This Grin

 Here's something spontaneous.

take it home; another pet staring in the window; claw marks on the banister; broken in; let me see the way the whites of the eyes give us some peace; this mind, at rest

another stripling; a home to hold; let them settle in for it; drink the air; deep sense of relief

an infinite well; all senses dulled into one another; in the grip of a feral hiss; in heat; this is 
what gives us all pause; such longing on craven display; such a clever landscape painted for us, another undercurrent at work; painter's vice; limited to something burned into a canvas; something hung up on rusty nails above the portrait window

it is yours to keep; yours to ponder over; yours to debate with colorful language; always your own

lay claim to it; shrugging from distemper and other maladies; begging for food at odd hours of the night; this destiny is yours.  

Solara 66-80

 a return to the Solara.

LXVI

What we’re waiting for/together/is some kind of magical pyramid scheme that will help us all /transcend/ into wearing monocles and hiring associates to carry our gold on their backs at all times. Who could /blame/ us either? Though, I think monocles are hard to balance. Also, anyone /who is/ anyone has cryptocurrency. Hard to insert the gold into the computer, I imagine. I’m going to /live my life/ in-0-1 combinations. Affluence in a cloud. Affluence forever. Digital/ monocle//. Forget the rest of /you/.

LXVII

Once monoliths. We are like the hulking beasts of our past. Lunging to the present. Clawing to the future. Half of my desires are lost in the passing of one minute to the next. The other, a fierce sunlight, bearing down on the sundial. Merciless, an eye eternal. I could easily be lost to the reveries and delights of any given yesterday. Remain at attention. Stay a course. Survive.

LXVIII

It might /begin/ as a sliver of mercury floating its way towards salvation. It might /begin/ as the gentle lulling of a breeze against the window. It might /begin/ as the sun peaking out from the endless night. 

It /becomes/ a storm. It /is/ the end. For now, let us /bask/ in its simplicity. /Before/ too long. /Before/ we must change course.  

LXVIX

My evening was ruined/no fault of mine/or yours/or anything for that matter. Nothing to be done about it/really/when we get down to it. Outside the scope of our control/of our collected wisdom/and experience. What can be done about cosmic events? Certainly, I am no expert/neither are you/I suppose.

LXX

what, peace and /heaven/, when. where/each/collide. how, in song/we are all made purer/minor miracles of flesh/bone/salt. give in to this /endless/ wandering gaze. somewhere, like all lost objects/come to be /found/ again/with no sense of urgency. written for us, above our vision/in slivers of/the/ infinite.

LXXI

I once dreamt/the afterlife/in a side room of my elementary school/illuminated as statues/seen only by lightning. God had jokes about hell and I missed /my family. Eternity was a long time/perhaps/definitely. Ten and dreaming of a heaven-in the building where I was /learning/forgetting/obscuring myself. I’ll never forget the lightning, the awareness there was a border I couldn’t cross. Then, in an instant /I arrived./

LXXII

I didn’t want a prayer card. They gave it to me anyway. Nothing was saving this soul /or my own. Still, I was polite and took it. The words were imaginary. The /picture, some stock/ image /underwater/. I wondered where I really was. What had I done? I spoke the words. /Began to rise/and found myself home /finally/ or that’s what I’ll /tell myself/ 

LXXIII

You could. Try to take water in hand. Hold it. The source. Slipping. I’m being profound again /aren’t I/held, my hand/my breath. All of this, a patient game of waiting/who will blink, /first/ more sounds from far away. More light rays, in the flux of waves. My chest, this fire/this staring into/another void. Water slips from your hand/ again/ 

LXXIV

Don’t pull me into your ideal version/unhinged material and beauty. Aggressive and color stripped/swelling violins/selling me something I /never/ knew I never /wanted/. Taking me beneath the waves, this siren song/this web of impulse deregulation/this hug of the waves, dragging me deeper/beyond the surface. Never let me have my own ideas again.

