Closing my eyes against this real light,
I see warm red through my eyelids
And if I stretch my hand out blind like this
I can imagine caressing your face,
Turning your chin up to taste your full lips
And the salt tang of the sea
That has faerie dusted them.
Hanging out in trees and lagoons;
Spray-painting abandoned concrete;
Stacking records on the autoplay spindle
And rearranging my room
To the crackle of spinning vinyl;
Romping pell-mell over islands
Chased by hunter dogs and fat wild boars;
Floods of experience wrapped in whispers of red hair,
The clickety-clack of eight wheels and nine inch nails.
I know that my every effort to erase what we’ve done
Has come to naught but a floodgate
Open wide of oh my god
I never forgot, only forgot to remember.
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Floodgate
Posted: February 14, 2002 in PoetryTags: Boar, Dog, Eight, Eye, Faerie, God, Island, Kiss, Laura, Light, Nine, Records, Red, Salt, Sea, Tree, Vinyl
Bye Kittnz
Posted: February 12, 2002 in PoetryTags: Anastasia, Atari, Cat, Dawn, Hobbes, Kalvin, Mother
Ahh! Hear that sound?
Of cellophane tearing across
That keeps happening –
It’s the unbridled loss
Of my four furry ones:
Hobbes Goldenfoot,
Kalvin Screamerchops.
Anastasia Saunterbutt,
And that wily Mogwai.
These four I raised
Now collected by Dawn
To occupy her house
While she’s always gone.
Locked in the basement
When her mom comes by
Too bad you can’t come with me
So I have to say goodbye.
Burn the Phoenix
Posted: February 10, 2002 in PoetryTags: Closet, Frog, Froggacuda, Green, Laugh, Live, Love, Onion, Phoenix
I am thee Froggacuda
And oh so froggy be I
Defined by myself as myself
And marooned is my current cry.
Inside I’m still the same hollow
Green straw puppet carnival black hole
Of pool-soaked poetry pages
Missing something to be whole.
Cobwebbed closets rarely treaded
And rusty hinges, unsafe passage
Basement dwelling, life enshrining
Long decoding of this message.
Love and laugh; live your time
Unwrap an onion and be true
I burn the phoenix of my years
Consumed by seeing myself in you.
A forest
Of opportunities
And I
Cannot restrain
From celebrating Venus
In every female form;
Although
In my heinous thoughts
The gloaming that you see
Is the embers
Of another
Life.
When you smile,
And when you bite your lip and sigh,
Your eyes searching for mine
Looking for some sign
That all the while
I have had you in my heart.
That’s when time
Rushes in like waves of the same moment,
Like I was on one of my old trips;
I press my finger to your lips:
I am yours, you are mine
And we know that’s at least a start.
I fought to keep it down at first,
Like promising never to drink again;
The it was second nature to laugh
And explain that I was too busy.
But like drinking, there’s the thirst,
And I find myself back at the pen
Raping paper again as I ply my craft
In this motherfucking southern city.
You don’t know what you’ve done
Wrecked the car by going too fast
And I along for the ride
Get the lash of blame
Because I pumped the gas.
Your shirt has come undone
These windows are steamed from the inside
Oh? What? This stupid game
That can’t survive the morning sun;
Now just memories from my past.
And as the tires start to slide
And as you search my fevered eyes
Bare shoulders spangled with drops of rain
Realizing that we’ve crashed
Because nothing stays the same.
Cricket Machine
Posted: January 18, 2002 in PoetryTags: Breast, Cricket, Deer, Machine, Night, Sky, Squirrel, Tree, Window
It is cold in this basement
Cracks in the casement
Windows leak whatever warmth
To the suckling of the cold.
Share! Share creaks the air
Of that many mouthed night sky.
In a forest of bare breasted trees,
Their raiment mulching around their knees
Winds a path I build when I first got here
Now only walked by squirrels and deer
Within the house, but still below ground
Is that subtly comforting electronic sound
Of the magical cricket machine.
Becoming
Posted: January 13, 2002 in PoetryTags: Breath, Light, Mountains, Road, Shadow, Sword, White
A winter white sheet covers me
As I sit in this chair, unmoving.
