Still Life

A candle drips its gysm
to the bottom of a toltec
designed
mexican beer tray-
a single edge razorblade,
partially underneath
abstracted from old backpacks
or bottom drawers in secondhand stores

and a tin cup.

This is the Matisse story
of a simple arrangement
of cirrcumstantial objects
in a room on a thursday afternoon.

Bits of dry dust and black ash
an old dirty rag lay bare on the counter top

and this mornings work beneath her finger tips.

Rap Sheet

Picture the Subject
A mug shot of a poem
that went terribly wrong.
Who is really to blame
for its coughed up fabrications
and bits of hoaxes?
At 10 it was discovered
fondling imaginary landscapes
At 15 it was accused of putting to the torch
a party of harmless adjectives.
At 23 it was jailed for littering
crater lake with ryhmes.
It survived for years by defrauding
gullible English Departments.
At 28 it was sent to sing up the big river
for stealing petty change
from the pockets of the elderly
performance poets.

Who is to blame now
that it is back on the streets
and more dangerous than ever?

My heart's gone walking
In a tattered old coat and oily hair
Spitting and sputtering
Through thin lips and teeth of rot
He sits circumspect
In opposition to the order
To the rhythmic forgetfulness
of those around him.

Heart lays back-
Head on a wad of newspapers
Closes his tired old eyes
And stops beating.

You
Hands on hip
Blow a strand of hair from your face
Scoop him up lovingly
And bring him back home.

Post Mortum

All hail the Crash bang of the calculator!
Sum totaling our net worth-
figuring out if we can eat tonight,
tomorrow, the next day.
Figuring out if we’ll celebrate your birthday,
Christmas, get married,
afford children, repair shitty cars
and shitty apartments,
or operate on subtle malignancies.
We rise from tired old mattresses,
rinse beneath rusty showerheads,
put on dirty clothes and drive still asleep
to punch in
punch out
and give it all back to the unappeased mother,
the absent deadbeat drunkard of a father.
The cruel and misreant machinery in the blue suit
behind the podium on election day-
all the while the boots go crushing,
stamping out our hipster drifter doppelganger flame.
Pin us down beneath the weight of expectations,
the weight of obligation,
the illusion of responsibility.
Our life light dimmed by the proffer of a door,
its darkness inking the town
like a sudden thumbprint.

This Journal

These are lives
of scribbled pages and folded up flowers
of memories we capture and confine to words
your story is colorful
bold
your tears stain the pages
where i can taste your fury
and when it ends,
i am left dumbfounded
in flickering streetlights and loneliness
i understand no better why you do the things you do
i dont feel passified
or justified
or anything really.
i look at you and me it helps me realize that
you are not perfect.
maybe i look at you and i think
that your imperfection is really something beautiful.

Apples for Oranges

You've become unaware of the power
that the mind holds over perception
we stood on a milky savannah
with a crumpled map and a thirst for movement
and looked up just in time
to catch the end of huxleys flare
sliding like red paint down a canvas littered with stars.
you have forgotten that unknowns are controlled by fear
and have become afraid.
Dip your finger over the side of the boat
draw a line to my heart
a line that divides whtat you knew from what you know
where you've been from where you're going
it doesn't matter what lies on either side of it
so long as it leads to me
don't give up
don't get distracted by those things perifpheral
and try to remember
that in the beginning....

Even Newtons laws needed proving.

South America 1998

An empty bed,
Sun stripping the bay
already, the insinuation of ascending heat.
we drag our bags to the car
wind down windows
and throttle to the harbor
where we exchange keys and wait
next to the fisherman smoking their cigars
and staring at the sea
which carried their lives away long ago.

soon we'll be knuckling our eyes
over breakfast in santiago
Then cooly flipping our id's over the border
back into Mexico
your tanned arms at the wheel
the day so lovely with loss
that we hardly talk
or think about the plane which will lift us into the drizzle
over the pavement of shattered puzzle
and all those voices too small for hearing

we will go home an decompress
and hope that this indescribable something lingers

but not yet, not now.
now we watch the compass needle flicker
over the bays salvation of blue
our wheels spitting stones from the road
the sea glittering in shattered chains of light
the way it remains in me
forever.