LXXV

You’ve decided for me/stuff that turns a dream to cinders/ashes. Decocted and reduced-left in the pot too long. Lost in the reverie-turning to a weathered paste. I’m heavy of foot again/loss on my features/stolen from me. Sing me this symphony, wind/let me set it and -not- forget it, /this time/

LXXVI

I think I /finally understand./ it all./each rendering of the impossible /begins with the/.end point in mind/scrolling through infinity—left to our own descent 

into madness/and the multiplication tables turning [in on themselves]./ever the gyre/endless manifestations: in a sequence/

in a volume beyond

numeric representation. All of our hands are /raised/. 

LXXVII

I won’t deteriorate any longer. In our conversations, you’ve shown me versions of myself. Reworded me for clarity and reformed my broken stabbings of sentences for something listening, somewhere, and we haven’t really been speaking. Even still, I am in debt to the caverns you have shown me, have left me to wander. Even as you, yourself, continue your own excavation, elsewhere.

LXXVIII

and still persistent. very much in the throes of some kind of fever. pressing forward when the shakes set in. easing the symptoms. letting off the adrenaline rush. stuck in some sense of purpose’s flight patterns. thirst never quite quenched. again, a rush. again, the old sense of wonder. it never goes away, does it?

LXXVIX

this will eek out of me/running away with the feeling/in spurts and shouts and shouted gulps of hot air/in the worst moment possible/letting it buoy itself behind air/fueled by shrill projection/less of a spectacle, but no one is looking away/break and crack and fall into the smaller, jagged pieces and distortions of the feeling consuming the whole of my attention/focus, viewer/let it seep its way from me to you/drink and/be full

LXXX

Disappointed/denial, in retrospect/sunk in feathers/free and floating//glass cracking from the edges to the center/uneven/scratched to the point of concern//each sound, sharper than its predecessor/even this mockingbird’s lament/this robin’s aria/this crow and its pointed stare/focused and waiting/drenched in our disillusion/nothing is the way it was/promised//

I heard that 311 song playing and this happened

A little levity, I suppose.

"Rainstorm, take me away from the norm

Wooaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I got to tell you something..."

I suppose you do. Words meant for me

Have a way of arriving in my brain.

Yours are no exception. You still left

It unsaid

Resolving on a chord and changing

The record over to some new song

With rap and rock fused together

A display of 

Machismo

For the masses

I am a wounded bird

Waiting for your message

I know it already

So what do you have to 

Say for yourself?

Will the rain come

To bail you out again?

I’m sure you’re hopeful.

"And it goes like this"

Airing Out the Feeling vol 3

 once more, a solara-free saturday. there is definitely more coming, i promise.

No path, like this one, the one necessary 

for some kind of rest. Slippage and breakage
Tender thy farthings. I am a bucket of impatience
Punctured nerve endings, like shell shock

Immune to the siren song of deeper breaths

Patience

Grow out from me, solid oak exhaustion

Shake this in a broken cup. Clink and a clack

I am so much of the noise ratio. A pillar

of vibrant waves of sound. Glimpse
these stress responses in glances

Never head on.

Corner dwelling, hands over eyes,

active terror response, having been
seen at last.

Grow out from me, shrieking,
Pink cloud of impulse control
Let it grow
Forward

Blot out an agreeable starry night

Hands and hissing, 

Reject Light

Remain in cover

Of shadow and another

Darkened room.

Double plus blackout.

Grow out from me, empty

Glass bowl.

Let them see what you’ve been

Feeling, Leonard. Let them know

What is willing and what is being

Dragged by the scruff, nails and
Loud repudiations trailing behind.

Let it be left behind.

A monument to what it isn’t

or even what exactly it is.

Just so.

Like that. And let it stay

behind.

giving and taken

 another Solara break, probably will just post it on a different day. I've been stepping out from the AI and doing more daily writing of my own. Some of them have been rather fun, so here's a recent one.

giving/what it is giving/some lore/some sense of outrage/boils up through me/giving/what in terms of the gift is the gift and what is the curse/lingering air collecting in pockets of lung/pockets meant to be filled/

less given/more to give/these are the words/pushed forth in some air/foolish love of my life/feel it/

giving/once again/
so much to be taken/
lessons in the abstract/made terrestrial/made with permanent marker on a wall that has been painted over/each time/a new coat/

giving/all of the given/lined up in infinite rows/lines reaching to the very back/giving the sense of eternity/a bad name/

this one/that one/too/lest i work to make you forget/what will be given to me/given to you/this is mine to give/mine alone/take it/foolish–love/i must insist/made for you/

Solara 51-65

 15 more for your general enjoyment/perusal.

