Monthly Archives: July 2020

A Drift of Contrition

Why do my eyes deceive me? he asked.
What are the tides going to bring?
Where does the stretch of the canyon
meet animals, and birds on the wing?
Do such stipulations reek of deception?
Have the contents of reality sworn to be lost to time?
I imagine a drift of contrition,
before landlocked insanity felled
and we went blind.
Blind to the falling stone.
Blind to the worry wart.
Blind to the faithful and god-fearing.
Blind to the worship at midnight.
Blind to the daily prayers, repeated
without consciousness.
To the regretful actions and the outright sinfulness.
I doubt you bring cards to the table of god.
I bring cigarettes and a stoner’s guilt.
You bring coffee breath and flagrant lies.
You bring idiocy.
And what else?
Time will only tell us.
Time will, surely.

And surely, what with time as a whole,
in step with a continuum and a drunken spine,
do the ides of April go tumbling into May.
And the flowers burst like eggshells
and the leaves grow overnight.
And the grass gets greener,
and it’s mown sometimes.
However we are, with or without labor,
it is the temperance of being together
that goes slipped into dancing at dawn.
I wake and am perfectly calm.

So for goodness go forsaken
with a riddle at your side,
a sandwiched rock and hard place
you’ve gotten stuck between.
See neither one
while laying on the wall.

Nature’s Slow Resolve

Oh to work without escaping
into brilliant light, forgiven
by a candle’s wick.
Oh to treat afternoons like
stark white gloomy skies
are nothing but a shield
for the sunshine.
I cover my eyes.

Laugh like you were born smiling,
try to reach God with every grin,
with your cheeks tucked in.
With your railroad sins
hidden by tired sacks of dawn.
I’ve coffee then gone.

Please deny no passage
to a riddle on the beach,
like pleasure in the pulpit
was a sideways reach to heaven,
lowercase inside my mind.
I kick and scream in 4/4 time.

Lie under a whippoorwill
and tease the branches well
until the leaves tickle your ankles
and you cry from giggling.
Nature’s slow resolve
seeps through your skin.

But Not All Too Real

Have a way with wonder
and go grazing past the fields
of green. They are vast and
without scope, you said, and they’re
nothing if not lost to the past.

Funny how the tinkered tailored soldiers spied.
Wouldn’t you think the aim would be to stay
as far away from danger as you can?
I hole up and my whole self is calmed a bit.
At least until I read the news and it all becomes
all too real.
But not all too real
because I can stay in my apartment
and go places that are safe
for me,
a white man.
Stupid.
How odd
that history
should paint
this present.
I look at my skin
and see nothing special
at all.
At all.

My Oh My, This Place

Inspire me
Desire me
Require all my love
I’ll do it purposefully
Undoubtedly
Like a moth to the sun
Before the world lit up like madness
To a fantasy clutched like teddy bears
Oh teddy boys who party on
In working class duds
Boots of phony leather
Worn and weathered
Like the lines on their gums

Organically
You fascinate me
You’re more than I can judge
You are constantly
So lovely
I stare off into space
I can only sometimes think that way
It’s the position of the head
That helps me to say
Something
Anything

My oh my this place
It’s practically perfect in every way

Nevertheless

There is an indecisive man of goodness
who dances on the lawn.
High above his standing person
is the kingdom of God.
Yet the doctor is puzzled
and the leaders subsist
on creating danger in the heavens
with a rod or a fist
or a submachine gun,
or riot gear and tear gas to attack our lungs further.
It seems new war crimes –
amidst a new disease,
and a new stupidity
that don has evil-done –
are played out.
People are dying.
People are crying out
for a little guidance,
a little know how.
Not a play for cheap laughs.
Not insanity on no one’s behalf.
Oh where does the path lead?
Can I retrograde all my confessions
for the sins of a few thousand?
My head spins.
But words persist.

Rainstorm

Just a little better now.
Just a little simpler,
a little more meaningful.
It’s that it almost didn’t happen.
It’s that we were almost left alone
to be shivered by the lightning strikes,
to be arranged into the clouds.
Thunder.
Thunder.
Thunder.

The Perfect Guide To Rattled Swords

Distract no differences regarding indolence of seated sins.
Beget no patient sky’s inception on a whirlwind.
The mountains call to me
and I’ve not seen them in some years, you see.
I’m just a passing gaze upon a side street.
No shivering deception casts a net.

A package was delivered but it didn’t arrive.
Just like Indiana Jones with his Holy Grail eyes.
My separate need to sink into the grass blades
is like Nora Jones singing about the blues greats.

Pleasure is a pattern twisted.
Pain is something more.
It is the perfect guide to rattled swords.
It is a back porch.
It is a nice space.
It is cold drink.
It is a familiar face.

Pain is just pleasure flipped.
I feel them both each day
and moreso when the weeks stretch out
then slip away.
I’m happy now
but freaked the fuck out–
just not enough to scream from the fire escape.
Not enough to hear some voices swayed.
Not enough to stare down strangers
until I’m sure they’ll go the fuck away.

My pills wrap me up and warm me.
My pills wrap me up and warm me.
My pills wrap me up and warm me.

They Don’t Strive For Sainthood

What was once disregarded as trivial
is now touched by the hand of a serial criminal
lost amidst side streets trembling.
It is no more a canyon of dreams
than a patchwork of a cavalry,
tepid
tried
true.

And what portions of privacy
can be pleasing to the aristocracy?
I wonder.

Still there is nothing to fear but the fear of fear.
Seeds of a sentient ghost
will shiver
on pillows of black smoke,
on faint wisps of wokeness,
on crass waves of grain,
on shaking window panes.

There is much to be known
about the living alone
that is lost to the doldrums
of time.

So tidy up homes
and want no other.
As if a house is a kaleidoscope
painted over shutters.
True, there’s no one out there
worth seeing.
They don’t strive for sainthood.

Even in Darkness

From the foundation on up
to the rooftops,
my dear,
we are rattled with private planes
and suits on.
Where will a monument
capture the wild
when insanity brims from a heart racing?

It is played,
undone like an eagle identity shouldered.
No contempt for the wind.
Feel it play ’round your skin.
Feel it play ’round your eyes
’til you’re crying from laughter and built up
like a house which was once a metaphor for a heart.
Otherwise simply ascertain a percentage of canopy whistles.
My brain shorts.

Continue in earnest.
Watch sports.
Hug who is dear to you.
We’ll all die from something.
And no one knows when.
And I’ll tell you in confidence,
it is neither here nor there how I go out.
I could crack my skull,
I could scream and shout
’til my throat’s sore.
I bury tides with sand
gone
rushed away.
Even in darkness
the lights lead me astray.