Bare Feet and Feathers

I slipped down an icicle And fell into a sand storm. that can desiccate a soul. Wasted like a slack jawed geriatric.   I’m killing a man everyday and I keep forgetting to pray before I rip out his heart. I've got blood all over my shirt. Our circus act broke up When the wire snapped The whole family is splattered. This is the closest we’ve ever been. I woke up in a casket And heard the bastards laughing Over the last shovelfuls of dirt. I've got the rest of my life to escape. I got bleached And lost all my color. Someone slit my throat; no voice. I really am invisible. A drunk driver raped a girl but he was yelling liberal politics So I figured he must be okay. I couldn't hear myself think. It got crowded in my shower I forgot to shave and I look like shit. This is when I bite my nails and shake.  Everyone keeps looking at me. My feet are greasy. I can’t feel the earth Except when I trip. I’ve got to grow some roots.  Where the hell have I been? Tho...

Ours is a song of holiday tables. Clattering chatter of our dining room, Wedding china, and shared fables. This is the history of the baby boom. Clattering chatter of our dining room “Remember?” “No, not him, he’s dead.” “Oh, yeah, too bad. Cancer, I assume.” Auntie Vera remembered a good book she’d read. Remembered? Better remembered than be dead. Uncle Jack’s scotch needs more ice. He has to drive.  His face is looking red. John offers his best Republican advice. Uncle Jack’s scotch needs more ice. Good buddy Bain helps clear the dishes. Pat’s telling a story. We’ve all heard it (at least twice). Jesus! Is it Easter or is it Christmas? Good buddy Bain helps clear the dishes Oh God! Who can eat cake? We’re too full. Around here, it’s like the loaves and the fishes. Cathy knitted that scarf, real New Zealand wool. No way. Can’t do it. Can’t eat, too full. “Yes, Sinatra was great but Elvis was better.” “But      "My real name is Mister Earl”, in the lull.   ...

I can pack a poem like a freshman loads laundry. Lights and darks. Cottons and knits. You need a crowbar to find an image. Time for me to embrace space and           let                     words                               float. Milkweed seeds            drifting four feet above a field. More gossamer         images lace curtains loitering           around open                bedroom window.                      June.         Go barefoot              in my own backyard.          Enjoy                 the ...

Life wind, timpani roll, rushes round steadfast soldier serving. Flooding sound bleaching color, trailing taupe, phone ringing… Crisis, crushing ego, dust, stinging eyes, closing throat. Over oceans, flies finest throat. Exhausted ear, forward, rushes finding strawberry love in the dust. On the eager edge, laps color blasting temptation. Soldier serving   tours counted by bells not ringing. Sighs, moans, cries and cheers ringing round mute heart (a mutilated throat) Chain gain shackled, sentences serving, hammers pounding rhythms to dust. Outside, dawn’s purple rushes, shivers, slicing sky with color. Flushed face, rose in color. Syllable chirps of a poem ringing. An autumns’ chill rushes (pizza, in a cemetery, serving). Memories gasp, an old man’s throat, made hoarse under years of dust. “Hey everyone look here!” No dust. (Vivid, immediate, living color) No dark lot, no hoarse throat whisper. Clanging poems ringing across wires, for everyone, serving. In, like kids at recess, ...

You happen to me like breath on a mirror A vanishing shape in the fog You are a whisper among beating drums. A tribal rhythm of dusty heels. Something primitive clawing on the shore. Something primitive in me. Between ventricle and atrium. You are a ghost in my veins. I let you out to stand on the tip of my tongue where you taste in me the syrup of need. And I hear, through you, the melody of want. No steps to take, no map to here Words blast heat fusing the dreams of our poems. Leaving rhythms for us to dance like the feathers we are on this breeze. Two spirits in the mist Reincarnated, we share atoms. Collided and blinking truth, beads of life skip, suspended in sky, like dust kicked up from primitive heels. This is the most I can be; a splash of light on the altar of an empty church. And I ask you to sing to me again, as I drift off to sleep. Waiting on my dreams. 

Spring’s golden children skip stones In August’s haze, through humid want. Smart sparkle girl, weed boy unwanted Upstream on the River Youth. Far from the life pond of experience. Intersecting paths, circles, from opposite shores Carried downstream, caught behind the dam of regret. The Black Swan born from the depth Busting the surface in a spray of passion Effervescent avian firework ignited By the spark of an affectionate memory Unknown consequence. The delicious taste of regret Like a kiss good night. The Black Swan leaves a trail of charcoal feathers Gathered up in the daydreams of a poet.

A library, in the dimples of a laugh, baby’s-breath-chamois folds, you little giant; put you in my pocket. Salty mineral flint, fossils of life I can’t know, repeat mournful decades to ecstasy. Smile. A library! (in the dimples of a laugh). Cookies-in-the-cupboard temptation; that’s you! My warm world so cozy, too quiet to disturb, you little giant, put you in my pocket. Vaudeville dancing, slapstick chopsticks (pull my finger), I’m a rude crude dude, pants down, falling down until… a library, in the dimples of a laugh. Prehistoric miasmic asthmatic whispers…sadness? Concentric waves, warm inoculation; that’s my kiss! You little giant; put you in my pocket. Midnight kitchen raid for something sweet. A library, in the dimples of a laugh, you little giant, put you in my pocket.