more than                  sacrifice If I were caught in amber... In amber, I had fought An amber of half light  lived in a lens without life. Static golden light.  Honey without sweet might as well be ice.  It is the ember of an old man, the ember in an old man, The ember of this man, the ember in this man. The ember in stasis, the ember pending. ember, ...

My poem is my virus. I am the parasite. You are the host. I violate your membrane with perverse imagery. Your soul is eternal. Mine is not. I will leech into you. I will bleed into you, all of my DNA. All of my relevance is in this syllable... What sound do I need to make to destroy you forever? What is the rhythm of significance? I am as arrogant as a plague. No effort can sterilize my filth. This disease is as certain as death if you have read this this far. then it is too late. You are too far gone. When I die, you will carry me with you into dense crowds of loved ones, into temples, into courts and classrooms. The infection will spread to your tongue. Your voice. Your sound. And you have become the parasite.

It was Sunday when I was kidnapped by bees and taken into the soil, told to contemplate my cuticle... Contemplate your cubicle and tell us what's fair, Loving the myth of the millionaire of loving the truth in the air? Bow down and be low, be among, be within, be with us, be in the Earth and love the soil. Know your food and celebrate. Celebrate the simple. Damn the fool. Damn the Chief. Damn the cool. Damn the thief. Sieze the power of your palate savor the taste of your ballot. Celebrate what is ample make yourself an example Love the whole and the real. Let your neighbor grow your meal.

My tomboy listens My girl pouts Those shadows beneath her lips. How open can open be? As open, as open is she. One in ten? One in twenty? Too, too many are set free without ever an apology. See me. See me, see me. Let me waltz through the lobby. Announce my arrival. Be my Siren and blare a triumph, a secret, our love. love me love me love me My tomboy. My siren. (my secretest secret wish...shhhh) Homosexual molecules loiter somewhere on the horizon. Needles march a cadence. Black cards dispersed into the galaxy. It is a sinister tarot that tells me to take fifty dollars and let a man take me, and put a needle in my arm to win your sympathy. So, let my head fall into your lap brush my hair and hum me a tune. I know... Middle class white boys need not apply. Yours is a passion that rides whitecaps Mine is one that rides the undertow Middle class white boys dance to revolution songs "The night is made for lovers" I danced barefoot to Gloria....

Rambling like bittersweet At our garden wall In peppermint air Beyond electric bees Out of a campfire’s spit Beneath lilac and lavender Within a grape’s dew Among the outsiders Inside the world of us Between the in-betweens Under nebulae, novae and galaxies Rambling like bittersweet Over our garden wall After all these thoughts Beyond a halcyon dream Alongside peace on parade Across a forest stream Amid soldiers marching in socks Toward the tug of you Near me in our us land Despite the clutter of images Past the rush of nouns and verbs I’m back. (written for One Single Impression Prompt #169: Rambling)

Unbroken smooth between before after bruises bashes and shatters Beyond humid shocking kisses rather a cool lasting that matters. You are the one safe place I know. Fingertip gravity cheeks to lips Returning coming going and home Never leaving steadfast praying grips the exploding expanse of a poem. You are what I will never give up. Arlington to Golgotha, offices to factories Shoulder in, eyes forward, chin up Quiet unspoken shared stories lingering lost ring of a coffee cup. You are my favorite ghost. (written for One Single Impression) http://onesingleimpression.blogspot.com/

Skitter scatter and scratch Stop to tap, tap and tap Poke, peak and tap. Tap, tap and tap. Divine persistence will pay little feathered brother tap tap tap tap tap Divine persistence will pay that's what the Earth will say Keep it up, keep searching Keeping wanting and wishing tap tap, and tap skitter and scratch. Good luck will come your way. Yours is a feathered faith. You are faith covered in feather skittering about on a tree. That's a faith like mine like ours A scrambling faith A searching faith. faith that clings to bark faith depending on what lies beneath faith that could fly but lands back beneath the branches above the ground but below the sky Suspended. I n l i m b o faith from HUNGER and hungry Faith that flickers out of view. flickers into view out of view. Panic calls and peace presides. just like my feathered brother...

