Another day.

Playing at the engine
and balancing pressure to reach the right gears,
I narrowly missed the sunflowers.
The afternoon consumed each hour
so easily
as the blue crept down from the sky
and made the mountains dusty in the mouth.
Only the windows could keeps us in
as we ascended to a mutual unwinding.

A few things:

7/16
Playful
the wild in this life is colliding,
greasy passions crash into each other
like drunken dancers
who've forgotten their shoulders.
Enticed into fighting,
challenged trust does not wear thin,
the sounds do not back down
pushing points beyond the hands of sarcasm,
Our songs play past the reach of pathos.

7/17
Afternoon Maps
Summer is series of maps drawn for walking,
Arrows pointed toward bare feet & herbed lemonade,
the lawn is hungry to dirty your soles
and draw out you callouses.
Sunshine breeze is worth the insects.


(this piece might be continued at a later date)
Zephyr
I pulled and prodded those tawny-auburn ears
Old and Mellow,
his wisdom would take naps by the fireplace.
He could yawn any other dog under the table.


Stranger on the Subway
The tumble of light revealed only what florescence could manage.
Identity quickly losing saturation,
color dissolved,
faces getting blanker & blanker.
As the distance passed around us,
a dying bulb spasmed,
stealing distinction with each weak flicker.

small ones

7/16
Decadence
We passed about
the small sweet glasses,
wound whimsy around the garden,
and devoured 3 different desserts.



unfinished from 7/15
granulated question marks
smooth over like crystals in the the wind.
You don't have to worry about the music unanswered.
Paper flowers more are susceptible to the breeze
and dance during the florescent after-party.

The right stuff

7/14
Sometimes when the words are right
they refuse to move at all,
tremble at the switch of the clock's twitching wrist,
In this shape
meaning is too big for a single moment,
too heavy to be netted by a collection of letters.
The weight will release you from your skin,
no matter how hard you cleave to the page,
but it is vital to make those g(r)asps,
stretch the legs of your heart,
one foot tickling God
the other still hooked into gravity.

Happy. High. Drunk. And in love.
Will not lockstep to any rhythm,
but sink into the footprints,
dissipate like dust in the dry horizon.
The right words dance along every quantum frequency.

A Poem for Star

Sweet little Starface
with a smile that can crystallize neurons,
turns thought into sparkle & shine,
and puts a silver lining on my gray matter.
We sip sweet things & sing our miseries.
The delights builds in their absence
as the air is filled with succulent nothings.

Under the Weather

Still dizzy
after a reverse pizza
thoughts evaporate
without a sizzle
the wind smiles loudly
and my brain disappears.

Vacation poem stockpile

7/5
Through the pass
our car quickly became an upward-tilted lullaby
as our wheels churned away from the ocean
the sun punched through
what I'm sure was the most beautiful part of that dream
shocked from my sleep
my eyes process the light in patches.
When we arrived,
I quickly collected
10 very angry punctures
their mouths aching for a volcano itch.

7/6
The colors flattened out beautifully
& I found myself more often
brushing up against the limits of my vision.
We filled the sage air with attempts at comprehension,
chasing social fallacies
pitfalls for the classic mind-set.
The colors of the mind resist flatness,
even for the sake of the beautiful.

7/7
Like strangers in the subway
Dreams press their bodies against me,
we become acquaintances through skin.
Their intentions fly through me
and my slow breathing body.

I knew all the faces
(because their identities were only half-hidden
beneath the gossamer of appearance)
the locations changed nearly too fast to recognize.

Their words pressed closer,
and after a frantic sin
we had alchemy for breakfast,
I woke myself
by rubbing tinctures into my dream-skin
then stretching it
tight over consciousness
at the first drumbeat
we ruptured into morning.

7/8
Breakfast tastes better
the closer you get to the sun,
up where the wind can't seem to make up its mind.
The gusty thermals makes games out of the birds
who call their own names
in their own birdish language.
the rocks are uncomfortable
but very prestigious.
From that dignity
our eyes expand in multiple refractions possibility
Perspective means everything
or gives meaning to everything anyway
& here I am
astride my paradise,
bridging the gap between earth and sky.


Small mouthy flowers
make the wind their trembling serenade.
The rockface is dotted with their pink
full-bodied surprise.

7/9/10
the air creates a constrained sort of ecstasy
dryness pulls the skin tight,
a thinness begins
between outside and inside the body
in the heat
tension is a slow demon,
lays you out without your notice
leaves you sticky
& contentedly inefficient.

7/10
On the ride home
the cemetery erupted in roadside sprinklers,
misted-over my windshield,
a fairy tail is stacked on a street corner
5 mattresses high,
the pink light bruises
when bent over a July horizon,
Got salt in my hair
& sand in my shoes.

7/11
I still think of you
sometimes so hard
my breath begins to shatter,
threads of time pulled tight
fray into the shape of your name,
& when I sit down to write it out
the pen explodes in my fingers
the ink is sticky and staining,
You've left an indelible effect
on the way I touch and color this world.

4th of July

Before night was broken
by a series of fickle flickers,
we played together
and when she laughed
there were picnics in her eyes.

Catch-up

7/3
Steady Afternoon Decline
Three waves of music intersect:
soft backyard guitar,
a serious groove needles out the Cure,
as a distant ice cream truck
rolls out notes from the public domain.

Two open doors invite the wind
to flip through our songbooks.

A single thought skates across my mind,
gets caught in the motions and the music,

then dances into nothing.

7/2
Music Marrow
The red light is sharper
on each reflection &
the beer-tainted air is hungry for a lilting beat,
jonesing for music
—for that next crescendoed fix
can you feel?
can you feel?
can you feel!?
What kind of tinny sounds cradle your heart?
—put tension in those purple strings?

(the ink falls easy
with the help of ingesting
molten songs)
I'll make note of your musical preferences.

Recognition precedes distinction,
but only by a sip.
Dig out beauty from the scraps and skeletons,
the marrow is harsh and elemental:
the perfect starting point.

Rain

I can recognize it through the open window
on and off real softly
pieces of sweet summer sky.