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.

A few new chords

I. Fast car

Acts of desperation, followed by disdain. Bad humor knocks down a wall, and gathers up a friend. Fueled by lines, fiery passion, longing love, hands outstretched. Looking to jagged ears for help. I doodled on all my work today. And I rolled in the grass. Ants are crawling on my skin, and I'm bleeding through my pants fast.



II. Alpha

Old alleyways. Immigrant trail.
It's a morning dripped with thunderstorms and a walk that resembles our drunk driving.
The message I won't send declares, "YES."
I'm tired, stinking. Thinking of dryer sheets.
Horizon cracks like eggs of breakfast.


III. Buzz

My body's sore and bruised from mysteries and blissful rides into the oblivion of future fun.



IV. Reminder to her

A million days a million ways,
I am the person in your corner.
Helping you along, hearing your hurt.
Knowing that your star shines as bright as the others.
A family built on cracks,
Only to live as a being supreme, should we look back.

Faced value

What is a weed?
An idiom?
Something not in need?

Can my pursuit of compassion calm the tension?
I'm full of questions, marks, bruises and pain.
I want a bed warmed by souls reminiscent of summer rain.
I want the cover of night to kiss my eyelids and bring sweet.
In between every breath I can feel your peace.

There is a garden where I fill my cup. Favorite flowers grow there. In the eyes of their petaled faces, I see the friendliness of childlike curiosity.
I smell lavender, jasmine and spicy fragrances, dancing across the buds, and the extension of my tongue.

Prickly feelings of atrophy are going away slowly.
Blood starts to rush to the places that were numb.
I wish I could grab the head of the oppressed and press it into the dirt, in anger, in jest. Breath deep. Emerge with dried grass in your cuffs, and bugs in your hair. Don't forget to wipe your feet and leave your senses there.

We fight, because we are the faded sides of the same coin....
All of us, abused, spent, rubbed, gambled, tossed in the gutter, spat out by the vending machine of society.
When the collector comes along, we are reinvented and remembered.
Our plain metal selves are anxiously awaiting to be molten down and made anew again by the cosmic coin maker.
Flipped, fashioned, pressed in "trust", anyone's the taker.

Whisky tango foxtrot

Sweat etched into my neck the time line I waited.
Frustration built.
My shoulder and back made of stone, asanas won't touch this week or next. I wish to set forth my prayer in motion, a ride I await, my vessel my freedom. I'm enslaved waiting for the ride.
I get home, a small prayer answered. A cold quenching cure for thirst quickly dies. The undercap reads "To the wheels on the bus." I scoff and go downstairs.

Some..thoughts..bound..together.

Your sad grin at mornings wake. A light I don't turn off.
I watch you gather your things to leave. I swept up today, please bring more of your soil.
My nail beds, still colored with Sunday's paint.
Rough edges, getting smoother with every unplanned night.
The abrasion is good for tattered souls that got frayed by lords of lust and freckled fantasies flailing into emotional waves. The sea bottom is littered with vessels who crashed.
I stay afloat.
I see shoreline.
My craft secure.

Hot August stuck to my flesh. I smell tomorrow on your breath.

Fleshly shaved pillows imprinted on my mind.
I'm writing with wrapped up unmentionables soft as a watermelon's insides, protected by that deep, dark green rind of me.
Crack the hard shell between your teeth.
Let my seeds fall.
Liquid muse waters are shed between.
I pass out from the epiphany.

Downtime

In my downtime I make sentences. Sometimes more. Sometimes I throw out scraps of paper that were intended for more.
In my downtime I taste. I notice the detail of my nectarine.
I watch the afternoon glow dance across my floor.
I hear the birds, inside and outside my house.
I walk the stairs with care.
I remember the trash, and the bag.
I wipe off the sink.
I set things purposefully. Piles divided by their importance in my life.
I drink more water.
I fix my hair. Consider cutting it.
I stare at bumps on my face in the mirror.
I trickle. I lolligag, mumble, sing and talk to myself.
I answer messages. I read junk.
I look in my vegetable drawer.
I remember a chord. And I forget it again.
In my downtime, I do a lot of things....
Then I go back to the world of up again.