Bread on the counter Mayonnaise spread Cucumbers suspended Green,green aquarium...with salty green vinegar cloves bouncing and teasing... (and my mouth is watering). RAYMOND! Grandma is spent, She's a flapper Jars aren't jazz and her Grandchildren are wanting. Pickles are pucker. Our cheeks know it. If only Grandpa could... POP! Goes the top. Grandpa is strong. Will I ever be like him? Posted for One Single Impression "Top" http://onesingleimpression.blogspot.com/

Evening was spying from the apple orchard the first time I opened my eyes under Great-Grandma's turquoise afghan I heard my parents dancing in the kitchen. A little later, Grandma would announce evening across the yards to end our game one out, two on and the inning was over in a dash to clean our hands before Grace. Evening became an exotic land; the home of sex and sin and petty vandalism to be invaded by silly boys armed with hormones looking for something pretty to hold on to. Evening starts when I put my briefcase down. We share it with the salad bowl and laughter. It is the safest place I know in our golden little home. The sound of evening is in my daydreams in the muttering of its nightclub clientele beneath a boozy saxophone and cocktail clinks. It sounds like sequins and purple. Evening will wait outside the church when my son carries me on his shoulder past the bagpiper and into St. Rose's. Bury me in turquoise and strike up the band. (t...

It's the shadow of this thought into which I've fallen. This well of plots and characters left unwritten. Thank you for the nudge but I don't remember meeting you Oh! Yes, we made love so sorry it's the shadow of this thought through which a vision of you must swim. Now I remember the taste of your skin. Please take your place among the cast as I step away and fall And fall And fall away. I forgot to pay this bill? Sorry. It's this shadow of this thought into which I've fallen. Chasing a naked girl Correcting an injustice to make it right. Sinned? Me? No, just walking and thinking in a world of gray or into a world of citrus and thinking and thinking away. Maybe we met when I knew your name and you mattered in that moment but my heart beats in the shadow of my skull making you suspicious of me. I know and I know which way the world turns toward the bright and the loud, leaving the rest to live in shadows. Doubly darkened by the sha...

Bang on the ground and clang in the sky, Ringing ragged rash, pimpled up sizzle. Singing salient, singeing brilliant, baked us dead dry. Southern citrus and succulent sun, Syrupy sweet popped down drizzle Enveloping tongue, puckered pout; your sweet fun. Morning’s cheer applauding, “Awake!” Sheer chiffon pursed, wanted kiss. Gauzy glamour, breezy and bright; my loving ache. Glamorous cool glade shaded, heavy and dark, Gaia’s fauns governing the afternoon bliss. Teeming tendrils teasing the feathers of our nubile lark. High brittle flight across the chilled glass bright. Aloof and aloft, trillions of dead backs turned this way. Squinted up and bowed down; our tearful plight. Sultry dangerous hips swaying suggesting sin Buried under a million nights and one candle’s wax Pouring over shoulders, into veins, through your skin. Royal regal voices pour from a saxophone’s bell Berry juices bleeding from spring’s best snacks Demure shrug shoulder, winked my knowing and...

Kickoff. A high arc spiral from father to son Across fallen fluttering leaves. Wishes. Encouragements. Settlements. You zip your jacket against the cold. Second quarter. Bulldogs dig into New Haven mud; A plastic thock of pad-to-pad. Handsome Dan charms the cheerleaders. The underclassmen sell hot chocolate. Halftime. Aunts bake turkeys while grandfathers gloat Brothers pout and sisters strut The Coach bellows “Dedication!” Cranberry prayers in breathy fog. Third quarter. A pimpled pigskin bloated, Too tight for your grip to toss And violate November’s taught linen. Bands in the stands press the party on. Fourth Quarter. Hands are held, cheers sent up. Flags waved, pennants folded. Hearts are wrapped in flannel. Our silly love is suspended in an icy milk sky. In summer; we worshipped near naked bodies. Gods that sprint over the clay. Come autumn, we’ve grown burly, Tossing our Giants into the fray. We wish for shoulders to lean into the wind. We spe...