somewhere on a train in kansas

Lonely for sunrise

It’s America out there. I know it. The night sky is as dark as faith.

Random street lights fire back a signal of life to my box car.

The light cascades to a vehicle. In it’s prime.

A prime that reminds me of the junk yard I saw back in the dry of Arizona.

Rusted and forgotten.

But we remember this vehicle as it proves its use. The train moves and it’s forgotten.

And the driver sleeps, I tell myself, there is life out there. Tucked in freshly washed linens. Out of sight from my box car.

I saw a cemetery, as I was waiting for the coffee to start brewing.

That’s a few states back. Follow the tracks and find us here.

A living mass tomb.

4am. Box car holds us all victims to sleep.

Sprawled out. But this is where you find me.

Stubborn and face illuminated. For every sleeping stranger to see.

Waiting for coffee or sunrise. 

Rime Royal stanza form (29/3o)

just a child at wild
trying his best
(and eggs over mild)
to lay worry at rest.
to hope is to quest
and though language still peppered
love is still his shepherd.

tribute to Caesar (inspired from the art of Bartolemo Manfredi)

a monument stating we are only giving to caesar what is his
...and washington too.
you can't measure soul in that offering plate
whether you call yourself
muslim, Christian or Jew.


(28/3o)

26/3o - cut up poem

25/3o

varnish or vanish, Vanna White.

Once you age it's either surgery or the plank.

walk off and plunge down to the pebbles
"How's the weather now?" you ask yourself.

just fine.

it's an octopus and his ink now
need some papers signed?

all these documents you cling- knock together hallow

like pistachios collecting in the used bowl.

24/3o

stained glass.
stained lungs.
stained dreams.
stained fingers.
stained by art, smoke and time.

nimble is the hope to leave the sky pure.

23/3o

It's true that fresh air is good for the body.
but too much will make your head spin.
It's true that water is good for baptizing
but too much will lose you at sea.
It's true that time is good for making memories
but too much will claim us all

this is our body.

a '94 buick (near the turn of the) century

(22/3o)

silver in color.
a sleeping giant of metal parts that ran on fuel made of dinosaur bones.
haunted in trouble.

i drove it out to the shoe tree in salem once.
urinated on a witches doorstep on a dare.

the car broke down after life had tamed me.

....but you doesn't keep jumper cables at the ready.

re: 2.1.2011

(21/3o)

step outside with me and tobacco stain the rocky mountians of your teeth.

spit the nicotine out of my mouth
i told myself i was going to quit but the holidays get me everytime.

make a raft out of hallow dreams and wishes that died from green house gases before they left sight of our planet.

maybe our aim was off- cast upon former super nova black holes. posing for stars like centerfolds.

make the raft and push it off in the sea of the current of the moment.

kick with me at the rusted sleet in the corner of the sleeping giants eye

drown if you must.

pause if you can.

it's april out there and everywhere.
and the air is whimsical.

falling snow refreshes hydration for your prose.
and these days above freezing just melt the frozen tears that felt comfortable sleeping in the gutter.

to the left of your zippo..

it's four hours until closing time. pocket that tint like a monocle.

floating around like the moon

remote lost. flip cushions.

neon signs back drop fogged up windows.

check your pockets .find a pocket watch

strangers we thought wanted to shake our hands 

only reaching for their wallets. wear your shot glass like a......

 giant laughing  in her sleep.

like a sailor cussing  on shore leave

over you if the fitting....

dog tags

pet like rosarys.

like a soldier praying  in a fox hole.

"we're not the bouncers, man."
everybody's got something to prove.

.

narrative. childhood memory

(2o/3o)

north of the fence
that i threw a strangers glove over.

they stood around us in a circle. my foe and me.
circle. a shape still new to us.

i tried to find a way out but the circle rendered unbreakable.
pushed down and flailing.
set back up in a fight. ya gotta make some enemies to make a crowd happy, kiddo.

when a bigger kid tells you to swing he doesn't mean the set of seats.
i had a k under me and i was in the first.

i turned to face my rival. turned around. denied exit from the circle as well. older boys bent on seeing younger souls battle.

my fist. small and doughy.

holding all the fury of a declawed kitten paw.

5 swats it took. exchanged and blood came out of both sides of our noses.

a combo color or smuckers and snot.

a lady built like a line backer giant was the next thing i saw. first i felt. the talon grasp of a post-menapausal monster.
god like grip on the inside of my panda arm.

no one had taught me that crying after a fight was a sign of weakness.

so tears fell out of me like honey in a tree in the hundred acre woods.

the linebacker lady took me to the teacher.
words harsh and far from harmonic cutting jagged like constuction paper.

