
Scrawl
down what you need
you come up short
nameless.
–
Crawl
on your knees
fingers flow in
darkness.
–
I saw
a photograph
where I possessed
kindness
–
I saw
within my hands
a certain knot
timeless.

Scrawl
down what you need
you come up short
nameless.
–
Crawl
on your knees
fingers flow in
darkness.
–
I saw
a photograph
where I possessed
kindness
–
I saw
within my hands
a certain knot
timeless.

And I’m laying in bed
But instead
I could be some drunk fisherman
Screaming the same shit at the ocean
That I did when I was a kid.
–
And in that wake
I take.
I could risk it all
Without much consequence, no pins
To pick and thread.
–
You told me everyone you know will die in your bed.
Funeral forgotten as every ghost erupts from your head.
All my friends have got a different dream
Well mine are taffy pulled in diaries.
–
And I’m living in my head
It said.
I’m the same dumb shit that danced on the sand
Mask donned beneath the celestial teeth
Laughing that the stars don’t know what they see.
–
You told me every way you know to get at me.
The floor of the fruitstand all strewn with seeds.
All my friends have got another dream
Well mine obey respectfully.

Reading tales about the dead
Why would they care about the legacy they left?
Do across the void we carry caring gifts?
Surely love is lost after the veil lifts.
–
In awe the way the kinder ones persist
Projecting love through the grey mist.
The others get forgotten though.
Forgotten lives of the so-so.
–
The cloudy bits I left for free.
When you go and take your memory
Leaving words to some bored entity.
A whisper ripe with ambiguity.
–
Will all the love and hope I leave
Touch my children’s children’s children’s sleeve?
Will I give storied forests or will I give scribbled leaves
Based on my disinterest in my own family tree?
–
When I fail and die
Where will my values lie?
I always felt my life was mine.
Privy only to the mind that sits behind the eyes.
–
To be better than us who came before
Is my borrowed motto at the core.
Maybe with a little swirl
Of “not everyone will change the world.”

And in this cold desert I love.
And if I lived on,
When this cowboy moon shone,
I’ll dip my toes in cadence flows.
–
Or if in that blue moon I shouted
of a glass beach and tap shoes,
Oh, I’d shout words that movies use.
I’d rally all those goosebump crews.
–
And when you’re cold,
If I lock eyes
when fortune’s thin
I’ll dip my smiles around you.
–
Or in the spirit of the open books I flaunted,
in the harvest hall I’ll tear my shirt.
Buttons scatter in the dirt.
My words they shoot not coy not curt.
–
Oh if I spoke my mind not with a glance,
But with some interesting and badass dance.
Oh but when I speak at all,
I say, I say, I say it all.
I’m sorry I sang in an angry tone.
Your eyes low, then rose.
You spoke your prose and ran.
Sister chasing brother in the snow.
I’m sorry I see me in you,
Our life’s mistakes ablaze,
Upon advice we make them anyways,
Biting off more than we can chew.
I hope you know I want what’s best
For your life and mine tied at the breast.
I hope I know what’s best for you.
I can’t have you in this floor I’ve fallen through.
Same pitfalls and floodgates,
Watch our traps amalgamate.
I’m sorry I love you,
The driving force in our parting ways.
That and my striving for improvement craze.
And dissecting how our shadows grew.

And if I looked up and didn’t see some dumb ball,
I’d be sad?
I don’t see why.
A reliance on a state of mind.
A weakness given to the whims
of chemical receptacles
whose preferences consist of settings
where light meets darkness.
Contrasting visual stimulus.
An iron fist is the way to go,
though.
A series of synapse manips.
Maximizing delta utils.
Flux. I’m riding dives and dips.
Any other way is futile.
And doing this I snap the cold.
From a rush of love or joy or flirty retorts
to scraping kitchen mold
or itemizing expense reports.
No longer waxing on that sickle circle
to provide me with that pale shade.
My time too valuable for trade,
and my heart has never waned invisible.

Do they, when the sound is thin
Fawn about the chaise in the room?
Words that I couldn’t say,
Oh, I will paint you things.
Today, when my lips were thin,
Palmed my life around, golden hue.
Thread pulled, usual way,
Oh, I’m a saint, a king.
Do I, in retirement
Shuffle toed ‘tween nick naming the commune
And remember every choice I made?
Is remembering the better way?
My age, pulled like a string
Lost body, it’s a sound plucked tune
Meandering across space
Oh, I’m the fish of Kings.
Everyone knows the time’s run out.
Braced knees on the downhill jaunt.
Timid toes too scared to want.
I see the golden scales, the feather.
I know I’m heavier.
Braced claws with teething pain.
Careful canine rupture game.
Climbing ivy, driving posts,
Scuttle scrawling through incense smoke.
Kettle’s hot – embrace it anyways.
Sail’s taut – riding ocean flames.
When I looked up I knew the moon,
Just as if it asked me to.
This simple orb string spun of glass,
The eye inside a photograph.
And in my den I dumbly stood,
Smelling every scent from childhood.
The crisp air from a leaf orange pile,
The nectar floods in apple aisles.
I looked again and saw the sun,
A symbol for work to be done.
A time to set aside these thoughts,
I’ll burn the wick, I’ll burn it hot.
Return to sill after the day,
To find the clouds clouding the way.
A loon I long the moon to see,
The dream I find’s indifferent to me.
And now it’s the future and I don’t sit beside plastic leaves and steam. It’s a busy road, it’s tops and toes, birds and trees. If I pop a lid there’s still steam but it’s rising majestically from a paper sleeve. I wanted ivy and leaves, I got rocks and onion stalks. These days I talk and I don’t talk. They’re killer waves, these conversation saves, shaking earth, breaking things to elements. People reduced to common sediments. Stars shine to remind that we’re insignificant. We live to live and dying is a period.