My breaths are shallow and I can’t see
Whether to move or stay very still:
I am hung on that decision
Like a meathook.
The longer I wait, the more my weight tears me
To get off is still more painful
But there is no mistaking impalement
On the pike of indecision.
What to do? I don’t know;
I will never know unless I do
Something – anything is better,
But to throw off these veils
Is to see what I am afraid of:
That lonely vista of sunrise
Over faraway mountains from another mountaintop.
No road nor path presents itself
In the gloaming beyond this sheet;
Light-shadows shiver and mold to each other
Unknown consequences and results
Which my feeble calculations
Cannot fathom as I am staked here.
Nobody knows who I am anymore,
But if anyone can it must be me.
Count on a breathless ride for part,
Meandering, enjoyable inner tubing for another,
And yet other unpredictable situations.
These are all definition-grounds,
To file and hone the self-blade
And the mind-sword.
Be born and becoming.
My freedom is a burden; I have no direction
Automaton, I am missing vital instructions.
I think I know just what I must do
But I cannot seem to pull myself through
This wasteland of broken mirror shards,
A painting I thought I had painted so hard
That the quality was enough to last a while
But I hear the click of the statistics turnstile.
I hear those close freed by this decision
An am thankful that they withheld their derision.
Sleep is coming in her own time.
Soon, but not right now.
I hear her footsteps in the courtyard
And smell her in the still air.
Sometimes my words fail me;
I can’t think, and my poetry sucks.
But keep trying, trying, trying
From my blanket-swaddled lair.
Preceded by gifts of yawns
Tearing up my eyes,
Filling them with dust and starlight
Beckoning to dreamlit vistas.
Fighting the unseen entity
Trying to tell myself that I don’t want to
Mind slagging into smooth film
And willpower saturates to crystals.
Side Trip of Hyperspace
Posted: January 7, 2002 in PoetryTags: Bear, Cat, Closet, Eye, Happy, Mind, Mirror, Spider
I am small again:
Smell of closets, scuttle of spider;
Withdrawing as the fat withers from my mind.
Rediscovering someone vaguely familiar
Only from the corners of my eyes
In old photographs
Or in passionately scribbled lines.
In this transition,
Is it supposed to endure
Or is it supposed to break?
Phoenix, do you hurt when you burn to ash
Or when you rise to the sun?
Questions that reflect
My bewildered state of mind
What side trip of hyperspace
Oh what fortunate dilemma of uncomfort.
Forced to remember, to recall
Those unanswered playthings
With the back mirror-pooled eyes
Of teddy bears and demanding kittens;
Of imagined characters that were once so real
That I was them,
And more than that, happy to be.
Remember who you were
Once upon a time.
Remember who you aspire to be
Once upon a time.
Remember that the only time you can act
Is moment to moment to moment.
Take a deep breath and exhale
And act as who you are
And who you want to be now.
My heart is heavy and blue
Like a lack of oxygen
Some necessary energy source
A nutrient it is used to being fortified with.
This weight in my chest
Prevents me from breathing too deeply.
I walk hunched
Like there’s a rope attached to a stone.
Re-opened for business
Because I need someone to talk to;
An understanding: me and pen and paper.
These are my lists of things to do;
Poems, non-linear and creative.
The multiples of me
Will from here on be referred to as “we”.
We are, and we care what happens
To us, the firm, the fundament.
Something let loose
A dropped leash, slipped the collar,
And now we weigh:
Freedom versus security.
ADD is like myopia –
It is naturally difficult to see
What we think
Is best
For
Me.
Soshial Obligashuns
Posted: May 18, 1997 in PoetryTags: Bullshit, Eye, Fuck, Husband, Politics, Smile, Window, Woman
Damned to be a husband I rebel
As all others before me, more or less:
Within the strict limits
Of my integrity and commitment.
Get the fuck out of my poetry journal!
Consistency and constantly aware
Of this yoke of woman,
A noose of responsibility to sosh thrills
And pinky-finger parties.
Obligations that are a mockery of forced smiles
And strains to remember politics.
A boring waltz of bullshit hellos;
Small talk about whoever didn’t make it
To defend themselves on this court date.
