Time Placement

All my time

Spent

In fragments.

I could write it a love letter and throw it, without a bottle, into the ocean.

For all it is worth.

Churned by the white froth.

Wetted and torn by the elements.

Ink running deeper into the sea

In gobs

Distorted blots to poison the sea life.

Better to fold it up,

Into the perfect,

Well-manicured paper airplane

to toss from a great height.

Let the wind allow it to travel where it wishes.

Borne across the currents to a place where

Birds will tear the sentiments apart with beaks and beady black eyes.

Shit out my words on unsuspecting windshields

To be blasted away by bargain wiper fluid.

and to slip into the road.

Deep into our streams

and make the least of us

Vomit into the cold, night air.

In surprise, grasping our chests for relief.

What it amounts to in the end-

Always a poisoner,

and those who are poisoned.

Remote

We lost the remote again.

As a result, life has been stuck on the same infomercial.

-3 easy payments of 19.99

-No CODs

-Buy now get 3 free.

-Wait, there’s more…

How have we lived without it?

Whatever it is.

The world would never know,

Except we will always know

Because the confounded remote

has disappeared

into the vortex that is the couch,

Or the basement,

Or another dimension that is inaccessible to this mortal coil.

Meanwhile, here we are,

Ready to buy,

But waiting for the number 

to flash across the frozen screen.

Grip

Once a nagging pinch-

Becomes a claw, imbedded into the skin to the tune of pained wailings-

Becomes a forced tangle of the constellations; the slurring of celestial bodies-

Becomes a part, fused in place with various heats and adhesives, Accepted-

Becomes the whole of the thing itself. Complete.

Peace Unlimited

 

I want to paddle out to the middle of the lake and sit with my eyes closed,

The canoe paddle across my hips.

Let the water lap against the boat. Feel the breeze gather a small steam around me in the margins,

Note The sound of bird song, rambling and arrhythmic.

Allow it to slur together

The gentle flow of nature’s soundtrack

Attuned to nothing and everything washing over me.

Here I will breathe 

with reckless abandon

let my lungs know their depth,

satisfy a hunger they didn’t know they had.

Take a moment and admire the peace

of this place.

Then, after a centering sigh of relief, an acknowledgement of my place in the center of this lake, this moment, and the great mystery that is the cosmos, push forth a shattering wail from the core of my misery.

Let it smother the birds mid-warble and the gentle waves and watch as it sets fire to this tepid, pleasant body of water’s sense of harmony.

Shriek after shriek.

Full-throated endorsements of my torment,

in a rush like phlegm dislodged.

In the shape of fits and coughs and gags.

Wailing

Snotting

Pleading.

Until my point is made.

Mantra (Pitfall)

 You are the way you think you are.

Exactly that way. 

On a rope

Gripped tight—white knuckles

Tension sawing through the bone.

Seeking to loosen

attachments.

Fighting,

To stay suspended

In the space

Above

The snapping jaws

Of some ill-timed

convention for

half-starved crocodiles.

What you think,

you are.

Eventually.

Let the teeth

and the frenzy

rise up.

do the Lord’s work.

Leave the bones

Splitting at their ends

as a monument

to knowing

Thyself.

You

are,

you think

You.

The Devil’s Hand

 

Lift the arm

To accomplish basic tasks

And let the right hand 

Ignore what the left is doing.

Let it indulge its deepest desires

To claw a piece of happiness

from between the couch cushions

While the right scrounges for quarters

To buy another vape pen, turn the living room into the parlor of smoke where decisions are made.

Where futures are broken and sliced up and taken apart for fingernail filings.

Let the left feast on old, hard candy. A grape-turned-raisin. Forgotten indulgences.

A momentary taste of sweetness.

Before it is put to work.

How We Spent Summer Vacation

Sweat drops into the gears of the machine

clogs and gums up the timing.

Locust clouds on the horizon,

Dim the light of the heart of the summer.

Sky, a blank space peppered with smog-fine point accents of haze.

Humidity cloying-

Chafing against a skin refusing to dry.

A rigid attachment to feeling

Good.

Those Wild-Wild-Wildwood days.

The stable has burst open.

Each horse on display

Riding proudly out into

The sweltering world.

Replete with those 4 riders

Dressed in heavy, body-consuming cloaks 

to stick a thumb in the eyes of those prepared for the weather.

Behind them, a parade forms;

Even an ending deserves a celebration.

Feel Good Parade After the Forest Fire

 Still clipping away over here with weekly posts. Share with someone you love, or tolerate. 

New month-

Less new me

Aged like rusted metal

in an old backyard,

Forgotten.

Covered by overgrowth.

I have value to the scrappers.

Boil me down

To sell me

For pennies.

Copper is forever,

So is mud.

And, so is death,

I’m told.

The 100 Hour Flood

After the rain, I tip myself over and let the excess water I’ve accumulated out. I do it in my backyard, in the small, gated corner where the grass has grown unabated, next to the trash cans.

I crouch and twist my head, let the water leek out of my ear in a flush-stagnant, ripe with mosquitos and hangers on. 

I tilt my trunk and bend in a complicated yoga routine:

Cobra

Downward Dog

Warrior 1 or 2?

Tree Pose, but while tree is sawed in two

I let the lukewarm water, tinged with old scraps and flavored with the remnants of earwax, drain from me. Small pieces of eggshell and coffee grinds scratch and pull at my inner ear. They are begging to stay.

I contort myself again, letting the flow of water shrink to an uneven drip. On all fours, I shake my head-an agitated dog trying to release the last drops.

The yard in front of me is soaked through. It’s lined with the junk and earstuffs that have plagued me. The mosquitoes, now good and angry, patrol this new world, looking for a still puddle or sweet, new blood-Maybe both. I take a deep breath to center myself, drink in the odor of the foul soup at my feet. Fighting the urge to gag, I step away and close the gate, clinking the locking hinge shut to lock in what I have cast from myself.

Now the day can begin

Desert

 

There can be no mistakes

When the prairie remains dry

Again.

Returning to the dust of my childhood.

To the dust of bible times.

Coating everything with a thin film.

Choking out the lesser creatures with grit and haze and heat and the volcanic stare of the sun.

Fine sand caught between my toes.

Lodged in the space where I can only taste the hint of something, but feel the rough paper texture in my mouth.

We do not get a mulligan.

Each action has a cost

And there are a finite number of choices

Each dwindling based on the previous one.

The sand whirls in a tight circle,

Climbing a little higher each gust

Slow in its ascension

To a titan

To a god.

As it blots out the light and the wind’s screech moves from background to center stage.

I look up and face it.

The inevitable conclusion

Before the curtain

And the applause.