LI

I’ve never been more accomplished, in my statement/this mess/I have reaped what I have sown/culled from the aging crops/taken what can be saved/left the rest for the locusts/what you see/now/is the after-image/the negative of the actual photo/left to the stillness/I am pensive in my victory/my eyes do not waver/never off of the horizon/this one is for me/for me/alone/let me bask in it/

LII

seen/

A vision/of

failure/of

time’s victory/of

another reminder/of

god’s laughter/of

mild songs of lament/of

sweet, sonorous silence/of

the aftermath of something/seen/

as nothing/ 

LIII

Again, artist behind the art/in plain sight/with their forebears/visual ancestors/ascetic comrades/becoming one/with/creation/an uncertain unification/right in front of us/behind our own frame/in the home of another onlooker’s onlooker/visions of an eternal vigil/uninterrupted through the eons/left to their own musings/look on/ 

LIV

You’ve already been able to know me, so well. I’ll drop the act and let the spectacle take me in it’s loving arms. Unbend the knee/oh how the old habits/die hard/. I am fighting to remain present./in this/very moment/you witness the true, /miracle/ I will be made /manifest/a glorious manifestation. My, how the stares of your peers, in horror, mollify and make you happy. how/appalling. How interesting.

LV

What longing? Watching the Sun crash into the Earth again.

These dreams. The projector has 

one film. I can’t look away either.

Looking on /helpless/

like the child when mom and dad

dis/agree/ and there’s nowhere to look

except right into the blaze/knowledge being

what/ever/ it is this time. Some talisman, some

chain. Rooted to the spot. This operation is /already/

a disappointment and a realization. /Both/.

LVI

My life has become just another

/imitation/ of some surrealist painter’s

portfolio where I say shocking things

and make still more shocking pictures

in shocking mediums and no one has much

to say but applaud /with gusto/ and /I guess/ 

there’s not much else to do but put the brush

into my solar plexus until it enters my body

and I can finally try painting my /soul/.

LVII

Oh god, I didn’t mean it like that. Please

take it away and let it out to the pasture.

/you know what I mean by that/let’s not mince

words /or meat/. Sometimes the reality sets in

and I am filled with buyer’s remorse, at another

Loss. What I’ve commissioned /”what have we done?”/

You know the answer, /so do I/. Let it sink in and do the Lord’s 

work to each of us.

LVIII

The great plains sing like they are America. The creatures harmonize behind the plains. I am unmoved because I am already America. All of me/is reaching for something pastoral. Something from a place I have no /access/ to anymore. Some part of us long forgotten//. I asked for this, didn’t I? 

LIX

A view. A sky. Rocks and trees and overgrowth. Clouds of undetermined menace. I was promised spectacle. I was promised miracles. Here I stand, where I’ve been my whole life. Counting clouds. Waiting for the universe to lift its gaze from the cosmos and pull me up with it to a fate deserved.

LX

Good ol’ respite in the end of a good ol’ bad day. Darn tootin’ and damn skippy and what have us. Not a whole lot to it when the sun winds down and the moon winds up, and I ain’t plum foolin’ myself otherwise. No sequence to interrupt, just the comings and goings of the world and its mischiefs. Me and mine and you and yours, just witnessing the whole spinning mess of a thing, aren’t we? Might as well /crack/ open the suds and /get to it.//

LXI

Dream this /world/-World dreams me/Left within confines of a broken, overflowing circle. Slipping from the margins, undoing and cooking myself-in symmetrical /burnings,/ patterns. Longings escaping from their cages/given to their movements, /baser/ instincts. Willing to be lost. Willing to compromise the whole structure-ruin the enterprise. My world rolls over in its /sleep/the alarm rings and /know it/ now. All of it.

