8.30.2013

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.
  


8.26.2013

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.

8.23.2013

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.

8.06.2013

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.





8.01.2013

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.



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.


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.