(working title Mordor)

 Nothing but the grey effaces

That walk with me and

The bestial faces

Of the animals that shout at me

A prison of fools

an untutored school

I want to escape through that tiny hole

And let the movie run out on the ground

I tried to get the ashes off of my feet

Tried to save that wild dog

There were broken teeth of glass on the street

I saw yellow flowers of flame through the fog

I felt the weight of the world in my hand

Ten plus one in the chamber

The weight of mountains while I stand

My shadow belongs to a stranger

I’m thinking of you and your ocean eyes

A daughter of the wind and wild spaces

Beloved grower of flowers and secrete surprises

The works of a love that time never erases

Razvedka

 she makes her stately way

when the day is new and the sky is gray

her dark hair frames her fair face

as she floats above the ground with wispy grace

they say she'll not speak a word

unnoticed by fallen leaves and singing birds

sometimes if your voice she hears

she turns and smiles, then disappears.

small talk

 If we don't 

try harder,

all we have is

the jargon of now

marking time with 

"how are you?" 's

and the distance between

things 

like the shadows of

fence posts

as we go,

the unfelt 

"I love you" ''s

melting us away

until there is nothing

left to say.

We should and do

talk about anything,

the taste of 

that herb we 

can't remember the name of

the wild plants that live in Texas

the shape of Etruscan

pottery

Sometimes the now 

is plastic and 

broken

and it is the only 

thing that

keeps us from being

who we really are.

Just a sissy

My heart is not nearly as strong as

    my love for you

It's like trying to swim an ocean

   with just a pizza slice floatie

and a rubber ducky toe ring

 

  I live in a matchbox

in your purse.

It smells like sandalwood and rose oil

   chapstick and chewing gum

I'm all yours

When you hold me in your

   hands, I am a flower.

cover me in clouds and 

  kisses

   When your shadow 

covers me, 

 I feel mighty

Brutus Van Gogh

 

I am jealous of the lives of ordinary people

of their rolling achievements

if only there were a way to paint them

turn the light upon some of  these

common gardenias and 

 hold them still in the placid gold

One of the boys 

sitting next to me in the VA

had a tattoo of 

Barney the dinosaur on 

his ropey forearm

I want to know

I want to know why and 

what the fuck it means

My own scratchings are 

ugly dull and mostly free

never get a tattoo a judge 

is going to see

that's  what Dad said to me

There's a redhead down the hall

who looks as tough as a little truck

  but has little rainbows

and unicorns on her pelt

  The little pictures should make 

thinking people keep their distance

I went walking the other day

and a woman gasped a little

when she rounded the corner on me

I had a shirt on, but she 

probably saw what's 

under all this

bullshit

 

 A silky poet wrote

that Love is a Death Wish

  That hits like a pillowcase 

full of doorknobs

Love is about

turning yourself into a ghost?

Love is the destruction of 

your dreams and self delusion?

Love is that feeling I get 

when I feel you are there

even when you're far away.

twenty three and we

 

In the ground and stones 

there have been a hundred cities

so why then, do we keep looking

for a home

Over in that place, they speak

of the crimes of the blood

oppression, enslavement,

violation, 

   da da da

those who win are

the ones who whine

in this parlor game we call 

history

it is said that the suffering of 

your people is locked 

into our bones, the crushing

push of the slaver's chain

the terror of annihilation

but nobody talks of the

joy 

of the Bacchanal or the

sacred orgy

of the victorious swell of the heart

standing over the mangled 

bodies of our foes

the evening visit of perfumed 

ladies seeking the sweat and

cock of the gladiator

Some there are who

keep talking about chains and 

the whip

 forgetting that you are also the 

hand that wields it and locks it

Nerd-dom

 

An hour 

listening to the

stories of all plants

growing around the park

oppressive heat and ugly dogs

was a Saga ever so justified with 

a privileged audience such as this without

horns of mead, instead of tepid water squeezed?

Late, a freestyle long form  screed of how to 

make armor in a garage

from my bench, so tedious, so unasked for

so graciously received 

the sky

 

your kind of crazy is

a smell I like

but can't name

sandalwood, campfires

minced onions, 

lemons 

and a little bit of sweat

searching for stars

sitting on a dirty beach

seeing through the clouds

looking good.

