today's poem - "surely we slink"

 

surely we slink

 

almost static isms  

stockpile silence

in simple nature zones

and moon patches  

hollow waves crane

where boots fit tighter

than miserable guitars

on salty nights rampage

through leopard land

 

surely we slink

in outworn headbands  

burly beeves listening

if main instigators

hear creeping silence

fizz orthodoxies of ignorance

bent over wands of fire

handheld by frozen invisibles

working overtime

 

in this miracle hour

smoke signals rise

over horizons

as UFOs elevate

sharp angles of light

so loudly you can’t hear

uniform plastic orbs  

a million miles

some other day away

 

waiting for a sign

or a song waiting

today's poem - "Joan"

 

Joan

With her heartfelt pleas       

she unleashed hellish furies

with a martyr’s ease           

today's poem - "when sunglasses were everything (take 2)"

when sunglasses were everything (take 2)

 

At an ambivalent horse show, speaking Esperanto  

owled in my stylish sunglasses     

outside looking inside smirched glass houses
lobbing stones – chimpanzee nimble

Call me anything but call me my funk name:

Dab Stupid

 

Yes whomp me upside my head                   

in my double-mirror wraparound shades            

and fallingdown house:

To squint is to see

How dull and stupid everything seems              

 

And then, enter modernly thorough Millicent

$1,000 on her nose, her extreme meta-designer shades

vectoring my eye-windows

entrancingly exhibiting birdlike opulence          

fab wandering skinny queen, sheathed in diamond      

past me her beanpoled selves in fly-vision twangle

 

People, bust me right upside my head coz     

(Soon)  she gonna be married she says
she’s hitching her mules up to Reuben      

successful boy scientist down Marvin street

raise up a family      

twelve children, maybe thirteen        

A little home in the country

Woe is a me ba

So bust me upside my cornpone head           

coz I ain’t nothing but a country fool   

Millicent is diligent and won’t be negligent

to her businesslike betrothal

and I am pierced to my heart in my flashy eyewear   

 

  

today's poem - "Sonnet with Spaghetti and Meatballs"

 

Sonnet with Spaghetti and Meatballs

 

Natural meaning like homemade versus restaurant meatballs

invades my mind with empty detail and stories without resolution

like a tea tray resting on the hem of birdhouse roof high above

like the home cook trades presentation for rustic taste

 

I reflect on spaghetti and meatballs around the world

magazines, journals, periodicals, books pile up around me

as eyesight fogs and appetite to know eclipses reading speed

I compare strange meatball recipes in blogs and cookbooks

 

Music and construction TV shows alternate with Law and Order

cram unused mind sectors until I become reading impaired

assigned reading sputters slower than casual meaningless fare

and crashes like paper airplanes into weird roof intersections

 

Revolutions with no evolutions focus like a man without a face

in a revolution of decades in moments that settle like dust

today's poem - "Cockamamie"

 

Cockamamie

This colorful object has a very real presence

its arcane art an amazement of all things gone

from inner landscapes of collective mythology

tumbled from brooks rippled into a dark-eyed lake

to a pyramidal-roofed gatehouse backlit by dawn

whose dark windows reflect spectral testimony

while nearby, oak trees like pencils fall into themselves

today's poem - "Superman and his pals shotgun red kryptonite on the Einstein train to the Frozen Islands"

Superman and his pals shotgun red kryptonite on the Einstein train to the Frozen Islands

 

Superman says

let’s take kryptonite and trip all night

if we micro-dose we won’t go comatose

yet red kryptonite will make our cells re-organize

so let’s lay off what smells that way

Us is going to party like granite until we understand it

Superman says

 

Frozen islands

at the end of time and rainbows of rhythm and rhyme

partially sane roads married in time by the palace

of dimmed eyes on the Einstein train ride passing by

talking however he likes to whomsoever he likes to

and as he emceed the square his aptitude for aptness deranged

Frozen islands

 

today's poem - "Five Star Noodling"

 

Five Star Noodling

 

Life in odor-distilled odor

sensed in aromatic laughter

flopped down under the sun

below the expanding world

 

Mix barnyard lemon herbs

yellow green silk hoppers

ascensions and base necessity -

it’s morning on a five star day  

 

today's poem - "when sunglasses were everything"

