Behind glass
everything looks dusty.
Dinosaur bones? Dinosaur bones. Ear flaps and all.
Some kind of tusk.
Stay into it. Back pocket camera like.
One million years ago.
That young? That young.
Back when
sea turtles were the size of cars
and cars were the size of lizard poo.
No way. Yes way.
The security guards are looking again.
It's a souvenir.
Call it a hard copy. Somehow
their teeth are still good.
Call it a crime. Call it a crime of envy.
original works of parts
Super Modified Diamonds
Plus enhanced catch and release.
I lose the thread of conversation,
stupid faced seeing you smile
down near the tracks
spray cans in hand and
giggling over whether or not
the tags will look as good
as they do now
come daylight.
Ripping the river trail by starlight
on bikes in top gear.
Black birds calling
so we will not hit each other.
Midnight is
when you are around and I am not
whistling to ghosts.
Stay up late and wake up early.
Uncoiled dragons like coffee too.
Stupid faced seeing you smile,
in the summer yard see the starship in the distance,
cutting the powder fabric of the suns rays
into off and on mowed lawn streaks of sighs
for days. Staring up at the windows on the horizon
I wonder what the passenger looking back
at my little swatch of city
feels about solid ground.
On your way. On your mission. There is
a lot to get done today. Mary is out back too
gardening, trying to. The flowers will come in
mid June, she insists. Talking to herself aloud.
Lucid in a sky. Grinning back to you
barefoot in the inch high.
Sun come rise and I cannot make out
the shape of the ship anymore
when the cloud cover is burned away.
Clear blue
eyes again.
Stupid faced. "What the hell is so funny?" The back of your head
looks like it is catching fire and I
do not know if it is the sunlight caught
or you
smiling back. More coffee please.
I lose the thread of conversation,
stupid faced seeing you smile
down near the tracks
spray cans in hand and
giggling over whether or not
the tags will look as good
as they do now
come daylight.
Ripping the river trail by starlight
on bikes in top gear.
Black birds calling
so we will not hit each other.
Midnight is
when you are around and I am not
whistling to ghosts.
Stay up late and wake up early.
Uncoiled dragons like coffee too.
Stupid faced seeing you smile,
in the summer yard see the starship in the distance,
cutting the powder fabric of the suns rays
into off and on mowed lawn streaks of sighs
for days. Staring up at the windows on the horizon
I wonder what the passenger looking back
at my little swatch of city
feels about solid ground.
On your way. On your mission. There is
a lot to get done today. Mary is out back too
gardening, trying to. The flowers will come in
mid June, she insists. Talking to herself aloud.
Lucid in a sky. Grinning back to you
barefoot in the inch high.
Sun come rise and I cannot make out
the shape of the ship anymore
when the cloud cover is burned away.
Clear blue
eyes again.
Stupid faced. "What the hell is so funny?" The back of your head
looks like it is catching fire and I
do not know if it is the sunlight caught
or you
smiling back. More coffee please.
Baseball 6 (rain delay)
The only lightning I see is coming out of my-
Rain delays, but not a drop on a helmet to be seen.
They say lighting can strike you dead
miles away from the actual storm.
Electricity, I've heard, has
a mean habit of traveling.
A break in the action is a good thing
when you are winning.
Everybody is hungry.
"It's just a matter of getting fed, n'a mean?"
The strange times are these; when you hear the crackle
and look up for the lightning
and all you see
is clear blue sky
next to the radio tower
and you wonder if
maybe that one
was going to be me
out in left field.
Play on. Play on.
Rain delays, but not a drop on a helmet to be seen.
They say lighting can strike you dead
miles away from the actual storm.
Electricity, I've heard, has
a mean habit of traveling.
A break in the action is a good thing
when you are winning.
Everybody is hungry.
"It's just a matter of getting fed, n'a mean?"
The strange times are these; when you hear the crackle
and look up for the lightning
and all you see
is clear blue sky
next to the radio tower
and you wonder if
maybe that one
was going to be me
out in left field.
Play on. Play on.
Broken Physics
Yellowbird goes back to Titan
on an expidition, faced up to
what is and what is put in to words,
full afterburn while the getting is good
oxygen wise. X planed goodnessed scramjetted
to wherever. Touching down is a luxury,
hon'. I've been meaning to tell you
in very face up terms
I don't think
Seoul
is going to happen this year or ever.
