Working Stiff

In collared moments shattered whispers lie.

In between patient breaths, we hold ourselves and try to seal up the cracks.

Our secrets are all we have left.

In time they will fall like leaves, and our walls made of old stones will come down. 

Winter is here, and we throw ourselves against the hardness it brings.

The park is still. It's months till spring.

Courage...in a month's worth of Sundays

I think of this Paul Newman quote tonight and over the past few weeks.... When this interviewer asked him about why his marriage has been so solid, why he didn't cheat? He said, "Why go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?" -Loyalty.

Occupation

Sometimes I work late on the dark side of the moon.

At night my head is caressed, falling deep, lazier than honey nestling a spoon.

Lore swirls in my head, knocks in the night make my body tense.

Firelight becomes my only friend.

A howl somewhere nearby sends stars away.

Piano keys and thunder cradle me tender, rejoice my very milky way.

Ballast

Main Entry:

¹bal·last 

Pronunciation:

\ˈba-ləst\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

probably from Low German, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Danish & Swedish barlast ballast; perhaps akin to Old English bær bare & to Old English hlæstload, hladan to load — more at lade

Date:

1530

1 : a heavy substance placed in such a way as to improve stability and control (as of the draft of a ship or the buoyancy of a balloon or submarine)2 : something that gives stability (as in character or conduct)3 : gravel or broken stone laid in a railroad bed or used in making concrete4 : a device used to provide the starting voltage or to stabilize the current in a circuit (as of a fluorescent lamp)

....And his words I revisit because it how we began this lyrical dance. 

His arguments outstanding, his abstractions are the only words for this. 

I feel the pulse of my own making below. 

In its beat echoes stir in my ears and become all encompassing. 

In between the rhythm we make, I catch my breath. 

When I look into your eyes I don't see the reflection of me, 

I see deeper into the phrase "I hope you stick around". 

Very good day

Wake up early. Make coffee for me and the one I love. Listen to music. Enjoy the sunlight. Play my guitar. Study, read and write. Discover new poetry. Continue to look forward to the prospects of the eve. Hard work paying off. Blessed am I today. 

Evening Love Song

Ornamental clouds compose an evening love song; 

a road leaves evasively. 

The new moon begins  a new chapter of our nights, 

of those frail nights we stretch out and 

which mingle with these black horizontals. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Jack Kerouac

Fellow writers were always asking Kerouac how he did what he did. So Kerouac set down 30 essentials in something he called “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” These tips may or may not make sense to you, but that’s Kerouac, man:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

A legend

Goodbye.

Aluminum heart

Girls come with secrets and locked drawers.

They come with faces you'll never see.

They want to be swept away, and yet stand all alone, despite the shaking knees.

They muster up bravado when they are tarnished and lost.

They bring in the last flowers to be saved from the frost.

They'll stand like a patriot, against all odds, 

For their unknown country, and their undying selfless cause. 

They wound like no other creature can. They can stomach heartaches no one could ever understand. 

They cry for their children in the night. 

They hide their tears in the shadows, and smile in the light. 

They are the girls that walk the streets. Feeding themselves crumbs of dignity with a woman's slave deeds. They are always second class, always last. All encompassing. All woman. All me.

Hour Desire

I want to exhibit with you in a forest grove.

Pictures upon pictures of our black and white pasts immortalized, seconds pass like ashes. We age evermore; 

Built on sticks, dirt and earth our watershed met.

I want to play with you in a forest grove, melt away our muscles The ones that hold our heads up and make us nod, and arrange ache around our eyes and jaws.

In my teeth I can feel you.

You and I mix together our breathes and wake -reaching... thirsty pores meet each other.

Our song is in the tone that makes heart strings pulled, tears almost come.

Foundations built on a strong ground with a crack running through.

Underneath flows the river, pain spills over the falls, and our souls regenerate in the pool undertow.

I want to be an explorer of rocky ground, and a wind chaser, and a bridge builder over all these land markings and forebodings. The notes bounce on the violin, it is made of fire. We reach for the neck, just as its about to explode.

Warming up

Is there inspiration under my nail?

In between this tooth?

Crawling around with the gnat at the bottom of my salad bowl?

