Sit Back and Enjoy the Show

The play of your life
Continues unrehearsed

Fate is the director
But you have plans of our own

You (The Protagonist)
Are stranded
With only scraps of plot

The script is impulsively ad-libbed
Except for a few self-rehearsed plot twists

The supporting cast of characters
Differ with relevancy and appearance over time

You hope the fan favorites
Remain in the wings

Ready to help advance the narrative
At a moments notice

And if everything appears to be going wrong

Imagine yourself in the balcony
Laughing with the audience

At the fool
On the stage

For You To Live With

Torn about and washed by turbine heaven,
We are flipped snaps,
Vignettes someone watches.

Newspapers whip about our ankles,
Trying to tear us.
Consonants claw us; vowels violate us.

The late hour cloud our response, blue to black.
Just this once let’s not talk. And,
May sparkling stars embrace us with tender years.

These predictable cries ring the mountains.
Help me hold them back. For whether it is dirt in your face or another wrenched from the womb is unimportant,

kiss me.

Dilation

Downward spiraling, and much to be said about the endless rains
The heaven bound will be back, I have no opinion on whether better off (again?)
Because I’ve just arrived, am still coming and still searching for a way here
Infinite and humbled,
I, Bound and liberated by myself, and other
The only meaning of perfection that I can state with a straight face or,
Something close

Seed and grow
The lands are delirious, and they attempt to forget themselves, with many no-matter-if-their-uncontrolled substances
Losing our history by excusing the one thing we’ve got
And it is inevitable that the reflections have become skeletons packed away in boxes
All labeled ‘fear me not’
Is it a trick?
Meet your everyday maker or,
Raise your glasses to the good life
Most will never know, the answer to the one question they’ve been asking and answering all along

Duality – the principle that doesn’t roam and go.
Here or not
Death is something I won’t talk about
I’ve seen it too much to have an objection
Things do work out, in the end, or following it
So why am I still here, you ask? Because
Been in love. Could you recognize?
This was all for you, and all out of you
And that continues on

Return to Sender

Profound thought without reason
like government without treason
or weather without the season
changing as the wind does
cause the breeze loves
its freedom as I once did before
back then before when after gin
i have found myself once again

SEE THOSE SHACKLES COULDN’T HOLD ME DOWN
AND NEITHER COULD A MAN
SO I DIPPED INTO THE GRIND JUST TO EXECUTE MY PLAN
KEEP MY FOCUS ON THE PAPER
GET THIS MONEY IM NO DUMMY
SOMETIMES THE HATERS COME ALONG
THEY BE SAD AND LOOKIN BUMMY
JUST WHEN THINGS ARE LOOKIN UP
GOD SMACKED ME BACK INTO REALITY
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE RIMS OR YA PRECIOUS LIL SALARY
THE GAME IS JUST A HUSTLE
HERE TODAY GONE TOMORROW
GOTTA CHERISH FRIENDS AND KIN
SEE THIS TIME IS ONLY BORROWED
THE BEATS ARE THE SOUNDTRACK TO MY FINAL DESTINATION
GOTTA LIVE THIS LIFE RITE DO IT RITE NO HESITATION

Just Listen

i wish i could take back everything you believe I did wrong.
The mismangement of your feelings and pain reeling
around in this circle.
being hurtful was not my goal.
There were never petty arguments or
time spent being mad….just time spent being
loving and laughing.
And then it happened. Uncertainty, broke in
and I thought you didn’t want what I did
I was still thinking like a kid.
I didn’t think I deserved what you had to give.
I understand how you see what you think you saw.

How do I tell you I loved you like women love
their babies….the smell, the warmth, the
ability to be overprotective…..
the extreme certainty that I wanted to be connected
to only you
I’d take back the lunch bag of lies I told
to keep your feelings safe. Didn’t know it would
backfire. I’m not a liar, but scared makes you
seven-faced, and fork tongued
to keep peoples feeling from being hurt.

I’d take back the garbage bag of lies i told myself
to keep me from being mad at my choices
trash stinks no matter who or what though
i’ve grown and now I know
better
holding on to the hurt I caused
created a pause longer than any silence
I could bear from you. smilin at me the way you do
i want to assume that you are healed up and
ready to steel up something right here where I am.
I’ve seen you when you didnt’ see me
and I waited patiently for you to cross my path
i loved you like cooked food
and you were right about the “default” dude

but i can’t change it or take it back
everytime you come cross me
you toss me that
in the end
i want to be you lover, but i’ll stand down
to remain you friend.
I may not matter to you
but it matters to me
I hope “this” point is taken
Please accept my apology

Poetry Anthology

a junk man whirligig all packaged
in black carpetbagger moveable type
suitcase from Mardi Gras to coup de tat
fat Tuesday colored beads crucified neck
his flower power hair tête-à-tête
the lady standing reading Bukowski
knew his archetype a legend a mystery
tarnished silver gargoyles enlarged ring finger
boneskullery signs of the cross continue to linger
dyed purple tattoos inked like graffiti
written across the train scratchiti
sounds like a truck stop in Memphis
or Huntsville Alabama a pimp a prostitute
a preacher man all I remember tucked in
the top a copy of the poetry anthology lopsided
backpack objects he collected from his travels
this memoirist unravels he gathers his gear
as he began to leave whether a mountain man
it appeared unclear but in this urban environment
there are valleys and peaks dog sniffing thieves
cons liar sifting prowler predators duke earls
gangsters racketeers in his world he
anthologized what he saw did not need
a word just moonshine maybe a guffaw
privy to see this story standing in the
trains observatory

Ana

??I remember the bitter taste of the pills rammed down our young throats.
Our peers were getting thrills from ecstasy, whilst we were in agony,
the ironic mirroring did not slip past me.
The angels in white coats found their calling in saving our fragile perceptions.
El diablo, and his henchman diagnosis, dealt in our deception.
Deprived of experiences due to our protection, we found positive futures were an exception.
Receiving our meds as though receiving communion, the body of christ in the shape of a valium.
The screaming of mania still haunts my unconscious; my dreams still filled with girls’ fierce resistance of food. Their frail organs that stopped pumping too soon, before they could win their battle with their nemesis.
In sleep I still kiss their thinning hair and beg them to repair their bodies.
To allow the sweet nurture of nourishment to embrace their interior.
Alas, they would still feel inferior to fellow girls at death’s door,
who had given in, so self assured, they will soon be perfect.
I could never forget the times I spent, eyes squeezed shut trying to repent.
Though my memories serve me better
than the death sentence served cold on the silver platter to these waifs.

The Paraclete and the Dove

Ashes to ever. I stain the sheets
with you. Almond eyes that you
bring to the shadows lighten our efforts.
We join, taxing the reserve
that luxuriates our limbs.

Afterwords the dryness is gone.
The rumpled mess created is pillaged
time well spent. The air singes
my brow and wisps at the papers discarded
on the table, chairs, whatevers, cares.

At the Beginning of a New Beginning

Sometimes the exact science of knowing
is left in the desert with no way out.

Daybreak is here with the possibility
of being more than a measurement.

Beasts, food, and foes come and go
as we, learning to call the things we see,

grapple with intangible life:
when in the beginning all words

were shaped in the mouth for the first time,
and we danced to hear the air sing.