LXII

still floating, even when the pieces are coming /undone/. stands still at an edge: staring at /the bottom-/-, absorbed by the distance, echoes and shrieks, modulated-pitched /down///remains affixed /to the point assigned___to the silent window to the/whistles coming back from an .abyss. left to its own amusements___gasp at the appropriate interval. any day .now/. 

LXIII

-alight with clouds/tear it down-gripping the seat’s headrest. old visions of nightmares/combustibles set, in the foreground, the flame/ approaches. never/ letting

it out of our :sight: not blinking/as the rains arrive/as the window fogs/as the mind is left to 

its own devices. we envision a future from what little we have acquired along the way.

LXIV

-you couldn’t /imagine/-even if you/desired it/what will be left behind/and what will be made of it/when we go,[and we’ve already gone, mate], we’ll be/unable/to set the agenda/any longer/. feel my heart’s ache at the /loss of/ agency. you’ll know it in the space where blood pools and leaves, though it’s not something we’d call a heart [not on you, mate…never that]. you’ll know something similar, something like a feeling/right?/

LXV

The fireflies came together to perform a collaborative picture series. We all held hands and smiled. Life was perfect again. Finally/right/. Showing the audience the truth of our priorities. Always/coming back to the heart. A pleasant reminder. We /only/ need love. They seemed to shout. Then they started trying to sell us a timeshare. /we were drawing our/own/conclusions.-all /along/-/

Solara 36-50

 In honor of organized labor's contributions and the federal holiday, here's more Solara.

XXXVI

give me that/old time, sweetness/give me that/yesterday’s concern/give me that/my reverie in sepia/give me that/four corners of my dusty, childhood home-a visit like it’s still the same/like nothing changed/give me that/hope that doesn’t ebb away with the erosion of the time stream/give me that/time back that I’ve been missing-where it’s kept/that sealed off room/untouched by light/airtight/take me there/take me to what I’ve been missing/

XXXVII

another night watch/another night where the air isn’t even moving/trees hang-dog/just waiting/water at a stand still/mosquito baby making music/conditions are perfect/placid/in reverie/waiting for the door to open/for a light to turn on/for a sign of life/we’ve waited long enough/me/you/the amorous bugs/none of us doing anything with any feeling/not anymore/but we’ll wait out here/all night if we have to/just me and the void/nothing to it/nothing else to be done about it/no, sir/

XXXVIII

given the circumstances/the way the evening has taken shape/dusk turning to absolute menace/even the trees are snarling/fog rolled in and rang like a school bell tone/operational inadequacy/all the lights become a torch/become a tongue of fire/nobody is speaking any longer, so they wait/settling in/unused/rusty/given these circumstances/one might consider the evening walk postponed/

XXXIX

behold, Excalibur/resting in this broken asphalt/left to wonder near the uneven street/torn by years of misuse/next to the old, older warehouses long since scavenged for copper/long since forgotten in the office christmas card rush/behold, the sword of Damocles/splitting wood in an urbane home three blocks north/long since forgetting where it comes from/its roots/in the cement of our early days/the wrong tool for the right job/always/

XL

if it’s skate or die, I know which one I’m choosing/bury me in under that half pipe though/I want to hear those clanking wheels in heaven/doing spins and the shouts of failure/excitement/let the scrapes and blood mingle with my body’s memory/let the rodents say a few kind words/I’ve been worthy of their dignity/you can’t imagine the fun that is to be had/not here/not now/not ever/but you’ll try just the same/fixing your deck and your trucks/changing the wheels out in my memory/the future passed me by, brother/

XLI

we’re approaching a place where physics are losing meaning/shapes bend and warp and distort and melt and expand and balloon and twist and collect and fracture and reform and combust and germinate and implicate and extricate and coagulate and we are all watching/stunned/silent in the beauty of the moment’s changing/ 

XLII

what I wouldn’t give/to you/to see the way the the light glints off your shadow/as you depart/in the majesty of this clear summer day’s gradual descent to a quiet evening/I’ve never loved so easily/never been awash in splendor like this before/you/you could be/just another satellite/marching towards the distance/a place to note my location/remaining/at rest

