In The Eye

Although the questions
Contradictions
And scattered condemnations
Will surely return
Tonight
The stars are quiet
And I am grateful
To be left
With my bottle of wine
A waning moon candle
And the company
Of sleeping cats

Listen

Inside lonely moments
Of silence
Sleepless nights
And distant contemplation
Moments
When we lack the energy
To keep ourselves
Distracted
You can still hear
A whisper

We have been granted shelter
In this dense shadow
And those
Who stretch the fabric
With a curious desire
To see ourselves
Metastasize
Are the reason
I feel a kettle
On the verge of screaming
When sliding my fingers
Inside her warming flesh

In The Red Corner

I wake up
From the same nightmare
Every night
Breathing heavy and
Stuck to the sheets

Never recall who
What or how many
I have been fighting
But a third degree black belt
In dream karate
Is far from enough

All I can do is uppercut
And hook
Block and kick
Jab jab jab
And in the morning
Wash the bedding
Hoping one day
They let me retire
And at least respect
The heart
I always brought
To the cage

Handmaiden Of Doom

She has been blessed
With butterfly kisses
Played tag
With the black bear
Adopted by chipmunks
And once
In the absence of a mother
A stag even trusted her
With the life of its fawn

The people
Who think they know
Agree on
Her skepticism
Sarcastic manner
And pessimistic outlook
On the bipedal condition
But as long
As there is one
Who cares enough
To see what lies behind
She will be happy
As the next
To be spinning through space
On this big doomed ball

Suppose It Shouldn't Matter

From both sides of the tracks
A hundred frog orchestra
Smothers the traffic
Tomorow's paper work
Approaching trains
And I do not care

I am lost in the song
Wondering
If they sing for cousins
Disappearing from our earth
Or friends found with five legs

I stare at a night sky
To focus on the layered rhythms
And watch two suns
Caught in a black hole
Collide and scatter
A shower of sparks
Across a thousand galaxies

Entire solar systems swallowed
Pulverized and compressed
Into a pin head of darkness
Weighing billions of tons

Enough for one mind
To collapse on itself
And still
Here I stand
Worried about frogs

Where's The Remote

When they catch me
Off guard
My heart breaks
Like no other
And I almost weep
For the truck driving pedophiles
And lesbian taxidermists
Hitting each other With chairs

Of course
Reminding myself
There is nothing I can do
Is only a click away
And judging
From the epic comedy
Blaring from seven billion channels
And roller-coastering
To an unfunny finale

I’m not positive it would be
In anyone’s best interest
If I could

New Highs Old Lows

Sanctuary is a word
I like the sound of
Couldn’t tell you where
But I hear it’s gravy
Thick blue and ready
To suspend thought

Never again feel like
An imposter
With a ring on my finger
Never again remember the man
Who introduced me to fear
Or the girl
Who taught me something
About love teasing fingertips

Time to sort through ego
Insecurity
And whatever it was
I thought I knew

A refuge where
Despite being numb
I am lost in each breath
And let myself forget

I have to come down

There is always a thread
To be justified
So find the balance
Between everything wasted
And everything learned

Shelving Boxes

For years
I wasted my sanity
Rehearsing different methods
Of telling a memory
How much I hated
And how
I needed him to pay

Never thought of this person
As someone
Who loved a Norwegian Elkhound
Drank coffee
Collected comic books
Or breathed in and out

I only remembered the fear

So consumed
With blaming a cartoon villain
I refused to recognize
The revenge was killing me
Until one day
I found a plastic box
Full of marbles
The same container
That once held his ashes
And I realized
You can only bleed for so long
Before death has its way

Runs In The Family

The voices revert to static
Each time
I look for a witness
Or reach
For my tape recorder
A young girl and a preacher
Trapped in reverb
Chant curious things

He watches us
He knows

The voices live
In a fifty watt Budokon
Make me wonder
How symptoms
Of mental slippage manifest

The rest of reality
Appears to be going about
Its business

Wake and bake breakfasts
Cocktails for lunch
Happy trigger cops
Civilians sporting Kevlar
Another prison built
Ebola in the backyard
The voices in my amplifier
Are my only real concern

Merry Go Round

The killer showboats
In fancy clogs
As I piss away the coffee
Cigarettes
Last night’s abuse
And plead for anything
To make me feel

In the urinal’s reflection
It seems so
Redundant
This breathing
Drinking
Stabbing the same circle

