Top 40

 

Give me that feel good jukebox snoring away

and let my dance partner be a real looker

in all the right ways, but with none of the attention from the onlooking crow lineup.

Let her move with grace to sound of the good lord’s own warbles

after we provide the proper tribute

in 25 cent intervals.

It’s that old time sneeze of a good time,

the sort that catches the moonshine behind your sweet tooth and stops itself clean in your cough box.

Go ahead and rock me, sweet lady.

Let me move through these steps and let the sound never come across cleaner.

A counter to the humdrum static slipping through the one good speaker and its bastard little brother.

Yeah I know the truth, girl.

Can’t help but shout it from the top of the counter

to a room full of people, maybe our own disciples

or maybe the ones who want the other guy 

and we’re destined for ol’ Golgotha off of Route 206,

Near to the air base 

And the litany of pines.

Bury me in bliss

Let these 3 minutes and 12 seconds

Purify me through the fire of a guitar solo as a bridge

Over my troubled river of a soul.

Make me gurgle and split out from the banks.

See me in all my glory.

Sun Spot

 

Here’s an example for you:

the power of sunshine

on your wounds.

Unfettered solar flares

Collide with the atoms above the skin,

form a pincer molecule to burrow into

The muscle and bone,

breaking, mending with a

daylight suture job.

Yes, the scar is permanent.

So is the healing

The poem that doubles as a prog rock concept album idea

 

We are inside The balloon

Broadcasting a dream

Projecting from each of our eyes

making a communal physical world

out of a shared hallucination.

The balloon floats over Montana,

Or what it thinks is Montana

But is actually a cleared forest

of purple trees and mountains scoured with bite marks.

Rivers made of something that can only be described as “soapy water” but definitely not soapy or water. Ground, a fogged-over glass.

The sound of bird calls, heard in reverse.

A point the balloon is marveling about in its internal calculations. Humming in alphanumerical reverie.

The balloon, set to record,

Ambient weather outside and

Ambiance inside.

Watching the world we make

Undo itself as you and I both reach for 

what we collectively suppose is the last chip in the bowl, As the big game reaches an inflection point that will determine an important outcome.

When our hands touch,

A brief, glancing of flesh,

Something important shorts above us

and the hallucination stutters. fades, and cuts out.

The only sound, aside from the collective gasps, is the deep exhalation from the balloon’s failing air supply.

Now we will never know

Who won.

In Vein/Vain

 

Take it in your hand

absorb the key facts, remember the ridges,

lock this into your memory.

Let it sit, untouched,

held in place with yesterday’s dust,

in the room off of the corner of our home.

Pay it no mind

gentle snoring, a casual scratching,

the foundation is settling, old bones creak.

Your hands, now calluses

and wrinkles and gnarled rootwork, bending in on themselves, they will remember.

It is almost time.

awakening like the crash of a rogue wave,

something has washed ashore.