"My backyard is pretty big"
"Stop kidding yourself,
you're planted. That's what it is.
It is what it-"
"If you finish that sentence
I'm going to take your teeth out of your mouth
and arrange them around a tea candle
in a saucer with a lock of your hair
to commemorate the day-"
"Ipswich? Quebec? No? Not yet?"
"Sometimes I think you're trying to be funny, bunny."
From this far away it all sounds far away and
tantalizing. "Because it is." Glamour
magazines and tits without shirts. Something or other.
Heartbreak hotelled. "I thought you were done apologizing."
"I'm not. Are you going to go get ice or not?"
"You probably should not be taking aspirin right now."
The question still stands. Clothing leaves with
half thunk second thoughts. But if you're okay
than I am not staring at the ceiling
counting seconds
until an agreement is reached.
The same conversations with the same people.
Good practices. Tying shoes again.
One sock and then the other. Then the shoes undone done again.
Eyelash flitting embarrassed because
pants are not optional, forgotten from the dream,
and knowing what waking means
for the millionth time.
Sao Paulo, Istanbul, London, god damn it, I was a Londoner
in another life, or maybe just the London scruff,
either way I'll take it, Rio De janeiro or that one place down south
right near Mexico City or, fuck it, Mexico City proper.
A bed, faced down again
because what is paid for is
what it is.
Humming a song or two and
flashpoints reached. "I can never take you to Atlanta."
"Why not?"
Berlin is shitty this time of year. I'm told. It's okay.
I didn't want to go
with you
anyway.
The thought crosses. Phone vibrating itself from a shelf
to the floor
taking
a stack of paperbacks with it. Water sounds splash glossed paper.
Timber! Crinkled grocery lists from between pages
come loose.
"I didn't know you could cook." The gray plastic rimmed
clock ticks on. Moths near the coffee table lamp. Reflection
and a coaster near. "I didn't know you could cook."
Fingerprints fade, exhalations mirror fronted. "Do you
want to get food?"
"I know a place."
What's the weather like in Singapore? "Have you been
to the scrapyard lately?"
"There's a '38 Mack truck down there."
"Yeah, there is."
"Half of one."
"Yeah."
"You ever wonder where the other half of it went?" It's difficult
to hold a hand on the like side of a body.
"I like to think it's still there
in my head,
in pieces,
but still there."
on an expidition, faced up to
what is and what is put in to words,
full afterburn while the getting is good
oxygen wise. X planed goodnessed scramjetted
to wherever. Touching down is a luxury,
hon'. I've been meaning to tell you
in very face up terms
I don't think
Seoul
is going to happen this year or ever.
"My backyard is pretty big"
"Stop kidding yourself,
you're planted. That's what it is.
It is what it-"
"If you finish that sentence
I'm going to take your teeth out of your mouth
and arrange them around a tea candle
in a saucer with a lock of your hair
to commemorate the day-"
"Ipswich? Quebec? No? Not yet?"
"Sometimes I think you're trying to be funny, bunny."
From this far away it all sounds far away and
tantalizing. "Because it is." Glamour
magazines and tits without shirts. Something or other.
Heartbreak hotelled. "I thought you were done apologizing."
"I'm not. Are you going to go get ice or not?"
"You probably should not be taking aspirin right now."
The question still stands. Clothing leaves with
half thunk second thoughts. But if you're okay
than I am not staring at the ceiling
counting seconds
until an agreement is reached.
The same conversations with the same people.
Good practices. Tying shoes again.
One sock and then the other. Then the shoes undone done again.
Eyelash flitting embarrassed because
pants are not optional, forgotten from the dream,
and knowing what waking means
for the millionth time.
Sao Paulo, Istanbul, London, god damn it, I was a Londoner
in another life, or maybe just the London scruff,
either way I'll take it, Rio De janeiro or that one place down south
right near Mexico City or, fuck it, Mexico City proper.
A bed, faced down again
because what is paid for is
what it is.
Humming a song or two and
flashpoints reached. "I can never take you to Atlanta."
"Why not?"
Berlin is shitty this time of year. I'm told. It's okay.
I didn't want to go
with you
anyway.
The thought crosses. Phone vibrating itself from a shelf
to the floor
taking
a stack of paperbacks with it. Water sounds splash glossed paper.
Timber! Crinkled grocery lists from between pages
come loose.
