Nowhere Fast

Be economical with your pain

Use it

As a constant 

As a familiar refrain.

Hunts down and corners

Joy before she disappears

Faintly into whispers.

Forced restraint, cold swinging

Noon to dusk

In quiet sublimation

Weighty and in a dance

A patient animal.

In this I recede

and receive grace

Practice it, re-use it 

and refuse it.

Positively Christian

40 scrapes 
40 scrapes
40 scrapes

A cat with nine tails rears

and claws my back.

The wielder a legionary,

a King, Lord, or a mourner? 

Stage left, stage right, dirty road

The passion players missed their mark

And the cross is bare,

No great turnout today. 

The redeemer always draws the biggest crowds,

featured players are lucky to draw blood.

And when the redeemer, he bows

the mourners rush like a flood. 

The applause comes heavy

when he bears the stigmata

'Course it's all makeup 

And a bit of drama. 

And I'm the imposter, a fakir 

I'm in the street

making 40 bets that the dead got it made.

Kings and Queens in flooded holes

whose chests rise and fall when we're not looking. 

The crow in the village square

"It's your hand that grips the leather"

while I'm convinced that people'd show

were it not for the weather.

What I do feel is what I believe does exist

The pain, which is true. 

One Can Not

One cannot know the other
it is written at times

I can see mommy and daddy
and brother and sister
I can see fellows and ladies
next to around me
But to know them from
where the back of their eyes
meets the front of their mind
is territory of a tincture.

Pre-Ammunition

I've a pre-ammunition of a world untouch'
all gold and green, somnus South
fluid-full and feeling bleating farmlan'
to breathe dank plant air from snapping plastic bubble
'fore a stained wooden post on a coastal cliff
the bullet clap accomplice to folding knees
death 'fore a golden vein of dandelion
dream backdrop of a billy-killing.
con carne consortium.

Pre-ammunition of an arresting cardiac simulcast
heart & eye an apple-orange conductor
of a stereotyped film reel, bucolic in nature
but rendering a manifest destination that stay receding:
a velvet love for kin und dass, wem du kennst -
a coronary thread - sunny dopamine orb brushed
& forgotten until next time the summation season come.

What that mean is, a resplendent arcane vision become
a chest-wound from forking knife, bleeding mournful -
once you feel its distant province, or discover and then believe
that nightmare of heart made of dying dream.

An old reality became a modern dream -
a dusty earthen shelf of gold, replete with buzzing licks
(zip-a-dee doo-da)
in which a friend might be on a first-name basis with your livestock
pat the filthy fur of Mona
hoist the heaving feather breast of Cheeky
scratch the graying chin of Randy
ruffle the cumbersome floppy ears of Yer Lucky,
easy like a morning scale the three-post fence and be there for breakfast
lunch and dinner called supper

In which windows had drapes and candles stood in pots
with wonky stars punched thru, forged a million
copies signifying nothing but the reminder that
our widest capillary fails to reach the moon and men are small too.
Spake the Bard or God - the dream fade and become dim,
untethered a lick or circuit blown -
when the train of thought pass over a bruised, aching subject
or vacuum run over a frayed knot, afraid so.

Mark On the Soil

rendering
it is one enough
that so often a dreamt horror
can be forward and backward
a present delight

shadowed restful garden
wood-still life as dolls
in sitting.

Derelict gnome between long-legged leaves;
they might petrify before having eyes
owing to time dying ceaseless;
for never rises the sun,
but in a circle falls
'round the Earth.

By extension, pictures fade
but good memory worth a few words

when dogs do not live forever,

and bumblebees need rainwater to live. 

The subject and object sleeping sound,
woken by an artless actor,
flail and stretch and gesture a wild mourning
without even a primitive soul,
wriggling and digging in the detritus
for trash with a sweet creamy filling.

Rudiments of a Sandwich

Ham sandwich, ham sandwich,
It's time for a ham sandwich.

You grab the bread, I'll grab the ham
and the mayo and the mustard
and the Kraft Singles
and the knife.

I'll place everything out in front of me with your help,
place everything on the counter
and begin to make a sandwich.
The bread is here, the ham and the cheese are here,
and the spreads are beside.

Here, I have the knife
which I spread the mayonnaise onto the bread with.
Now I squirt a lazy circle of mustard from the mustard bottle
onto the mayonnaise-covered bread. Then, I take a few
circular cuts of ham stuck together
place them on the mayo-mustard bread
and fold their top third down.

Then, I take another few slices of ham
and place them atop the previously folded ham cuts
and tuck their bottom third below them.

Oh, and I forgot the cheese layer,
and so I carefully remove the ham tower
then I lay it back down in the plastic.

I need to unwrap a Kraft Single first.

I unwrap a Kraft Single and place it atop
the mayonnaise and mustard bread, and
replace the ham tower atop the cheese and mayo-mustard bread.

Always two layers of cheese, always;
and so I unwrap another Kraft Single and place it
on top of the ham tower.

The patient sandwich top, a simple slice of whole wheat bread
lies beside.
I let him know where he belongs. I lift him up
and place him atop the cheese and the ham
and the cheese and the mayo-mustard bread.

The sandwich is finished, and I can't help but take a bite.
It's perfect.

Put the knife away, would you?
I'll put away the cheese and the ham and the mayo and the mustard;
then I will tie the bag of bread
and place it in the bread basket.

In the sink.
In the sink, please.

'The Healing Power of Native Ritual'

Ye forbid,

a commune with no purpose

and time to rot.

So much time, and the spreading thin

alone in the ether, creamy like halogen,

hither and thither with thine boisterous barrel of monkeys,

rolling in place, rumbling like thunder;

wood soaked in wine, pliable.

Usurpers of a bronze King-father

who held our valley, cradled the green pastures

like the crests of great mountains;

who fell to a crack, bending to clean a tile

in our semi-conscious washroom, cloudy with steam

where our pores dilated in horrible fecundity.

However moribund he became, we held fire.

And when he fell, the fire did rise;

we splashed blood along the wooden obelisks

and caught the raindrops to polish his bones.

"I give you no clues. I give you sunrise and sunset".