"you are nothing but trouble."

i was in first grade. a lonely k under my belt and already summed up.

it was my first visit to the door. left of the lost and found box.
principal's office.

a sub-zero dragon perched and hissed in the corner. named a/c.
breathing down on my foe and me.
my foe and i.
sat across. mirror images of different younger souls.

pushed to throw punches we didn't know how to make.

insults we had yet to learn to form properly.

eyes runny and fire engine red.

we sat like mirror images.

i remember that Jason Rambo and i first went to shake hands.

one of us used the wrong hand. and we mirrored when we laughed at it.

bruised like peaches.

i learned to forgive. i learned how easy it is to lose your footing when pushed.
i learned how little i understand to take something when pushed to violence.
i learned that my speech can run like lava over my sentences when i use the word "hate". destroying and only leaving itself in the wake.


well...i should say i started learning that day. as i assume as much of other people.
I'm still learning. from a lesson in primary school.

house hold chore (19.30)

back laid prone.
like a telephone line spine.
eyes shut like garage doors.
holding eyes inside. slowly corroding over time.
like the rest of me and the moments still young.

my eyes. dryer some days then i hoped.
some moments we hope to cry more then
the water we contain.
saline ocean.

First moment post R.E.M.
that is the chore that finds me on occasion.

sometimes waking comes with ease.

this is a new day. same old problem.

breath deep in heaving lungs.

but there is music to undig from noise.
and there is art waiting to be cured from invisibility.
moments that either peel or rot.
choice is yours.

the steps after the first one get easier
and less chore like.

sometimes

and that's worth the gamble.

(18.30) happy monday

"I say this all the time, in accidental rhyme."
he says with a snear, picking wax out of his ear.

...but the sky is clear, above clouds too near

and april is in denial, at least for the meanwhile.

because the clouds are paperwork, the sun doesn't mean to be a jerk.

rhyme scheme (17/30 4.2011)

with his picture in no one's locket
he walked there hand stuffed in pocket

"one foot just in front of the other."
next time love fires he swears he will run for cover.

arithmatic arithmatock.
he's armwrestling the hands of the clock.

wrestling to erase her smile and the parts he liked best.
because it's hard to come up wanting after you've given love a test.

re: shel's peckin' (16/30.2011)

the saddest thing I ever did hear
was a beautiful bird singing a song
to a man with no open ear.

4.13.2011

three hours off the shore of breakfast
the night air paused outside your window like a video game.
The captain paces above the attic
one peg leg
knocking like a leaky faucet
there are magic stars out there
that can only be wished on from closed and dreaming eye lids.
cast away on your mattress.
this is the sea of your imaginative mind.
clouds are cotten candy. let no one tell you differant.
and a new day holds promise. refuse to belive anything else, daring dreamer.
rest well, brave adventurer, even when you can't sleep.
rest well, the shore of breakfast draws nearer.

4.13.2011

okay
here it goes, friend
an arm to grab, squeeze even
when nightmares grow paths under.
walk tall.

4.10.2011

at the head of the pirate ship.
titantic of imagination.

dear crew,
this is what they found of us.
skeletons clinging to a treasure chest
the only witness
the slowly fading beauty of our bow spirit.
we held the key. like we held our breath.
unbeknowest to those who may adventure to dig up our remains.

• we were working together. in this final snap shot moment.

not fighting. the hand the key was in was ours.
oxygen escaping before time could have found us.
on a shore. any shore.
our final thoughts
floating up with our ghosts.
and the parts we hold the most sacred vanish as time permits.
and the idea we clung to sit and waits patiently.
(as only an inadament can)
and this water is too deep to haunt.
because no matter how scary we try to be...

• the sharks teeth will always be bigger then ours.

the movement of a whale tickling your translucent leg.
sending from thigh down shaking.
sending ghost like ripples.
like sonar... bouncing in the deep.
and dolphins hear it and think..... "imma ignore this shit."
but we will be some creatures happy hour.
but our pirate hearts stay.
even after the best parts of us have slipped off.
flesh and spirit leaving- which one first.
and argument only the living can make.
along with...do we leave behind more then corpses. .
in a following moment they find us. our skeleton remains. born once as babes.
only accesories to the idea we once saught.
pirates life for me.
the idea locked inside a chest...deep down still smells like old books.
of authors long dead before these skeletons born.
the old book smell with rise one day as they open the chest. the idea we once held..
we watch the chest blossom in the corner of our haunting spot.
our ghosts so waterlogged we haunt in area codes now.
and we watch
the living
wide eyed
mouth gap
to what we've learned this whole time.
the best of us is locked inside.