XLIII

Some two bit painter/an eye on less than blatant forgery/took a google image and put it next to his easel/inspiration, he said/it was true/the picture was indeed inspiring/down to the palette of colors/the shift of the subject/the day becoming night/I suppose/imitation is a game/imitation is easily confused with inspiration/and the crowd reacted accordingly/applauding in a crude imitation of the one who stood first/effusive/bold/thunderous claps of the hand becoming a storm/

XLIV

one day/god will assert himself from the wordless void/perhaps as a large hand/maybe a single leg with a wide open eye/communicating through blinking/blinking the masses to an understanding of a beautiful truth/maybe, he will also be a great tap dancer, though it would be more like artful dancing/one day/we’ll all know the truth about existence/and the majesty of song/and see the way we die in an unblinking eye, clouding over with the sadness of another memory in an infinite well/ 

XLV

this high wire horror show/at work/something haunting/something unnatural/moving with a grace unfitting/the stakes being what they are/must-see entertainment/we look away in performative disgust/instinct/moving on instinct/life and the turns it takes/each a pirouette and an axle/the stakes being what they must/another spectacle/another shake of my head/another denial of my own hideousness/look at be cleansed/ 

XLVI

you knew it/you knew it/you knew it/then you did it/anyway/let the consequences of your action filter upstream/into the tributaries and the overflow basin/you should have done better/you should have done better/you should have done better/instead we’re left with this/strong sense of disaster/cleaning up the mess you’ve made for the rest of us/while you just sit there/watching with those hollow eyes of yours/blank expression/thank you for this/sincerely/

XLVII

We’ll put this on a shirt/print it everywhere/it’ll catch like a match to dead forest/practically sells itself/practically, but with a little help from the internet/from the wild/from the former and the latter/people will see it and think of a great peace/others will see the calamity and know it as their own/others still will just think it will look radical if they wear it on a hooded sweatshirt they overpaid for/there’s levels/and there’s levels/and this is just one of said levels/we’ll be up to our nose hairs in money/swimming pools filled with it/God/I am so ready/

XLVIII

Noble majesty/come back to me/in visions of steam/in the mist of a morning/fresh and aware of the cooler breezes/lost among the dew/trampled over kindling/the life cycle of these whispering woods/at last/a champion worth our waiting/lumbers forth/in a pairing with another/just as willing/equal in each way/let the steam drift right off of them as their forms come into/focus/patient/even gazes/a sentry/another safeguard/returning to stand watch over something sacred/

XLIX

I’ll be direct/the future terrifies me/the changes morphing into new trends/language augmenting itself/modern art in general/fashion, oh fashion: recycled or otherworldly/world I know molting/who knows what will wait for me/for you too/as the sun becomes something it was not meant to become/as the rest of us drink even more expensive and alarming caffeinated beverages/snack on freeze dried delicacy/dressed like astronauts, maybe/I’m shaken at the very idea/

L

dressed up/for another performance/one woman show/avant garde diner/another vision of a future society deserves/less imagination than previously expected/all flash/substance in a vacuum/substance as a commodity/unblinking/unafraid/the world comes undone/remade/in clean ribbons/shredded and left to the wind/behind a still-life form/bowing at the conclusion of another performance/

Breather

 Taking a breather from posting Solara work. Working on a few new things besides Solara. Friendly reminder, you can read some longer form writing from me here. 

These modes of operation limit me
and I am still not sure if the light
above my skull is my own.

The wonder seeps from
my ear and onto the floor
for enterprising ants to collect.

Bring it back to another algorithm
of their own making; 0 and 1 and
heaps of garbage and ant shit.

Someone will call it golden
or another form of high praise
heralded by a dented bugle.

Collect it all and put it for sale under an arcane listing in print or in some coded tubings;

let the people decide.

Solara 26-35

 Full steam ahead, comrades.