Stealing the bridge

At the bottom of my glass of failure I found my success. I walked briskly towards it. It returned a smile and let me bask in rays of sunshine and sweat. I sat beneath a dirty awning gazing at open skies.
Listening to the singing and wondering "why?"
I boarded. Thankful, joyous, content.
I ran on in my head. Loot in hand. Art in tow. Projects bouncing around against the walls of my mind.
"Hooray!" I say. As I take the bounty of my labors, love, lost, into my room to pontificate and shed a layer of defeatism, and celebrate the wonderment of my lust for food and creative spirits that awaken me in the night.
I stir the contents of the cup once more....
Oh, it is not failure that the day brings, but more awakenings there.

Some maxims of Mark

"Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. "

"Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her. "

"Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. "

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. "

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself. "

"Be good and you will be lonesome."

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do... Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. "

“Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.”

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”

"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."


"Travel is lethal to prejudice."

Body at the dentist, mind on you

I sat, staring at dots in the matrix that was the vent.
I thought of life's meaning.

You were in my mind. Moon shapes were emblazoned on my lips.
I sat, staring at the wall. The downfall of craftsmanship and cleanliness made me disillusioned.

You were in my head again. You giggled and smiled and wrapped your legs around me as I tied my shoes.

I sat staring at the clouds. I wanted you to be here, there, and everywhere. I'm glad my mind escaped with you.

smile of now

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Nick Flynn

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

Work Day

Today.... Arrived in my usual way. Sweaty, red-faced, somewhat eager to start. Shortly thereafter I am followed by my aged friend, he always makes sure I arrive in one piece and at least smile at him. One of my young associates asked the distance of my ride. I quickly mapped it online..."About 4.94 miles, it says." We agreed it was a pretty good ride in. I realized after starting my computer that I'd forgotten my headphones. My favorite -hard-to-handle-but-always-good-for-a-laugh co-worker was exuberant by this fact, so she could talk to me all day, (part of the reason I wear them is to tune her out and concentrate on the task at hand. Funny how I make less mistakes with music so acute in my ear, verses music playing out of a distant speaker.) This co-worker had a radio on at her work station. She said "Hey, come here, let me tell you a funny story." (...This is exactly the sort of thing that stops me all day long....) She proceeds..."So this contest on the radio was to win concert tickets, to win you had to call and give your best cheating on a significant other story. So this chick calls in and she says she went to Vegas one year with co-workers and she got drunk and slept with this guy. She was engaged at the time, and felt terrible about it. So, she gets back to work and another co-worker saw the cheaters go back to the hotel room in Vegas, and blackmails the chick into doing her a favor. The chick said the blackmail agreement was she had to go with the co-worker to a swingers club three nights a week for a whole year. The Dj's were dumbfounded. They asked how she got out of it? The chick said eventually she moved away and got a better job. She won the concert tickets." My catch phrase for the rest of the day was, "So I had to go to this swingers club for a whole year."
I rode home at a slow pace. I enjoyed the breeze. It wasn't as hot today. I was trying to enjoy the experience like a smoker who had just regained his sense of smell. Tonight I plan on sitting on the back porch, drinking a beer, and waiting for the sun to go down. The summer's night air will lull me to sleep and I will feel the embrace of an earned slumber after a long work day.

Cockroach Blues

In cockroach heaven many reside;
Someone clicks on the lights, and millions hide.

The most beautiful cockroach lives in a shoe;
She is the princess, and waits for her special who.

She pines, night after night, hoping love will come her way;
But every time she peeks her head out, light turns her scared and afraid.

Even the smallest flea, and amoeba abound...
plays the blues till their special who comes around.

Either you run from the light, like a roach in a shoe,
Or you run through the night, knowing there's someone for you.