not the favorite-
this/thy little misconception/them
nor us, like thee/home forever,
just like never/like always/
glow always/unwilling to
fade into the background/zoom out
"you are here"
always positioned/never lost/
these little spaces/made clear/made
visible/lone beacons in a starless sky/
we are now/we are never/we are forever
little known and eternal/delayed and on time/
right here, when needed.
you're never going out of style
almost and not quite/somewhere/this is now and then and never/even if you don’t notice/even when it crosses the path you are walking/we are never without it/one another/
one and all/the table full/napkins and salad forks/et cetera/ et al./no roll call/no voting “present”/
we will own this/put our names to it/become it/swell and burst with the facts/non fiction/one and all/
lend us this ear/yours/mine/the litany of others/i should have known/never in doubt/together, we will lay claim to what is ours/
in infinite wisdom,
this vision, reduces
the likelihood of
miscalculation. sets
free, sets fire to,
unlimited brush
with endless air.
in infinite wisdom,
forever extending,
forever, each ever
a new hill to roll right
on past. right onto the
next vista.
from up here,
i can see anything.
i will be everything.
whenever.
dress it up any way you like and i’ll give you the notes you’ve requested of me. to tell you the truth, that’s what you’ve asked of me. honest like headlights on a hill in dead nighttime. dead to rights, just out there floating. letting you know that something is waiting. maybe even getting a little closer. with each passing second. each of them. growing in stop motion. slow road to oblivion/salvation.
which of them/who of us really knows anything? i will make a truth out of whatever calls my name the sweetest. whatever knows the way to my heart. through me. into my soul and out another end with clean exit wounds.
oh, to be obliterated. knowing my own destruction. knowing the end, recording it as the opening track. cue the sounds of accompaniment to my wailing. I won’t be alone when it all comes out in the wash. there will be strings and horns and other lines of melody and harmony. we’ve been working a long time together. so much to tell you. so little time to be told.
listen.
tomorrow...Tapes on Fire. Link when it's live. There's a bunch of other ideas in the works. more on that later.
consider it a spot of luck
that hell is below us.
and hell fire isn't raining down
any time soon. any time. anywhere.
maybe in hell, but as we've already established:
we are at a strategic elevation. the advantage,
critical. let them make it rain all they want.
we're sitting pretty in the regular acid/microplastic
rain we've got topside. they'll have to think of something
a little different to get us on their level.
in the spirit of fairness, though:
i will tell you our next moves, but it
will be in a coded language. taps, almost like morse code, but instead just one rule:
3 taps is a
surrender.
we: don't: ever: surrender.
take that how you will. we'll be transmitting until we receive a response.
hell isn't other people, it's a deep cavern filled with pitchforks and fire and
ceramic swing sets. i'd be mad too. it might also have paid advertisements
interrupting your thoughts. what could be worse?
what could be worse?
in another spirit i'll answer my own question:
not: a: damn: thing.
we aren't heaven, but we sure is hell aren't settling for anything less than what we've got.
and if you want what we've got, well
come on up here and make an offer. we're listening.
In case I didn't say it here: Tapes on Fire (a book of poems I have been writing since 2018) drops on 6/1. I'll post a link when it goes live. Get it while it's hot, tepid, or something.
only when the sun says
hi there
or goodbye
do we know the issue at stake.
hi and bye
sit or stand
run with the best of them or walk with the other best of them.
each a version of the greatest, each a mirror. each equal and opposite, bizarro version of itself
talking backwards and jumping instead of walking.
such oddity, such majesty, such normalcy.
geriatric and infant, here and there, blink and we might miss the moment.
beginning and ending, these are the changes i pay the big bucks to see.
i'm going to be watching to see what happens. i'm going to pretend whatever it is
matters. it might.
If you don't know: Tapes on Fire, my first poetry collection, is in the final stages of approval, available soon unless you can find me and hustle one of the copies I ordered. More soon.
so, yes,
paint brush and broad strokes, impressions
of time
in competing lines,
concentric swirls. i am rarely absolute
in
the things i paint and the things i say.
smaller shrubs
and trees, sing harmony.
nature yawns and the air is
comfortable
warmth, the tinge of pollen, a light roast
coffee
without dilution or flavoring. somewhere-
strings, not
overstaying their welcome, adding to
the scene. the players
moving their bows in concentration,
an acceptable amount of
yearning loosed from their instruments.
from heart to string,
from air to lungs, ear to soul.
notes of merriment. notes:
content. insistence. it’s real, it’s here,
it’s now. drink
deep, be satisfied. these are the golden times
promised to no
one, here and now. yours and mine.
the brush dipped
into water. purified, made almost-new. made ready.
nothing comes
out the way i expect it. add, subtract, revise, revisit,
rescind.
results. look for yourself.
...and back to a weekly schedule.
Fear not,
Fear all.
brinkmanship and the like.
We should all be so afraid. So very
afraid. Enthralled
by violence. Ensconced. Sealed. Terror and
Strife. I am ruled by my personal fears.
Little indignities.
Decency cast to the breakwater, smashed against the line of
patient
rocks. Patience, little one. Your time for ruin is soon
upon us all. Patience, Patience. The waiting is the hard part. Harder
than the doing. The coming and the going. Life is happening around
us. Little known facts and lesser known truths.
Patience,
little one.
