Complacently static

I am locked up inside my head right now, worrying hard that my impulses are getting away from me.

Worrying that perhaps my impulses are not the problem. Worrying that I have no objective system for differentiating.

                     

Where is that I want to go? I don’t know, so I guess the fork I take doesn’t matter.

I am worried that the vibrations of my voice will rattle my head until I don’t know what’s up, 

that my own voice is a will of the wisp beckoning to places I have no business being.

I am worried that my incessant desires to chase and reciprocate will diminish the magnitude of my returns.

I am worried that the voice of judged creativity (is it good, etc) will continue to run my life until I second-guess every word that flies from me.

 

Big dogs on leashes walk beside me, my hand gripping tight onto loops of thick fabric.

I suspect the dogs know that they can outpace and overpower me, but they trot beside me peacefully.

For now, at least. 

Oh man and that fact – that fact that at any moment one of these complacently static dogs could get spooked and run, scraping my skin down asphalt and sidewalks – reminds me how little in control I am of anything in my life. Anything could turn at any moment, starting with a morning walk.

  

On the Fritz

A world in which my tongue falls silent,

a dead and heavy lifeless thing,

and in its place there is the sudden brilliance

of your animated carapace

shining through with light from God’s hands.

Glittering scarab beetles tumble

from your rough-hewn lips of jewel,

until the hues resaturate themselves

and the night gives its belongings back.

Woe and Lush

These stripes --

The French of Parisian cafes

Dotted with errant brushstrokes, littered

With old men, wrinkled, napkins

Lined with sketch and lyric mixed.

Indian in the cupboard, you

Swing your guitar at lovers.

Your chords--

The airy breeze of shanties

Propped up against my sabal palms.

Let roads go where they lead, and I’ll

Return again to trilling birds. The song

Is the goal – the lush is in the psalms.

The voices rise when tended to,

The whispers hush and fall to moan.

And sometimes the voices sit in silence,

Sitting close, together, electric; alone.

And by a breathless sea, dark,

Rough chopped and foamed,

The nymphs of quiet youth shed light

And hide the want. Bury it in sand.

Chomp Chomp

I’d choose to err on the grungy side of gourmet, thanks. 

One time I sat at this counter

sandwiched in between two shining vikings

of the night, spiced ginger beards

and beer, enjoying the company of fun guys. .

I sat, with an energy less reserved for twitching

chihuahuas and more the like of a sugared-up child.

Full of desire to ride the rides and see,

with pupils waxing, all the sights.

And at this counter I gazed into the eyes-

bewildered eyes - of the art show flyer

held with scotch tape to grease-splattered walls,

and at this counter I stared

into the shifting soul of the aged demon

tattoo staring me down from arms well-obscured

by a full parlor’s worth of ornament.

Ropes of hair

twisting gracefully

in defiance of gravity

or genetics.

One time I left the muggy May evening

to go in and take my place

among the normal people from the

ecstatic haze of an altered condition.

A Link

7-21

I feel for Don Draper because he is a prisoner of a world he has made a career of plasticizing; 

helping to create the land of misinformation he lives in with sheisty marketing ploys. 

Psychological legerdemain.

"You do it to yourself, you do; that’s what really hurts."

I suppose that’s why I lose myself so completely

when tiny dining rooms crowd up with banjos and dobros,

when the resonance of upright bass and four part harmonies

grab me up and lovingly hold me in the ecstasy of a genuine moment. 

There’s nothing fake about old hippies, wide awake at 3am,

playing Grateful Dead songs and pickin’ on bluegrass.

"If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight…"

The whole heartedness with which I surrender feels as pure

and all-encompassing as hay dances during the harvest 

in every decade that precedes us.

It is 2013. It is 1973. It is 1863.

It is every time a set of fingers paused

to rest on frets before the next session of manic
movement gives birth to mountain melodies.

It is every time a young girl snuck over to take a seat near the musicians, grinning.

It is every time the music opened up to swallow a young girl whole.

“This is indeed the annihilation of space.”