Light Bender

Light Bender!
There is no case for further explanation
Now You are so
Much better than me.

Yesterday you changed
Shape
So suddenly
I needed to catch my breath.

Still, watching you go,
And in dread,
I send words-only to see them
Become part of the mist.

Poor Immigrant

The perfect fact practiced imperfectly
A proven lie
Motion without velocity
Season without sound

I am still yet the galaxy hurdles past me

Startling acts of reason
Alienated majesties
Flung from the roof
Aspiring to be airborne

I am frustrated with my inability to fly
No matter how great my desire.

Who comes to this poor, dark place seeking reason?

Acting Astonished

Not comprehending the moment
You are what you say you are
Even if you’re not
Your Ancestors warned you
But you couldn’t take them seriously
Because they wore funny hats
And crazy masks
How frightened they would be
If they could stand here now
Beside you in the rising water

And see how right they were.

Hysterical Misery vs Common Unhappiness*

*Spaulding Gray explaining Sigmund Freud

these pelts were pelts that
felt like felt
these skins were skins
for dancing in

God Made Linoleum

Someone stole my wife’s head
The one her father found
While chasing dreams
In a wide-eyed sky.

Someone took her skull
Came onto the back porch and
Spirited it away.
It still had bits of drying skin and sinew
Clinging to it like desperation
Death peeling off the grip of
Life-fingers

One By One.

I moved it out back
Because it smelled bad.
Indifferent to some reality that
Once inhabited there

Its absence leaves an open
Wound
From which our memories flow.

Bloomsday

praying for vacancy
that which you love
those you love but do not love you in return
you are exploded

godlikeness becomes you
but every move is incompetent
and you have no power here

The Devil Makes a Call

Losing teeth:
They fall out, slapstick-like
A romantic comedy- ridiculous

Run
Each step slower than the last
Until fatigue
Fastens us

Dreaming
Without desire
Or mind
Or other useless baggage

The fine print disappears
Like so many other things:
Taut skin,
Flat belly,
Hair,
Friends,

unlimited future.

A Killer of Armadillos

You disregard
A dream of flying
Yet your feet
Barely touch the ground
When did floating in air
Get so difficult?
An appointment at the wall of power
To go through or fly over
To stand and wait
To ask permission
Everything you know is wrong

It All Dissolves

Dwindle but remember
Keep and leave
the soul in December feels
a delicious illness in
the festival of ill children
a Knight, the Devil and Death
show up suddenly and
them that's in the dark
and those in the light
begin to change places

while we left here will
wind it up and set it out
a burning paper boat
insignia bridge

Diverse Fictions

Personal Mythology

Now may be the time
To spread new roots
To make new contacts
A horse’s ass
Strikes out on
A new adventure
No more the greedy cannon
Bark
No more the mark meaningless
Made empty darkly by fake
Beatniks and their ugly-thug
Brethren Navigator-drivin’- pistols in waistband ass-crack showin’ gowin’ back
Downtown.

Borders disobey heretofore obedient
River courses
Fuck you!

I had my own reasons for staying
Here all these years as if
Any new germination would
Be quickly identified
And sent packing as the ridiculous and
Uncool thing it really was.
Now is the time for color,
Now is the time for light,
Now is the time for personal mythologies.

(Drawings from "Belly of the Beast," a guilty pleasure- I love Steven Seagal movies!)

Sometimes When the Wind Is Right, You Can Hear the Train

Hairless june
Skinnybear gets in his licks

and licking gets old

but it beats the alternatives

Eating or being eaten
is a mistake in believing
indemnity is a right
instead of an illusion
Dial the knob
against the direction
because it doesn't work
any other way.

This is life
and we are in way over our heads

Finishing a Hat

The corpus composed
the boastful lines lie on the page
"not that I can't, but that I won't," says the Liar.
“Not until the wind blows,” says he.
The crowns and hats and heads blown off
And away in elliptical dancing
Down saintly western alley

Too late we grow smart
to realize:
not that I won’t, but I can’t.

* I wonder what this says about me, but I have always loved "Sunday In the Park With George" by Stephen Sondheim. I think that the piece titled "Finishing the Hat" really sums up how I feel about the experience of being an artist- I never took the lyrics about the girl leaving quite literally- it always seemed like a metaphor for acceptance, community, significance and meaning.