City Planning

 

This city, bright and mechanical,

Floating like a flower in an vase

Way up past the skyscraper eyesores.

Surrounding industry.

Inside,

Paths like a Wire Beehive.

Electric pulses

Winding paths

Dropping and rising in the space of petal to stem.

Path termination, kicked out

Into the old air

Far beyond, in the rearview.

Bobbing in the space of nothing.

Drooping a little lower each time.

The city loses its footing

Deflates itself

And the wires uncoil

Falling around the empty field

Under a cloudless sky

At the foot of the steel leviathans.

The monument whimpering with the spasms of a dying animal’s determination,
beyond the rear view's eyes. Imagine, it is still out there, trying.

No Zen Required

 

No sunshine will touch my shadow any longer. They've agreed to keep their distance. Agreed to disagree on some critical matters. Not sure of their relative place in the universe as long as the other is present. I am told they are not willing to compromise on this matter. I've tried to help them find reason, bury the hatchet. Worked out the angles between tripping over myself in the darkened room or hiding my eyes from the burn.

It starts early. I'm dragged to darkness by my shadow. He has lost his sense of proportion. Does not know his strength any longer. Pulls me deeper into the corners of my bedroom. Hides me under another set of light-eating blankets.

Sunshine calls me, but my shadow slaps the phone out of my hand. I have to trust him. I have to stay the course. I must not feel the temptation for warmth. For the outside to let the breeze sneak up and gently hug me. For the sounds of birds to welcome me out into the world.

My shadow, he knows me better than I know myself. The sunshine, radiating off of the sidewalk, zeroing in on my pale frame, it is a destroyer of peace. A bringer of skin rash, scaled flesh, eventual cancers, 

Here in the dark, I'm told I am safe, a proper temperature. I am contained. Controllable.  

My shadow, locking me into an iron tether. We shall never know the world apart from one another.

I try to tell him, light will bond us. He reminds me that vision is not a bond. This, this proximity, under cover of multiple darknesses. Us, alone, held fast to one another and shaking, this is the only true connection. Everything else is a sleight of hand and a trick of vision. Illusory. Disguises not fit for truth.

And here we are, in silence, and I just want to sneak a gaze out the tinted window, to see what might be outside. 

If only I’d let me.

A Rumble at the Open Mic Night

Up from the Sea

Lining my pockets with currency

freshly earned by Judas

Take a pound of the tender flesh

Scar tissue’s exchange rate is bad this week.

Flesh, well kept, never goes out of style

I’m a fish-faced enemy of the people

Lending power limited

Credit score infinite.

Up, sea

Let the current take me

See through the flotsam,

Age-old pollution.

The Fish with three eyes,

Glowing in the twilight and whispering sweet bubble nothings to the casual observer.

I take my financial advice from a Ouija board co-piloted by the atomic bomb and a piece of the real cross of Jesus Christ.

From Up

Come to me, sweet oblivion

Short my stock portfolio and eat the good leftovers.

Let my car run overnight but keep it safe from those who trespass against me.

All of the eggs in the fridge

Bloody with disappointment. The farmer’s crude lament. 

Let each meal swell in the intestines of my friends and foes alike. 

Sweet oblivion, decorate my yard with half eaten plastic wrappers and coffee grounds.

They will say, “that is a choice.” I will agree.

From the Sea Up

I am the Lord of Greater Inconvenience

You shall know my nominal wrath and be left shaking your head like all of the other suckers.

I’m not even going to be the better for it

It’s just a cup of coffee to me. Size medium, not even iced.

It’s all nice.

When the curtain closes

The applause concludes and the sound of shuffling feet 

Dies off in the now-dusty quiet of the stage.

Lights off

and we return to the soil.

 

Confessionals

 

Give me the truth as you see fit, my love.

Break it apart into 12 or 13 manageable pieces

rolling off of the tongue in meaningful slobberings

I know this so well.

Even better than you might, the medicated stumble of a mouth

rife with SAT prep lingo from a bygone era. Paleolithic 

shots of affection across the starboard front of the vessel,

whatever that might imply to our friends in the maritime industry.

Whatever that implies to anyone.

Holy, all that is Holy. Attached to sounds of my spindly flesh’s protests under the currents that guide us into what comes and what may.

I am slurring again, letting the closely inspected colors, neat within the lines, leak out and make a perfectly damn fine picture ripe with blurry hues. 

Everything ends up as shit if I’m not careful these days. With no bags to store it and set it on fire outside the local municipality’s domicile.

Go on, say it like I mean it, self.

Let them know how I really feel, this time.

Mea culpa

 I’ve written nothing this week. Made a new year less like the old year in an unsatisfactory way. Obligations and lists lining my walls. I am a glacier of ideas, melting with the speed of cow fart induced heatwaves. Something will find its way into the stratosphere in due time. You know it and so do I. Give me my wilted plants at the appropriate time. 

Map Oclock

 lenses on a fresh horizon

I am locked into the future. Eyes bearing down on what is to come my way, no deviations, absolved from uncertainty. Everything becomes a purer tomorrow. Everything a leap and bound to prosperity assigned to me from birth. Long after my death, my husk rises up to rekindle the flames of my sureness. The right, the ordained truths. All of it, mine for time in perpetuity.

 the lenses track the bird, flying through the heavens beyond the point we know longer know it.

Rave reviews

 

Click and purr and whir and whine and know something in the deep soul of the moment where I am trying to reveal a moving sentiment in still images. I created this mess.

Stop. Motion. 

Gold and silver and bronze and spray painted and blacked out. Here is your champion, outfit them as you see fit.

To the victor goes the spoils.