Today’s prompt. Thank you to everyone who has read my work all month (especially to the people I bombard with it on a DAILY BASIS.) I'm sorry to see April go, but stayed tuned…I’ve actually got something significant in the works that I'll announce soon.
I’ll never forget where I was the first time I heard it.
Who I was. Might be. That sense of displacement. In a conversation with one of my roommates, as we watched the end of childhood through an obscured glass. I had to hear it. He was insistent. Watch as his eyes light up with splendor as he shared this song with me.
My my my, my…my
That feeling, fleeting. furtive. the sense that every second was trying to hold water in my bare, shaking hands. Holding it at the end of a cold winter. Trying to take in the sun. Trying to keep it for myself a little longer.
Skinny love.
Song of youth. Song of sadness. The spare guitar jangling out and on itself. Furtive baritone. I’d never felt so seen while falling. I was sure of a nosedive. Unsure of what would be born from the collision.
Later still, watching my roommate dancing with a friend, singing along, joy in the moment funneling out from the oration of a song. It was a week from the hard stop.
I spent some corona and Budweiser tears, it was hard to let it these movements go. Hard to see me where I’d end up. Wondering what was left for me afterwards. Wondering what I had to show for my efforts.
All your Love was wasted.
A lifetime later. I only visit this song, none of the others. This line, anthemic before. I realized the mistake: Love being wasted, gone.
Love isn’t oil. It isn’t youth. It isn’t a pie graph or a timeline.
It is clean energy. When we use it, it fuels itself. It isn’t a shriveled, weak thing withering in on itself.
I’m still in that moment, hearing this the first time. Hearing it soundtrack life’s interruptions. Between the goodbyes. In our waning, in the winding down. In absence and reunion and the spaces where life carries us.
It wasn’t wasted. It echoes between our souls.
It’s still here. always
Today's prompt. Not a full 100% take on the prompt, but this is what is spinning around in my brain.
words and the like build
an invisible monument, reinforce it
with sentence structure. an errant clause,
punctuation housings and wirings. splits,
electrodes, and more to it than the untrained
eye (namely: me) can ascertain. The world becomes
a paragraph and all of the rules of nature, laws that govern
existence, fall into a single space before us, write themselves
into being. we are left to make the meaning ourselves. we get our
wish: play god and move all of the king's horses and all of the king's
men around the game board. where to build hotels and where to
press our luck: park place and the boardwalk, railroad robber barony,
becoming the means of production ourselves. starting small riots
and smirking as the workers tear apart what we've made for ourselves.
it is just like this. everything is reduced to the word choice. everything
becomes all right or terrible or listless or eccentric. or just is. or was.
one day it will be, too. we can only hope or fear. it just comes down
to the wording.
today's prompt. In honor of the concept of music, I'm going to recommend you listen something you didn't understand the last time you heard it.
music be, miscellaneous
and left for the scavengers.
they're playing the scraps of
songs my brain makes at the
end of dreams. no one knows
me like you. no one, makes misfired
synapse become the sounds of
distant symphony, played from a
cave. they didn't know the occasion.
they didn't get the sheet music in
time. wholesale invention. hardly
heard from the trucks going by, the
hum of progress follows its own,
distinct meter, notation, etc. improvising
as they see fit. the woodwinds against a
drum. the saxophone with a slide. the stuff
of another time. another nightmare.
another reason to shake our collective
skulls in disdain and rattle our brains
just so. enough to feel it again.
Today's prompt. I decided to look at some more Auden and chose this one as the poem I'm sharing today.
i.
we assume our lives are narrated by brilliance
and punctuated with fireworks. our own little
symphonies, crescendos and triumph.
auden assumed icarus fell with a splash, was
ignored by the cruelty of a ship with obligations,
dismissed by the man with the plow. missed by
a man who wanted nothing more than to stare
at the sun all day.
auden assumed
icarus screamed, struggled,
splashed.
if it were anything. maybe a dull thud. maybe a
listless resignation. maybe icarus had already expired
from the thrill of the fall.
to suppose anyone was aware at all is
where i begin to question the enterprise.
ii.
seen from above
seen from below
another bird comes crashing
another one of god's disappointments
i am just looking through the willows
for some food for my own son.
iii.
we assume our lives are
central parts in the play of
life. we're right. we are principle
speakers. all of us. each a megaphone-
each a soloist belting the notes with
disregard for blend. we are
something, all right. if not, you'll
hear it from. i'll speak to your
manager.
iv.
an angel gets his wings,
promptly loses control.
the clouds want to weep
but can't waste the water.
lean times are coming.
there will be other angels,
anyway.
v.
the plow prepares for tomorrow.
clears the land. prepares our
inheritance. every gust of wind,
each grain of sand, every dog and
sparrow, ours. all of it, tomorrow.
Today's prompt. Sonnets are not usually my bag, but I may have something coming out one day that plays with the form. I googled Modern Sonnets and this collection came up, seems appropriate.
i won't believe the truth, not anymore.
old rapscallion! old line to my feelings,
modern mystery: efficiency, soar.
excalibur, a sword from stone's dealings.
pulled from the dirt, plastic imitations.
sold to the highest bidder. consider:
when and why and how. the intimations
nobility astoundingly slither.
hither and dither, snake without a face-
two headed, de-brained, and still dangerous.
one head is cruel, the other? a disgrace.
still made to look born in a manger. thus
a saint and sinner, but more the latter,
fed by its malice, still getting fatter.