I am bored with sobriety
Tired of being twisted
Anesthetized to the
Homogenized plastication

The slick red wrappers

Where is the plague
I promised
My outside shot
The placid river
The smell of fresh kill
And pine

This is more reality
Than I ever hoped to find

The Finish Line

Out of the lysergic mist
A mile marker appears
And he is filled
With a profound sense
Of unease
Like wishbones breaking
Into three equal pieces

All the years
Of being tossed around
By a falling sun
Have left him searching
For a side road
To suspend a world
Forever out of hand

No more of the
Split second understanding
Slipping into the fog
Before it can be snared

Wants nothing more
Than to never be teased again
And however it plays out
He finds himself
Looking forward
To the very last page

Works Both Ways

Like some kind
Of real life horror film
The men in white gowns
Pry open a platypus
And poke
Her interior snout
As if that will somehow
Filter the air
Replace the trees
Restock the oceans
Or at least
Intoxicate the sober

With fading senses
We justify this
Inalienable right
To satisfy absurd curiosities

So I will hear no complaints
When the visitors
Finally touch down
And probe us
With sharp
Shiny instruments

Better In Theory

The smell of death
Is impossible to stomach
Yet still we lay here
A couple
Of negatively charged magnets
Stuck to the mattress

Outside
An ochre moon wanes
Between stagnant clouds
The wind rattles the branches
Of a thorn tree

Through the glass
A flame point siamese
Ingests our daily evolution
With graceful indifference

What I Wouldn't Give

We pull the rancid and
Sticky strands
Straight from the air
Sculpting them into something
That in the mind
Is rare and beautiful
And not unlike unicorns

Then we throw these
Ashtrays
To the heavens
And wait for their return
Because
We have heard a story
About letting go

We expect gravity
To function
Like they told us it would

We waste
Entire lifetimes
Waiting for a friend
To open the door
And release this vacuum

Two Bullets For Each Cure

We pile it on
Hoping to convince ourselves
The trashcans will hold
A little bit more
And soon
We will be able to
Bury the entire planet
In the hole
We have dug

Betting our latest religion
Will manufacture
A savior more genuine
Than the moon
Sun
And those
Who already
Tried and died
Throughout the centuries

I once found
More faith in the eyes
Of a catfish’s severed head
Than on the pages
Of these
Blind prophets

Three Black Eyes

Each time I grab
The last word
I assume it to be
A dragon finally slain
Hydras tied in knots
An unparalleled
Swansong
Dying unnoticed
With a million
Other things

Until it breathes
Once again
Out a throat
Not made for singing
A message
Unfit to hear
And it feels like
Starting another round
With a gladiator
That can’t be beat
But won’t stop fighting
Until he is

A Father's Pride

Found him under
The neighbor’s hedge
Dignified and
Waiting for death

Figured the bones
Sticking out of his back leg
Were his biggest concern

I peeled his body
From the frozen earth
And held him until nurses
Carefully removed my fingers
And took him
Into a back room

The doctor told me
His pelvis was crushed
Eight
Or nine serious fractures

His odds were about even

Chances
I wouldn’t have believed
After the seeing the x-rays

Almost convinced myself
Making him live
Was the worst thing
I had ever done

He hated me for months
Hated the medicine
Hated pulling himself
From room to room
With front claws

His indifference to life
Became a mission
For revenge
And because
He was my boy
I knew full well
That would carry him
Through several more lives

Land Of Og

Another sleepless night
To perfect
The synergistic spin
Five
Six times over
Rattle off a list
Someone keeps track

One thing is certain
They have no jurisdiction
Over us in Utah

Swim to make sharks envy
Abuse the eye flare
Because it burns so good
Laughter surging
Inside a flashing second
Of pillows
Glued to the ceiling

I think someone
Is trying to tell us
Something

Hope they found
The off switch

Family Stump

Still in mourning
For a couple of boys
In a black and white
Photograph
Long pale hair
And teeth so big
No one ever looked
Past

Like their father
And the father before
Their world was full
Of echoes
And eggshells

The only defense
Was keeping it behind
A smile
That never quite matched
The holes
In their eyes

What To Say

When he is finished
Feeling his way through
The stocking of soda
And candy machines
An old man sits behind
Thick sunglasses
In a storage closet
Serving as his office

A thin white cane
Between his knees

Never thought twice
About the light in his office
Always being on
Until one day
It wasn’t
And in a blinding flash
I felt
What it must feel like
To be alone
In the dark