Oh such is the truth of the matter. Such is the heavy head wearing the crown and the decisions they are forced to make for the rest of us.

Give me. Your dreams.

All they want is what I cannot give today. Come back tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow.

Night Court

 

In a cloak of night. Litigation 

between a set of shadows. Order

is established apart from the fire. Motions becoming theater off of the light. Reform

me, my friend, beneath dimming stars. All

of me. Robed

Creak

 

The floorboard groans

Nail heads at uneven heights

Poking out to claw into the errant piece of skin that chooses to graze in its path.

Arranged in haphazard order

No symmetry

Each squawk of wood’s lament

Each one, not the same as the last

No pattern

Except the guaranteed

display of sound,

Acknowledging the discontent

at the point of impact.

Murmurs from a Murder

 

Long con with the crows

murmur assent, harmony of 

Kakaw

Flutter of wings and feathers

Swirling, amassed.

Beedy eye,

Unblinking focus

Still below the neck

One gentle reminder/fragile form

A grip and simple twist,

Crumbles in on itself

Lays barren

Gone over twice

Deprived of value

Denied the feast of the many.

Line of vision 

Unobstructed in miles

Down the road

Power lines hum

Kakaw

Flutter again

Come in the hour of need

A great and plentiful

Table for none

Is waiting

Zen Ruination Part 3: Horticulture

 

I spend a little time each day

Before the Sun shows its face,

Speaking sweet words at the flowers

I planted in our backyard’s oft-neglected garden.

Bent over them, shining my cell phone’s light to aim my voice in the appropriate directions.

I practice my intonation,

Even pacing

inflection up.

Dulcet tones

The tapping of the clavas underneath the smooth 2/4 love in my song.

My eyebrows raised,

Loose body language.

Willing them to continue growing.

To grow up safe

Without bends in the stem

To know they are valuable and don’t need to compare themselves to the others.

Each one

Blossoming and arcing towards the growing light.

Each one,

More beautiful than the moment before I shined the unsparing light from my iPhone 11 plus.

Before now,

I would bark out commands

Grow straighter!

Blossom more effectively!

A drill Sergeant

Demanding results without exception.

As you know,

I’ve burned everything I loved

Away from Me.

In the shrill demands

the impatient scowls

The disappointment

That oozed from my pours.

Each has left Me.

You have left Me.

Maybe these flowers I planted,

When You told Me you were leaving, told Me that I kept You down

Under water and struggling-my hand firmly and figuratively on your head-bubbles screaming without interruption,

These things I have tried to talk into becoming something other than the weeds

Of our home’s ruined garden,

Maybe I’ll speak the words in the right combination and unlock my fingers from their collective, and figurative, scalp. They’ll bubble up through the surface and I’ll tell them how sorry I am. How much I’ve learned. How proud I am to have witnessed them grow.

Maybe I won’t fail them

This time.

Accu-weather

 Dressed for a rain storm on an uncharacteristically sunny day and waddling out to the curb to grab the newspaper and the rubber of my rain boots emits small squeals with every change in foot position and I’m waving at my neighbor who is sitting out front with the accoutrements of a seasoned veteran in the art of tanning lowers her glasses and asks if I’m expecting rain and I smile and tell her not what you’re thinking but yes and she gives me one of those benign head shakes like I’m not supposed to see it but of course I see it because I have the vision of a bird of prey and I’m considering my option to say something but instead I just adjust my rain bonnet and make sure that my other rain gear is still fastened appropriately and nod at her to wish her and her disdain a pleasant day and each step is now a louder squeal I’m not one to show doubt in the face of opposition a war time general stands resolute and grim faced even as their soldiers are chopped apart by the surprise pincer force of a greater foe no we are men and women of some kind of action and that action was preordained long ago and then I hear a crack of Thunder like a deep bellow from a large bear and it begins to rain and as the tabbies and pit bulls fall from the sky and smash through the neighborhood’s houses we’ve spent so much time taking for granted and as my neighbor abandons her temple of the perfect skin tone and runs as a black cat with claws exposed lands next to her and immediately shrieks a warning to get the hell away from it and the houses all around us start to show cracks and holes and fill with the sounds of cats and dogs I’ll nod to myself and think that even I didn’t see this one coming while I side step a Beagle landing directly to my right it begins to yowl as only a beagle can and I look at it sympathetically “me too buddy me too”

Set Change

 

Air, a precise note

Tip of the spear.

Crinkling from below

Sun, brilliant. obscured in the over

and undergrowth’s mingling.

A gift near the sunset

at the edge of the year

Shivers of our content

In the gentle bursts of breeze

and the rustling of our soul.

Panorama

of death’s plumage 

On display.

Shadows as giants

In the yellow-orange majesty

of soon-to-be gone.

Zen Ruination Part 2

 

and

Delivery

Is 

Guaranteed

On arrival.

Not in the space before it.

Before arrival

The space and time continuum

Bends and moves like 

a dull lava lamp,

Lamp extinguished.

The vacuum

Of free space

Travel on roads

Waiting and moving

Into and out of the void.

Cue those sweet,

Goddamn

Pianos

The gentle 1-2

of snare clicks

tap tappa

Tap tatata tat

A rich sub base

Sneaking up through the floor.

Something in the water.

Your package will arrive?

When it does

You will know

It was from us.

Not by the label.

There will be no label. 

-Cue the horn blast-

Still,

all is right and everything is in place again

And we just need your signature

-tinkling scales up the high notes of the piano-

the space between has been circumnavigated without the need for dead reckoning in and without running aground in tide pools of great inconsistency.

-sour saxophone bellowing-

Just sign

Dotted line

and we’ll take you right past the chorus

To the way the pieces come together in a final appreciative din and an end that writes itself.