 

when sunglasses were everything

 

as  I comport myself a dab stupidly           foolish my indignation                                                    

in her stylish sunglasses    outside my window inside a looking-smirch-glass
like a horse show horse outracing me            and all poohbahs of the world aside

like an Exquisita they say she        is a po boy’s fancy dream come true

      

would she put up with a nutjob like me   impertinent impatient stagnacity

so whomp me upside my head             moron fingers who let her slip through      

in my double-mirror wraparound shades             and fallingdown house

to squint is to nearly see                all lopsided architecture aside

 

I watch her between mullions    $1,000 on her nose      she cascades through my window  

to sashay entrancingly exhibit         a  lateral birdlike prism opulence            

fab skinny queen wanderer            passes my beanpoled yard

and think “Clomp Me Upside My Head”     and watch Conchita fly, Fly Away

 

People, bust me upside my head coz       (Soon)  she gonna be married
she’s hitching up to Reuben        successful scientist down Marvin street

raise up a family       two children, maybe three         A little home in the country
Bust me upside my head           Coz I ain’t nothing but a country fool       

 

I might as well pass away         I never learned nothing in school     and now I’m trash

 

today's poem - "Spectral Morning Haze"

 

Spectral Morning Haze

clumped river-mist-obscures my headful of fog

 

I want to sleep but wake want to wake but sleep

gaze-less see don’t see eyes half close half open  

dim and faded color-daze-swampmeet

 

like a slow river watch the forest ceiling

wait for day to remove hundreds of bats

who echolocate corners away from sunlight

 

and driftwoods away focus-free

 -don’t take a picture now

 

in the Land of the Free

         casual time sloshes painfully

 as I wonder a day shut

                                  full of what ifs ands and buts

 

fenced round within artificial walls, I fail to think

 

thoughts stutter

birds with crash wings waffle flat rise and fall

absorbing pinwheels of sameness

to inflate like bleak bread rises

in a charcoal ring sun

around blue sky shot gray

normal daylight estranges

an empty box of time

 

the static emptiness no hobo speech can elongate

windows suddenly open on a universe unspooled

 

I spit, I cough, I blow my nose, I drink coffee,

I pace, I walk, I shake my head, I kneel,

I gaze about me, I remember, I think, I begin

 

today's poem - "exo-capitalism"

 

exo-capitalism

quit-thinking commerce

every mighty mouse tiny

house espouse & advertise

 

We have outlived angry homelands

embraced those followers, fowls

and all those who passed us  

on fish-stairs, the main abounder   

all beneath a summer sun

who’d remember mama and the kids

parades of generations imagined as music

through wisdom turns to stone

 

Older than these rolled, sleeping hills

a flag stuck in sand is all a person is

who can bring celestial sound at times

despite beggar’s rags

 

As from far across remote oceans

great expectations and holy cows

expect gurus, oracles, and prophets

instead find glittering idols

which inhabit a simple melody

 

I wear away, riding a mule

in pursuit of the strange quality

of ever-circling birds

 

Nature is a smith more sublime

than artisans and artists attempting

artifice and making us sleep -

seeking a shore unfound

cities of gold beyond our ken

from antique gorges to crowded streets

farther and farther away

 

today's poem - "boats set adrift"

 

boats set adrift

 

unmoored boats

rock

random

  float off

pathless

here  and  there

tending

to

the middle of things

 

flood, wave

swell, crest

a gradual

flow

takes them

out

 

old rowboat

oars up-turned  

seems at rest

on the lake

horizon

but its motion

slow and sure

continues

 

untethered

from shores

boats set adrift

wander

onto world oceans

 

boundless

today's poem - "I can't finish the poem that never ends"

 

I can’t finish the poem that never ends

 

It was a day or a minute or a second 10 years ago –

more or less when Bugs Bunny branded orange peel stars    

began to sing the Shaft big house coffee house blues

so I can’t finish this poem that doesn’t end

 

No one knows what is in the heart after another can of wine

and play Rock House Hospital Blues by the Palestinian Authority

at a gathering on a personal boom box behind rows of dumpsters

 

Slow and steady the Laundromat Concierge wins the race

What race? A pink giraffe in the House of Bishops Star Wars  

Espresso game is announced low voice from table to table

by which poem never ceases its passengers never blend

 

From Super(Pachinko)Fly on lemon peel who can explain away

top to bottom 5 years ago said Yosemite House Sam

those switzerlandish poems hornswoggled by dreary friends?