I have yet to find a swirling word, lingering with the hops in my beer. I have yet to see a letter mingling with the clouds, although I did see some while tripping on LSD. It was a mysterious stew of alphabet soup floating overhead and tripping me on....

I do find inspiration in this most spectacular thing. This unrest that makes me toss and turn in the night. This bumbling human, wearing pants I am, has found a sentence pouring from the tips and spelling out phrases and searching the dictionary for more, more, more! It is in you I find an emotion, or two, to speak and lyricise-an exercise of my wit and foil, and kneed entries of endless bliss- I hope to find with un-gloved hand. It is you that has sharpened the led. Tonight I will give myself a good talking to....

Sauce Recipe for Boiled Tongue: An excerpt

When one proceeds to prepare a tongue...
You must remember it is one of the strongest muscles in the human body.
It has been flicked,
flittered, tainted, burned, bit, and bittered.
It is the connected filament of our purpose.
It is the taster of the fine times, and the salivated expression of ourselves.
It pleases and teases and makes moist motions to come hither.
It is both; the softer side of the sharp whip, and the merciless dom that takes toil- a fierce, coiled, cobra like spitter.
So when preparing the sauce,
mix equal parts pure,
with equal parts intent.
Stir, serve and swallow. It will taste what you meant.

War crimes

In times of war you should conserve your "thank you's".
Don't let them wash up on the shore like drift wood.
In times of war be aware of Halloween and the costumes at the drugstore that come apart at the seams.
In times of war all things should be considered and forgiven. It is good to acknowledge every missed sentence overshadowed by trips to the battlefield, every interruption made by the haphazard gun fire of a mouth out of the trenches.
The soldier-self rat-ta-tatting off words like it has more to offer than what the ego says, and more to tell than you... with ears, a brain, a heart... and you....with your own words firing back, shell shocked, like lovers do.
In times of war, people feel apologetic and sketchy like the first-time gambler.
In times of war, we walk with pregnant bundles of limbs that dangle for anothers reach.

number 70

This town, place of my rebirth.
I ride swiftly with swollen skies of mystery.
Painted clouds, worn out shingles of the awning below the heavenly stars.
Clouded nights prevail, stars emerge again like my poetic blanket soothing MINE OWN ACHE, from my freed fingers I wake.
I hurry on with night standing behind, he drifts slowly in. I search with a peerless eye-the back of my eyelids. the future is beheld there. with crisp thoughts, I enter the fragments of me. In between wrinkles I had once fell. I look toward the remembrance. Night shakes my hand. I am alone again. Sweet kisses to my pillow. My smile tastes the past, I do not mourn this season.
It is its will to outlast.

I wish upon a falling me

I saw a falling wish tonight.
I mean, I fell upon a wish tonight.
I mean, a star fell for me tonight.

What do my seeds taste like? Are they galaxies? Suns dying in the night?
Sometimes I feel like the author of A Million Little Pieces.
His aftermath, a heart piece he wore out too long. It eventually lost its way.

I trapped my heart in a shark's cage.
The steel kept it from feeling the razor sharp teeth. Now its been kept away so long, soft fingers barely pry it close.
Maybe I should bring it out once in awhile, leave it on my sleeve and keep it moist?

Feeling the head within

My monster, my mood, my voice that wanes....
You are my cancer. That festering canker that comes to a head.
The faceless malformity of my insecurities pops out of my chest, moseying past my rib cage, protruding like a green puss filled boil about to erupt on my cleanest dirty shirt.
This volcanic creation stemmed from the inability to communicate needs and wants...

Perhaps it isn't faceless after all...
Maybe half of it is squinting like eyes closed by the sun, or someone about to sneeze, or a receiver of a punch. But certainly half of it is suffering with paralysis and living a scabby, backwards blistered existence. Its face is the color of refrigerated olive oil. The kindred color of a soulless booger.

It also resembles a deformed erection of a misled penis... an angry eye... a neglected perversion.
Its grotesque soap opera plays on like an overlooked starlet's waiting for her tarnished Emmy.
It hovers. I malnourish it with positive thinking , reassurance and long walks. Its monolith like head falls flaccid when I give precedence to what my red blood pumping heart wants. And in the assembly of my woman heart, insecurities are banished and silenced.