Sometimes you see something in the eyes of a stranger, And ponder it's
Dark division, Or what the world gives,
And what you take in return.
You wax philosophical,
Yet its hard to remember hunger. But that's what you
Observe so close In your mind. You see, I've put
On this coat of armor,
It shines like Jericho.
In it's bareness it surely does.
Its then I throw my star map
To the sky.
It's a strange vibration,
Picking up subsets of information, Not that peculiar to what's already known. A hazy retelling of
Dreams we recall
In sunlit Rooms of morning.
This sensory yawing, this come hither, This de facto drama, This temporary breakdown of transcendental machinery, Nervously factored in the equation.
This sackcloth of ashes we carry, This ponder, TIS dark stone, shiny and cool,
This question, hurled from the sun, this dark advisor,
Ready to draw us due west.
I play jazz music, I draw
The rustic image, Castles
Crumbling in the sand.
I see the flitter on the screen,
This turnaround from the ditch, A bad day in Mexico,
The arc of the sun returning.
A roadmap of red and blue highways, I wish to pick one,
Perhaps end up on a dusty
Reservation in Utah,
Or a dark avenue, a pale ******* in heat and hunger of night. It's wild fate, And you haven't broke through yet. A shell game you just can't win. This
Strange world of lamplight.
Earth and roots and dark back roads, A spare key
Under a rock,
A slip through the slipstream,
In a rising beyond this dark vale.

Leading the page like a drunken sailor, Dreaming
Of blue sea taking it all.
Washing to sea and sky.
Best sit up straight,
Buckle the gallows and eves,
Rushing this long song.
We have a thousand sunlit mornings, until one morning we don't. Our name tied to our toes. When the first blue day goes on with you.
Like a Saturday drunk on the avenue, stumbling through the thickets of his life: Perchance a gamble, A dream
Of Sunday asleep on the couch, while the world hums
All around you.
And it's become your scarlet letter, A threshold of sun and moon. Care for another? I've
Knocked myself silly on this one, What should I call you
When you come knocking?
cont. tommorow-

Hear the heart bleating
For the lot of us?
Me, I've suffered the
Dullard's jenune
Once too often.
I've begged off another,
Hoping for lights out
Before the final words are stripped away
In a final comedown.
Night, with it's visceral lassitude,
Adding insanity to the notion.
I'll say its random,
Not much lately,
But enough anyway.
I saw a dream once,
Falling like light
In a doorway,
A tulip dying in drought.

I sit,
      Watch it go up
       In a cigarette haze,
Dreaming of pools
And tan women,
A beer raised
       In the sunset,
Wondering
            How far
              Can it go?
How far
         Have I come?
How far
       Has it gone?
I must be silent,
                     A cat
Licking it's paws,
                   Patient,
Watching from the dimness,
                     Waiting
On the mouse,
             The woman,
                    The word.
A sleek cat
        Sliding across
                    The sun.
The breeze
            And the beer
                The breeze
  Across
        My arms,
            My legs,
               My toes.
The cat returns
            To his quarters
                 Purring,
                  Waiting,
On the mouse,
         The woman,
               The word.

I spray saline in my nose,
Calamine on my foot,
While I fumble for words,
And the window's stained with seven years of cigarette
Smoke.

And you wonder if it's all
An experience?
Pinache and Chinese mustard
On the rug.
Its all so transcendental,
Reality in all it's vibrant montony. As a lace curtain
Lifts without a care,
And I ponder for words in the night breeze.

And my third toe hurts,
And it matters little To the surroundings, Except for the
Slick salesman heading up the walk with his wares
And a shark tooth smile.
While I dream Mozart
In 3 stanzas.

As the neighbors begin arguing in Spanish,
And doors slam and Voices
In the street.
The moon sets to the west,
And my third toe still hurts,
And the ache reminds me to
Be still. And I sit listening
To Brahms, Breathing in the
Shadow you create,
And the silence of a refrigerator running, the
Settling of time in a hazy window On a Friday and my
Toe hurts as a car peels
From the lot, As I strain
On the 4th stanza.

And my 600 pound neighbor
Above me settles in for the night, And I wonder of
Load bearing floors,
And overcooked dinners,
And how did I ever survive
My misspent youth,
As I dream of new ways
To wax electric.
I've since sold the copyright,
Discussed over drinks
In the terrace...

And I wait on the words,
And the beer settles my toe,
And I wait on the words,
And at last they come-
But my pen's out of ink
And the pizza's done.
So I guess I'll listen to my Neighbors argue in Spanish instead.

(A true poem of teen angst)

It's not lunch, it's my life,
Some pointed remark
In front of a friend,
And it stuck in me,
And my friend said
"Dude, what's your Ma's Problem" and I said"Me".
And he said it was weird,
And I agreed.
And I was a captive stranger
In the middle of this saga.
It was terse, this flimsy repose in this farse.
And my Dad rode her train,
And most times I got
The stiff rebuttal.
And I was 16,
And it sounded blase' to me.
But I didn't know **** either.
Mostly listen to Hendrix,
Get ****** before school,
While inside it wasn't
Like that at all.

It was more a reflection,
A stirring in a pool,
Light along the edge of waking.
Definitely Fringe Dude,
Get off the couch Son,
That's reserved for the
Big Shot of the family.

Light burning dark and glowing through my window,
I'd crawl out To the night,
Looking for love slipping away. And the rock n roll
Spiking my head.
And I'm smoking
And I'm holding.
And I'm a punk
And I know it.
And I'd slide out the door
With the LOOK from her,
And what I'd find was mostly
An even keel Of boredom,
A little pick up ball,
Maybe a joint down The woods.
Mostly stupid ****
Until I met Cathy,

And the levels changed
Red to blue.
And the feel of her skin,
Shadow and smell
Along a river of love.
500 miles long
Cresting to an Ocean.
And the Ocean Boomed,
And the crest rose
Crashing to the rocks,

And I wake to shiny pebbles
In glittering moonlight,
I'm naked and wet.
I move toward moonlight,
Following the sound,
Night opens like a flower.

(A poem written in real time)

Empty beer cup and a new bottle opener on a blue May
Evening. Cessnas an Cubs
Circle as endless drones
With no map or meaning.
In this settled night, a lone boy bounces a ball off a croquet mallet:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka, The ball,
The court, the mallet,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
Until he tires of this solitary habit. Him with his mallet,
Me with my pen.
Now and again, he swats it like a baseball,
Across the court and into the fence- Both of us to silence after. Soon I hear:
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As he retrieves his ball from the corner,
Tocka-Tocka-Tocka,
As I strain for words like a sad ape obsessed with a flea:
And finding none.
Soon the solitary boy with the ball leaves the courtyard
To the silence in a isolated
Moment in the American Fabric.
Into this mask of
                Light and darkness,
        Shadow and Imagination
A playwright, looking for a chorus, a melody.
Summer sounds and the race of engines. And the voices
Overtake the silence in the hours of ten 'til one.
And tires and arguing,
And sometimes the cops,
Or an ambulance
With bored fireman
And two paramedics.
And there's a drip in the hallway from the roof.
And I guess its not bewitching, All the noise for a small pocket of silence.
And I play Brahms,
And the police turn down my block, As the moon lurks pale
In the back of my eyes.