Righteousness through convicted assumption;
Convict through assumed righteousness,
And an open window,
A polygraph of eyes
And a sharp katana.
Yes I am sleeping in here tonight.
And it is true I am writing again.
Attempts to communicate, compromise,
Tolerate, have failed like good ideas:
Practically useless and foppish.
I am simply complex, and my head hurts
From psychotherapy and coping.
We are both selfish and immature,
Egotistical bastards, spineless jelly
In the face of adversity.
An oboe, a flat reed
And symphony for a blade of grass.
Duh.
One time I found
That I loved the warmth
Excavated by nesting:
Burrowing so far
Into a pile of pillows,
A weight of blankets,
The I left the world behind.
These were the laps
Of my imaginary mothers;
They were the arms
Of my dream-lovers.
Safe and tight
Inside a womb of covers,
Tented fabric and
Down-stuffed sandbags
Kept me secluded
From the shellshock of
Existing.
Risen
Posted: November 10, 1996 in PoetryTags: Dead, Iron, King, Lightning, Mountains, Rock, Thunder, Tree, Wood
That which may sink still may rise
Those who are living still may die
Rock may crumble, trees may fall
A king may sit in an empty hall
Mountains may soar to support the sky
If lightning speaks, will thunder reply?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Wood may break, iron can rust
That which is sunken still might rise
Even those who are dead still can die.
A Dream on My Couch
Posted: September 29, 1996 in PoetryTags: Ant, Child, Cigarette, Dreams, Ferns, Friends, Garden, Light, Lightning, Mountains, Orange, Rain, Silver, Smoke, Window
In a dream that plucked me
From the couch that I slept on,
I walked, ant sized, through the growth
In my garden,
Shaking nasturtium stems
To feel the dewdrops like rain,
And climbing mountains
And ferns
Like a child with no friends.
Reminiscing like a fool,
These dreams torment like reminders;
Gleans of silver behind the tarnish,
Cigarette smoke fanned out the window.
When waking I walk
Through the garden I planted,
I can hear, I can see, I can smell
But not understand
Like I was able to way back when
In the gloaming of orange street lights,
Summer solstice and heat lightning.
Once upon a time I wrote a story
Which caressed the face of the girl I love,
But the real life situation
Is untenable.
She has lost sight of what I once was
In my prime, in my heyday,
And this stubborn pride
Speeds my fall.
Once again, the impact will wake me
To a life in shambles;
Nothing gold can stay.
A purring song of liquid honey Angelkitten,
Burnished golden metallic wings,
Diamond-bright dinky halo and
Those kitten-soft feet to mommy-paw
Your eyes shut at sleepytime,
Hunting your hair,
As the wind from the waves of her home,
Corner-of-your-eye cat-quick paranoid spirit
Of Cleopatra Mykelti kittenator flatulator,
Calling-cards framing those other cats,
Wrestling with an orange and brown Afgan
Slim but phat tunnel-runner big-eyed kitten.
Lovin’ the palm tree, kisses for mommy silly
Rabbit treat-begging troublemaking kitten.
Heart of gold trusting Egyptian princess kitten.
Brave Cleo-kitten.
The Angelkitten.
Thee Angelkitten
Posted: December 19, 1995 in PoetryTags: Angel, Angelkitten, Cat, Cleopatra, Eye, Halo, Honey, Mother, Mykelti, Sleep, Spirit, Tree, Wind, Wings
A purring song of liquid honey Angelkitten,
Burnished golden metallic wings,
Diamond-bright dinky halo and
Those kitten-soft feet to mommy-paw
Your eyes shut at sleepytime,
Hunting your hair,
As the wind from the waves of her home,
Corner-of-your-eye cat-quick paranoid spirit
Of Cleopatra Mykelti kittenator flatulator,
Calling-cards framing those other cats,
Wrestling with an orange and brown Afgan
Slim but phat tunnel-runner big-eyed kitten.
Lovin’ the palm tree, kisses for mommy silly
Rabbit treat-begging troublemaking kitten.
Heart of gold trusting Egyptian princess kitten.
Brave Cleo-kitten.
The Angelkitten.
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