·

2.27.2011

like the brim of a tequila shot
the tears ran salty that night.

fingers fluttering something beatiful
if only there had been a keyboard to interpret
...
these railroad boots march to a drum only audible through the laces
and today is like all the other cases.

organic floor of pine needles is a cushion
just a pretty smelling way that
time takes it's toll and it keeps on pushing.

your name hung around the moon softly like it's halo

the snowflakes danced down with gravity
humming in your voice

i don't hear this but I feel it in the railroad boots.

and my steel toe grows colder
and all our wise men are getting older

and the young men dream dreams
that make them split at the seems

now it's only you and the moon
in this forest confessional

trying to speak in a smoke singnal ring
your choked up and your throat is to sore to sing

could be you or it could just be the beer
or maybe your boots have taken you here

and that's the only reason why

'cause the boots can't move.

not like you and the sky.

2.26.2011

wreckless and fear of abandon.

like a student without a hall pass in this school of the moment.

the words escape me and my tounge is tied up in the silk of left over heart strings.
...
cooked rare and bloody.

Bouncing off the ropes trying to find a word yet to be defined.

you are a student in this crushing life. alongside me.

please forgive me

I am just a student too and I can't help starring out the window.

2.25.2011

"there is vomit by the toilet." I warn her. "i just didn't want you to have to clean it up."

i use these words like a mason jar.
the words I can't say I try to imagine them and put them in this for you.

...  in the vase of these words of warning.

 I imagine each one polka dotted and odd number petal.

"the vomit. it's not mine."

"oh no is it bad?"

"yeah. you can tell what the guy ate."

"gross. well thanks for telling me. It's before the new guy just went home."

I have driven out of my way. a thousand miles out of the way.

no. fuck that.

it was further.

from the moon or mars- whichever is the one that's further

I had to arm wrestle andre the giants ghost on the way back from the

milky way.

i had to face a firing squad.
wrote your name on my last cigarette.

tamed the wild stallion that i rode in out of town.

paratrooped with jimi hendrix

I have dranken a baptismal fount so the holiness can course through my venis.

thinking that maybe on some world out there I could be buried next to you one day.

not for a while. if the good lord sees fit.

I have out shot every outlaw between us.

spinned on the corkscrew with every bottle that drawed to get in my way.

busted my chin on your pool table.

chipped my teeth on my pride on the way down

to warn you about the partially digested pizza or spaghetti. something with a lot of marina.

(uh.... it was watered down a lot too. but not by water. by beer.)

and it was worth it.

2.11.2011

the reciever smelled like coffee beans grounded.
and the black sky was slow at first but reflected now at the bottom of the tin or the reflection i was in.

down to the warts on my heart- i was cold.

... warmed by your voice
waltzing down the yarn of your telephone cable.

the comb of your voice sweetened by the honey of your laughter.

it's good talking to you again.

casting grace on every shooting star.
a book of matches and two of them gone.

there is silence on the night around me.
and I confuse the smoke of the cigarette with the exhaled air.

I remember you like the february snow longs to be ice cubes in july lemonade.

2.1.2011

kick with me at the rusted sleet in the corner of the sleeping giants eye.

make a raft out of hallow dreams and wishes that died from green house gases before they left sight of our planet.

maybe our aim was off- cast upon former super nova black holes. posing for stars like centerfolds.

make the raft and push it off in the sea of the current of the moment.

drown if you must.

pause if you can.

if you lost the remote- flip over the cushions- check your pockets .find a pocket watch (how fitting) floating around like the moon
to the left of your zippo pocket.
it's four hours until closing time

wear your shot glass like a monocle
tint neon signs that back drop fogged up windows.

it's february out there and everywhere.
and the air is dry.

falling snow claims hydration for your pores
and the days above freezing just melt the frozen tears that felt comfortable sleeping in the gutter

step outside with me and tobacco stain the rocky mountians of your teeth.

laughing like a giant in her sleep.

cussing like a sailor on shore leave
praying like a soldier in a fox hole.

petting dog tags like rosarys.

strangers we thought wanted to shake our hands were only reaching for their wallets.
"we're not the bouncers, man."
everybody's got something to prove.

spit the nicotine out of my mouth
i told myself i was going to quit but the holidays get me everytime.