Beat It

These masquerades,
the paper trains,
the long hard winters
where our eyes forget
what it's like to feel
warm and dry.

Dry flakes of sour humor
rock the mouths of
the tawny hips,
the tattooed lips,
hipsters, gangsters,
spoon stirs the pot,
rocks the boat,
keeps it flowing
hot, soupy
and dripping,
like the endless rain
on the ferry to Bainbridge.

On a Saturday morning,
finishing my coffee cold
and my scone crumbling
apart like our lives
always are.

Dripping dry pieces
all over the heads
of children that only
wish they were innocent.

Ladies and gentlemen,
boys and girls get ready
for a heart that's
bursting because it's
rotten with misunderstanding.
Get ready for a guillotine
loaded with unrelenting
selfish ideals.

Mark it, set it,
go home, make it
to your bed at night.
Make it comfortable
make it right.
Swing it tighter,
look up higher
from the feet,
to the collar bones.
They are an arrow
to the eyes.

Match your eyes.
Pin them together
on each other, and
let the ringing
lightning flying
colored sameness
collide.

Keep me alive.
Wake me at five.
Before the painter
starts work on the sky.
Bring it round to the morning
and show me
there are still things un-ruined.
Show me there are still
verbal
herbal connections.
Organic,
good for your,
body, soul, mind, heart,
condemned head.

I know they exist.
My divine bones know.
They live in the cracks,
in the rips,
and the single pennies
waiting on the sidewalk
to bring you good luck.

My Interprative 23

Paint me pictures in words
of blinding arms on trees
that disappear into a
palate of paint
so numerous of color,
that it drips opaque into
the dirty palm of a
day old beggar waiting
behind the stars.

Transport me to an ocean of grass.
Sing to me with
the noisy vibration of the bees
and the itching smell
of seed.

Walk me by a diamond encrusted body
flowing with easy grace,
and put your hand on my belly button
to stop the endless spinning
underneath my skin.

I have faith in that,
and I will walk on the forest.
Mourning constantly
that there's no more breeze,
but quietly brushing the
wet drops off my eyebrows
in thanks that I've been given
nothing but beauty to hold close
to my chest, when everything
else is falling.

When I reach the dead end,
that waits quietly and slowly
at the finish of some
grandfather's crab apple lane,
a white porch and a
rocking chair with my initials
carved in the arm.

I will sit there,
in the back and forth,
and the world will drop off
the edge, and roll away,
with the other rotting apples.

This is a daydream that speaks
of my satiated wanderlust.
And many years need to
tick along until it becomes
a reality.

So bring me to the crawling beauty
of the tundra, and feed my mind
with that everlasting air.
Give me a long gulp of it,
so the startling faces
of the caustic masses,
the empty stomachs of
the hurtling commoners,
the moonshine few
that wait for me in the bayou,
and those that stand on the roof
of the world with their carpet of dollars,
can only feel it's cleansing freshness
until it's time to end.

Not Yet

I'm trying to drown it out.
I'm trying to stop feeling the rocks
on the edges of my eyelashes,
dragging down.
Down into the ravine.

Lately that ravine is
someone named sleep.
A jester shaking a
tambourine in my nostrils.

I close my eyes and
a journey to the center
is an acid trip of
suicide attempts and
orgasms.

Breathe the live giving
liquid into my throat.
Wake up my lungs and
allow them to lend
a hand.

We need all the help
we can get to feel.
We need all the hands we
can salvage.

To resurrect my balance,
the balls of my feet,
under which the world
turns the wrong direction.

The noise it makes,
hidden behind the wind is,
"It's not forever,
But not yet."

That caustic and hopeful
"Not yet."