if you are seriously listening
to genuine folk songs of the world

     not to the muzak that pervades all malls

after a while you find yourself
     floating into these worlds  of ancient tunes
     imagining an ambience  of ages past
whose melodies have kept their power over centuries
and still keep tickling legs and bodies
     in our days
     of young and old

these melodies of our ancestors
simply remind us that they,
     too,
did know a thing or two

about the joy
     of living

People who know nothing are doomed to believe almost everything.

demons and monsters

whether personal
    or sprung from  Hollywood creations
    in that vein

seem to be a little bit like gods

you can
     believe in them
     blame them
     adore them
     fear them
     pray to them

but

     or because

you have no proof
they exist

in case you don't remember:
the left is always right

There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.

love is the ups and downs
of natural geography,
the only two feelings
when standing in the shadow of a mountain:  

1. your iris is the northern lights to me;
​
2. my freckles are grains of sand to you.

let's be realistic,
dear.

I guess we were never
in the same place
after all.

I’ve painted on three coats so far
and I still can see where I was last touched.
you stained your morning breath
onto the inside of my sheets
so I’ve washed my linens 3 times
but I can’t escape you.

I’ll shower for the second time today
until under my nails are clean
and the pores of my skin are bare
until the brush I hold no longer resembles you,
forgive me.

I’ve spent too long getting splinters
for anything other than a masterpiece.