 

First married in the lightness of the council's wedding horns

they heard from house to Vietnam Coffee house White House Caesar

to the High House Holy Wedding All-Star Game un-played

 

I don't have to practice Pam Grier as Coffy's thinking to walk the dog

that an audacious telephone game of a poem won’t bend

until never mis-dreamed the poem without end continues

 

 

today's poem - "a notebook"

 

a notebook

 

I adhere colorful subliminals to its green cover

bears into the mind collected words and idles

 

fits pockets and endtables

limit

 one (per necessity) spiral-bound endurable

 

note to self

don’t sell anyone else these

notes

 

don’t pursue or avoid anexact strategy

not that there are or

aren’t any that I know of – here’s a list except

it’s gone multidimensional; leaking into my copied medieval woodcut of a man with a handstick book-bemused scepter

 

lacks studied harmonization

kinetic where intersecting

a curtain timetable or philosophies

gnarl HB pencil, Write Bros pen, pen

 

and ink, artisan colored pencil

crayolas, glue-ins, pocketsful a

 

song of serrated situation, cut-outs

 

butt-outs, mutts, nuts, droughts

and sorghum doughnuts of indelicacy

where wraptaround mirror shades

faceprint thought-shreds into multiple

invisible possum trot overlooks

 

notebook where stalled ideas raffle them

selves rallying until threadbare

poem - "the Scavenger"

the Scavenger

scows scud night tides to prowl for stinking treasure

       riches rise, fall, churn in watery forces unknown

          I’m finding them and finding more as well

                  unspoken verbal gems embodied and able

                     scents creep in the stream before dawn

                        funny what is found in the flood

                             things with no conscience

                                     labels without trash

                                        trash without labels

uncertain outcomes wait for reason to speak

selves of dismantled weapons are left behind

finery transforms to rags of slippery pasts

creatures natural or butchered

corporeal or discorporate

in tree branches, weeds

stately and ridiculous

wave in greeting to say

pardon me drifting by

as words form within me:

    if your struggle             is forgotten                 beneath dark water

                     surface now            all aboard            my barge of night

today's poem - "Sketch for a Nuclear Jukebox

Sketch for a Nuclear Jukebox

Say, buddy drop an A-Bomb in the Jukebox

Down here where all the mushrooms grow

Sink into  a roiling sea

It will be small comfort to you and me

I want to watch continents

Blown to ignorance

As the jukebox plays number 23

 

Hey, pal I want to see that plutonium glow

Right now I want to drop in an H-bomb

Keep singing that song

You know the one that makes the air a gong

Drop a big old neutron bomb

for the human race’s swan song

and it won’t be long we’ll all be gone

 

drop a bomb in the juke box for me

today's poem - "The Big Noise / Inside the Noise"

 

The Big Noise         / one hologram inside another repeating doppelganger rapture of physical sound   centers many wheels music multiple-streamed beginning and ending waves and spirals and surrounding wails   close and far pulsed and struck to throb and flow echoes of the big noise

Inside the Noise lads inside the sound situate footwise for maximal reception on a dirty wooden floor in beautiful squalor cares aside ready-set waiting for note benders away from all else nothing much in mind listening and feeling acolytes in the angles uptown in the noise

today's poem - "Following the Dream"

 

Following the Dream

 

Raj and Justine travel broken highways

leaving parts behind

over a gauze-winding parade of years

 

Following a caravan that always rolls

one step beyond

as a trail of crumbs is spread by the past

 

faint, disappearing carnival music

erases the trail

and the air clears as a dark bird sings

 

Sharp rays of diagonal light twist

over raven mountains

to summon Morning from darkness

 

woven down dwindling roads

in procession to harsher lands

through far canyons echo shouts

                                             and boulders

                                                         fall

 

into a faded future where the Circus

holds Raj and Justine

within its drum beat of tamed hopes