i've learned well
what it feels like
to be both happy and unhappy
in the very same moment
in the very same breath.

in this transience
in these heartbeats
comfort, joy
and despair
all become one in the same.

at least the clouds are
smiling back

they have faces and
souls
and they stare back from their
blue canvas,
down on his *****, snot-smeared face

It’s a warm
sunny day
but the
bottom of the shallow, dry well
is cold and full
of critters

Well, no problem. The sky is so
pretty with all its smiling
faces that he
won’t even cry. He’ll stay there
and look up. Still waiting
for mother to return and
pick him up

Still waiting

Smiling back at the clouds

Still waiting

met a stoner on the highway
who was crying like an angel
of grace, leavened
like the abacus of misery’s
loom, a fellow sun-washed
tarnished
goodness graced
ill-believer who
saw no distance in the stars
and burned his soul with needles,
coming down on a young child
eclipsing serial apocalypses
in calypso’s grace,
a *****,
or a *****, poisoned
on a long winter’s algebra
entering into a space of
infinite solitude within the held notion of all beings,
O Shadow,
oh strange manifest of worldly sin,
where is my friend, oh master of destinies,
what shape is he in? does the dream
of a lost dogs sorrow hypnotize
like the eyes of a sparrow,
shooting like an arrow from a
deep dark hello,
how does one to think?
know?

I

Salient soliloquies startle unemployed brokers breaking windsurf and almond joys against a heavenly myrtle, or
Shallow ponds of serendipity swallowing enormously at bandits who bait their breath as minutes retreat, or
this poetry is about reminders, or
Children hiding under ghosts evoking dead pools of drinking moss,
who dream of knowing silence

Who,
spreading dyes of crushed grass give scarecrows a purpose to perch,
In a land called Home,
In an outlet called intelligible,
during a shared history, which,
Under dissection,
startles earthworms from their native volumes now standing naked in the daylight,
The daylight, which is contained,
a specular cocoon or an inverted dome: the sky.

II

a pinwheel,
when spinning, is unsuspected of employing Nature’s most dangerous tools,
One of flatness, one of exuberance, jubilation,
of the dirt that falls upon ones clothes as one passes through the pines and pins of solitude,
solitude, which,
in a wave from the unknown, dispose of forgone longings through the greeting of a friend who remains a stranger until they’re gone.

build my gallows
build my gallows high

blood moon, fire red
no gentle breeze
not a flower in your bed

the echo of rocks
from your fingertips
a roll of the dice
in your eyes

no flowers or the sun
a roll of the dice
and i'm gonna run

build my gallows high
with long fallen trees
in ragged, wind blown skies

build my gallows high