Backyard again

 "There" you say. pointing an ivory finger

"That's all those trees, spread

       by bird poop"

Underneath it, perhaps your inner witch

        priestess was telling me

  something secret

 that sometimes we are surrounded

 by mystery and beauty

  dropped by dirty circumstance

     

        Omnia Vincit Veritas

I have moved

from tolerance to adoration 

of the asshole universe

last one

 life is a crime that

we all blame on each other

money at the door

5squared

 i close  hungry eyes

dreams are made of shadows too

shake that Smokey ass

24

 my blood is all wrong

the walls are closing in now

fuck it, I'm alive

23 skidoo

 had a heart attack

wondered what it meant really

I'm alive, now what?

two and twenty

 all the pretty girls

have their  ideas, okay?

maybe you should ask

blackjack

 they surely can't hit

what they can't see, so don't show

mind your own business

Twenty

 red  typewriter sits

short story goes too slowly

I'd rather write poems

9+10

people love to laugh

hearing other peoples' dreams

should shut the fuck up 

4.242640X4.242640

turn your face sunward

what you see? child of nature

you're a fine sapphire

one seven

 sand dunes don't have names

wind and waves breathe  forever 

mother sea knows all

diez y sies

 colorful candy

green white red formed coconut

a kiss from your land

HMU

 If my sadness was a thing, 

it would be in a musty cardboard box

with dark, deformed edges, water damaged

not worth stealing from my porch

If my sadness was another thing, 

like something alive, 

but only just

a possum, humming with flies

if my sadness was a  person

i would say, "Get the fuck away" from me

but no matter, it would rub it's scabby boner

on my brand new pants

is that sufficient?

can i go now?

one five

 Luna makes a smile

the Mona Lisa skyward

the golf carts, awestruck

fourteen

 when I was fourteen

Summer I went nearly blind

one red eye saw all

Thirteen

 I see gardenias

close my eyes thinking of you

the shade is cooler

dozen

you have a monkey

weave a nest from your green leaves

she calls you mommy

Elf

 been around the world

playing with fire all summer 

sunburn and kisses

Dix-IRS

  groovy hold music

makes the nightmare come alive

I'm feeling the suck

niner

napping in a field

dry grass makes palatial beds

clouds are a blanket

 

ocho-

 In botanicas

holy water, plastic skulls

dreams are fragrant smoke

sieben

 if this rifle talked

it would say it was sorry

bitte, vergib mir

Six- Birthday

 celebrate good times

the chorus is wise right now

your get down is wild

Cilhuat'

 my cat is tiger

a pillow with a razor

ouch! watch your ankles

quatro-

 talking in my sleep

that time we were camping out

slumber in the breeze

trois

 gone forever wife

a crane over the water

your shadow remains

two (backyard)

 

two little red birds

fluttering brightly as flames

my heart thinks of you

#1

 curvy wooden box

humming through cyclopic eye

I popped the B string

Honky Buddha

 In these times

we walk in shadows

or in glorious light

the position of the Sun

meaningless

 compared to the 

compass

within us.

This truism, uninspiring

    and dull as the wet 

warnings in a public

     toilet,

replete with low quality

graphics,

      is one of the only

   fixed things pinning 

us to life.

 "Nothing Lasts Forever"

can give us

            Hope

            Despair

            Contentment

            Fortitude

            Joy

            Improvisation

            Daring

  - a shopping list of life's little fingers and teeth.

        

San Pedro

 

We were walking to the haji mart

 when we found a baby on the ground

at first we thought 

he was a doll, a very realistic

doll,but

no dice.

You didn't know

what to do,but

bless him, i did from that

time when i thought things were

going to work out

he was in a nest of brown

paper bags his skin

was just a shade

brighter

naked little chicken

I took off my shirt

and rolled him into it

he was so cold

when i saw his eyes

and he saw mine

i held him to my naked chest

and damn me

if he didn't latch on

you said we should call

somebody

you're right i said, 

but just the same i 

could not put him down.