10 Apr 2018

Cut nose/spite face




I may have said this before
But both your faces are showing
Turn the other cheek
Before someone slaps it
I will not accept your falsity
I reject your glad-handing grimace

The power lies within
To deny your falsehood but
I will not
Do it

Taken to task
Called out
Whipped and shamed
You will be hung out to dry
In front of the whole goddamn town come
Sunset.




30 Jan 2018

Worms turn beneath flowers as the birds await their feed




Flames cascade down toward the earth
Fitting exactly between the collected tall buildings

Workers, mothers, preachers of god’s word
All run for their lives

Soon after the white cumulus turn blue, then black
Snowfall is reported but

This city
My city destroys any purity long before it can reach us
 
Its concrete surface remains clean
As we fade into evening and disturbed sleep

The streets clear except for a broken toy
Springs and cogs poking from the innards

As we slowly turn from the sun yet again
Surplus fumes and winter death

Words drip to a stop for all the tired writers
For today there is nothing

Good
To report 




2 Jan 2018

Untitled (seasons)




I want to live where it snows
Every single winter
To awaken before a jagged horizon
Where mountains block the sunrise

I want to live where it is too cold to rain
In the autumn
Only orange leaves dry and
Crunching underfoot

I want to live where the summers
Defeat the average man
Where women and children wilt and
Rejoice in the searing heat

I want a billion stars shining each night
Wild animals prowling across my porch
A post office and general store
And a small bar in which to get drunk

I want this simple string of things
I need them as you all do oxygen
I need them both alone and not
Alone

Hidden in the dark of night there must
Be a road straight and true
And
Out of this town.


















11 Oct 2017

New Work. Oct 2017



Weird people


Not the different
Not the odd
Not the dysfunctional
Round peg in square hole
Types

But the weird
Those who are kind of
Slippery and glossed
Calm and sallow with a
Volume never above a mediocre
Voice

Untrustworthy and nauseating
Happy and agreeable and
Out for themselves only
Ever and for
Ever

They are sly and cut like razors
And so you bleed out before even
Finding a wound
And they are the majority
The climbers like
Spiders on a web of success
Reaching the top and dying
Still ignorant but richer
Than
You.




 Normal people


We are small
And caring and look too far
See too much
We understand the fire
The insect and the elephant

You have no idea
The difficulty in maintaining this
Façade
To awaken every morning into anything but
Normality
And yet still become the shape of it
The weight of normality continuing
Permanently crushing
Unceasing and tireless

Our days an unseen high-wire act
Between street and office and café and
Finally home
And throughout our finite tolerance
We still manage to love and compound our art
Into the everyday hum

And it becomes at times impossible
To maintain the
Façade that we are part of this
Normality
Middling
Fitting
Square onto square onto
Square

And we are small
But not the smallest
We look too far but are not blinded
By it
We are nothing like you.