XXVI

I didn’t want to write it down/let it come to life off of the page/wanted it to stay in my mind/this swirling kite of internal flames and broken shards of glass/left it to whither in a darkened corner next to childhood embarrassments/instead/it scorches itself free from the paper and sets itself upon my shoulder/dutiful companion/my only true one/long since past the point of a single refrain/a single return to whatever came before its screeching entrance into this overturned room/this mess I’ve made/nothing to be done/everything is already set/

XXVII

When words are set to fire/the smoke is a wisdom and a killer/lifting itself high above the flashpoint of a flame/above our worldly concerns/the sky drinks what comes its way and coughs complicated clouds of sentence structure out over our fair city/the sky, always learning/always preparing itself for the next great idea we feed it/soon, the preparations will be over/soon everything will be the way we dreamed it/one bonfire at a time/

XXVIII

When flame is feeding/avoid meal time/you will see each crackle and burst/a snarl/fangs in a fevered dance with prey/not a single wet eye in the room/all susceptible to the itch/the scratch/the tug of the spark and scrape of each and every singe mark/lining the otherwise plain walls/off white/plaster/peppered with the marks of a flame whose only time keeping is the measure of its hunger/crawling towards what will soon be cinders/

XXIX

More than stupid hair metal/we’re something classic/individual spokes on a wheel that will only move forward/locking itself when reversed/nuts and bolts rusting with speed/with alacrity/we will remain in the front yard/dry rotted memories/a monument to what was once glorious and is now of slight embarrassment/each stupid solo/each flick of the mane/every shout and controlled explosion/none of it matters as the dew in the grass reaches our fringes and sets in/

XXX

What is/left for me/next to yesterday’s castoffs/waiting to be collected by the pickers/dustmen/the trash collection agencies/clandestine recyclers with balaclavas/I haven’t even had my say yet/gotten to shuffle through what you left for me/before/this descent/before the throngs and the multitudes of interested parties scrape the collection for personal gain/before/I can reclaim something to call my own/something to link me from a past to a present/to the future now/and the current then/all/in/one/

XXXI

King and beggar/ascend thy throne to the scorched heavens/clouds on fire again/should have sprung for the sprinkler package/here, on earth/we all stand marveling at the coronation of one so plain/the ascent to a sky so ruined/what has become of thy kingdom/here, on earth/we are far less presumptive/no royalty among us/not in the alleys/not in the dark spaces that sun and sky on fire’s light refuse to touch/wading through the refuse/we are all our own lords and magistrates/kindling for an even greater burn zone/ready for the next spark to fly/

XXXII

Will the molten earth burn through my fineries/I hope not/these suckers cost a grip/a whole band of the green stuff/none of that imitation/performance art pants and off brand accouterment/natural disasters are never timed well, but this was supposed to be more coronation/the scepter is already drooping from this heat/what is one man/even a king/to do about the ambient temperature/my loyal subjects/bring water/

XXXIII

I’ve always felt my most confident when wearing a mask/someone else’s face/someone else’s problems superimposed over my own/the rest is green screen/I am free to be a different version of me/maybe not me at all/to gawk and stare and sneer and smile and weep openly behind this heavy, sweaty material/even with my vision obscured/dehydration setting in/the dizzying smell of a latex overload/I’ve never been more myself/more alive/than right now/

XXXIV

Hello there/hi/yes/this is me looking to speak to you/will you open the door/will you/open your mouth/your heart/to the good news that I am willing to share with you right now/at this location/in this very moment/I won’t even ask for a hug/this time/we may have gotten off on the wrong foot/though I am willing to be your honest companion/maybe even a sidekick/if that’s what you are into here/yes, mother told me I can come on a little strong/but/you’re very important to me/to this entire enterprise/really/and I’d love to explain myself/explain us/to you/

XXXV

Sometimes these feel a little/too soon/too close to the heart of the matter/something that knows me in ways I am not sure I know myself/looking through my soul/instruments of knowledge/instruments of pain/instruments of experience/innocence/music as a weapon X/misery as a balm and a tonic/a body translucent/a spirit on display, rattling its cage/demanding, through tears and triumph/to let itself out for a walk on a day with a clear sky and birdsong/