A Late Night Or Call

Realize:

You’ve been left with only compass and map

At valley ends, but no worry, the only call back

Was to be your mother father best friend or sister brother

Or an odd one selling you unsympathetic receipts

And the rest you know, you know

Are not biting their nails over your return

Or like you

Slowly laying back into the blade of their own survival knife

Into their own spine

Wishing, and I quote:

“I could just go back home.”

So bear in mind the times she left your hand on her

Teeth tempting

Meat of thigh

Now she no longer gives gift

Now she lets you indulge

In all the probable or inevitable

So you keep her smooth, love –or luck- colored hair

Where you can love it

Where you can huff it

Like suicides in garages

And from the bottom of barrels

Of your loneliest but electric late nights

You’ll give her a call

Receiver to ear

Twiddling an imaginary banded lock of her smooth

Love –or is it luck?-

Colored

Hair.

The Law/Politics of Diminished Return

At the point of revelation

Of a super-personal-customization

Of population control

I feel it, I know it

I wonder

Will it roll from bottle, will it break bone?

Will it call attention with night shredding light?

Will it slug along, razor sharp, in warm water?

Or tranquilly, slowly, breathing alone?

Will it be on impulse? Just too much content of cupped hands?

Will I care if anyone knows? Or understands why?

Is it important to express, just how casually, one can decide to…

Bitter pill

Rehearsed drill

Do your lack

Of free will

I feel it, I know it

Will one day render all frozen

To a halt, to blackness

To the end of mind…

And at last

Until nothing exists, to you, to leave behind.

According To My Book

There is nothing more built

Than a finished novel

Pressed and distributed

Won to my hands

To help me slay hours

Days to come

And days I’ve killed in the past

Nothing earthly so complete.

The Pinks

The folks are tried

Pink, by what has become them

And nearly hairless

In the face of all this winter

And there is a dog on leash

For every one storm which tries to untame man

The pushing wind, trying to unravel a gentleman’s brow

So he steals a wolf

Feeds her indoors

Makes her accustomed to the glowing warmth of an easy chair in front of a fireplace

But still these seasons change

Leaving not what they may regret

Rather

Cycling back

Back to the day which begot you

In this soon warm epiphany’s spring awakening

Giving you itchy feet

And a yearning to see more

The greens and whites and blues which bring back

Nostalgic yet primordial beginnings

To this now

Swollen and awkwardly toned human

Pink from what has become you

Seeking comfort

In this cerebral presence of all.

Shadow Wrangler

…and here you are

Posed as erectus

Quietly and mostly subconsciously

Judging your own

Unwieldy, posing shadow

As it, and you, become attuned

Of the daily humdrum

That is the cross

We all must bear

As we drag it through gravel

Slung over favored shoulders

Along our grandest journey

The ever-all encompassing

All degree

All direction

All junction

Walk of life

…so slinks your tired shadow

Humdrum’d; banging away

In tribute

To your next weekend

Or even

Your next free-time afternoon

Setting

With the emotionless, unsympathetic Sun

To start again

The fine tuning of drab routine

To walk

Through

And wrangle

On hind legs.

A Year Of Quicksand

Wake this morning and collapse all of your youth

Eating at the earth re-adjoined

In this prophesied dissolve

Praying for a glimpse of freebies

A patch of shade

Under skies floating gingerly from undying circles

That recharge your brinks

So you can continue on days in the shackles of servitude

To the laws of what is yours to call reality.

So we've grown weary of feeling stubborn

Knowing tomorrow won’t bring Providence

So is this what I've become?

A solar flare to leak relief until explosion?

Just remain somewhere centralized in a mass

Silently beckoning innovation?

So for now my hands slip, I'm confused

Because I'm more man than I've ever been

Still these endeavors reduce me to boy

And in my own light, girl

Every time I close the lid on everything.

So here in sand

We can't slumber

We're forgotten on feet

And we're all born forgiven

So thankful on a regular basis

With an onward limp

Sweat dripping down to puddles that never make mirrors

And it could all be over in moments

Despite all our unwritten songs

Maybe songs about roads under tires, paved in sarcastic explosives

And when they joke, they’re highlighting your hopes, and laughing

Forcing your mind blank

Removing your presence

Yet your hands are dancing,

A sardonic commentary toward your general lack of spirit

You’ll say

Toward your own settled nights:

Bring on the quick sand.

Desert. Sky. Friends. Time. Chapped Lips.

And sink.