"I didn't know you could cook." The gray plastic rimmed
clock ticks on. Moths near the coffee table lamp. Reflection
and a coaster near. "I didn't know you could cook."
Fingerprints fade, exhalations mirror fronted. "Do you
want to get food?"
"I know a place."
What's the weather like in Singapore? "Have you been
to the scrapyard lately?"
"There's a '38 Mack truck down there."
"Yeah, there is."
"Half of one."
"Yeah."
"You ever wonder where the other half of it went?" It's difficult
to hold a hand on the like side of a body.
"I like to think it's still there
in my head,
in pieces,
but still there."
Sea Turtle Island (21 text messages to my little sister)
[i love you]
Sea Turtle island was a special place. Mariners from countries all over the world looked for it. She was a rumor in back rooms where ale came heavy and smoke came heavier. During the opium wars it was said that the entire fortune of the fields could not match the wealth of the jade a man could pick up with his bare hands on her shores.
All of the way around her, the beaches glowed brilliant green by day and glittered by starlight underneath the moon's watchful eye. A few returned from her and would share their stories at the pubs near the docks and the jetties. For each one there was an entire crew lost to the oceans of the pacific. Legend perpetuated itself, but not without cause. Every line of history around the pacific rim contained stories of a brilliant green gem, half buried in the fickle waves. Every story of conquest and hero through the ages held a reference to her.
Sea Turtle island was a beauty and a much sung wonder through time. There was a party of rapscallions, a collection of never say die's who thought otherwise. They believed, circulating the shorelines and exchanging words with so called survivors, they knew that if the winds of the pacific would only blow their way for enough time, if they had enough within themselves, if the ifs, enough of them, could and would break their way, they might find that island made of pure jade.
They gathered their supplies and they enjoyed their ale and they laughed, telling of their mission, and watching faces go pale in the dark lit pubs. The patrons knowing they would be raising their glasses to yet another well meaning funeral with no bodies to put in the ground. The garden of headstones grown larger and more crowded and for nothing. They laughed and caroused and had their fill and they went out on that sea, chasing streamers of myth and history.
The crew of that good ship came apart. Came apart. Came apart. Mid voyage some had second thoughts. On the last weeks others wondered if there was enough on board to get back, the island of jade being without so much as a butterfly to eat, less it be blown that far off course to land and roost on a thing made only of precious, precious stone. There was a mutiny and then another among the ones who did not die in the first, and still Sea Turtle island was yet to be gained by navigation or map stolen or map drawn by one or another drunkard claiming to have been and come home.
The oars would rock against the ships hull in the current, unattended because there were no hands. When the wind died and that ship of small men dead circled on her own for weeks without end the day finally arrived. The bow dug into sand, but not a sand any man ever saw. It was made of fractured gem stones, a rainbow beneath the waves that glimmered like the iris of an angel miles wide.
And as the hull of that ship washed against the skeletons of dozens of others, ever more skeletons nestled within their sides, Sea Turtle island shone bright against the licks of frost topped glass blue wave peaks inside the pacific where the currents take men to die.
Sometimes We Hang Out Great (smoker 33)
I'm probably going to stop myself
from landing you
a punch in the face
some time between your first sentence and your last,
but in between we cheers our cigarettes
and the ash hits the floor and dusts up
like we would and
in the cloud, river dried,
it's all good fun. What more would a friend ask
of a friend, aside from a spare apple now and then
on dinners skipped.
from landing you
a punch in the face
some time between your first sentence and your last,
but in between we cheers our cigarettes
and the ash hits the floor and dusts up
like we would and
in the cloud, river dried,
it's all good fun. What more would a friend ask
of a friend, aside from a spare apple now and then
on dinners skipped.
Cycling
The pact:
I won't push you too far
if you promise not to to make
every corner and edge
look like a video game
with three extra lives
hovering overhead on the approach to the tired, broke down
two inch lip of an outside curb
when I can't tuck you in
the way you want me to.
I promise. This time will be different.
Underneath moon and street light in the dry,
head lit blazed
on the mean downhill to the river
we know like the back of our hands;
this time will be different.
I won't push you too far
if you promise not to to make
every corner and edge
look like a video game
with three extra lives
hovering overhead on the approach to the tired, broke down
two inch lip of an outside curb
when I can't tuck you in
the way you want me to.
I promise. This time will be different.
Underneath moon and street light in the dry,
head lit blazed
on the mean downhill to the river
we know like the back of our hands;
this time will be different.
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