That Easy

Some days you wake up
with a mouth full of blood.
Some days you don't.
Those are the good days.

Steel Town

My body has become so hard of late.
Hard like metal so pressed
it sings in perfect pitch when struck.

I have been listening
to the tones shining up
into the sky and my locked jaw gives,

laughing along the tracks
my voice joins the melody,
a dog dancing and nipping at butterflies and knife wise notes,

and while they dart and tack and
teeth snap missing at road flare brilliant wings
I piece together the loose parts

you left in my head and
make a new memory out of
every context torn word you said

and up there in the attic of starshine
inside my fractured night crawling head
you sing right along, skipping across the tracks
as my body and I belt out
our hammered iron blues.

The Way It Went Down (a salute to the infantry)

Have you ever taken prescriptions?

My physical was exceptional.  My mind
is capable, of oh so many things.
Impressive things.

Have you ever broken any bones?

They have all been rehabilitated and
can do things over time
that few other collections of the same can.

We are going to pull your medical history.

How far back will you look?
I am a changed man and
everyone is young and stupid.

Are you aware that falsifying information is frowned upon?

Are you aware that adversity
is a stud in the wall of
the house civilization and "family" builds?

You can check the boxes however you like.

I feel like there is a "but" in there
not given voice.  Is there something else
I should know?

Is there something else we should know?

How much time
would I do if my statements do not match
the foot falls of my history?

Apart from the proven,
the drive, the acumen, the muscle and
the flow, the taste for the adrenal and
the nonstop go, the penchant for the push
at the edges of corporeal paper envelopes,
the tiger behind eyes loose chained and
the erring on the side of the slightly
self sacrificing insane

the fact of the matter remained
that I am psychologically ill equipped
to deal with the storm of enlistment's shit

and admitting that my denial
into the brotherhood
had nothing to do with
the physical or the store house of
knowledge built or train-ability or
shear toughness

and everything to do
with a well documented
glass brain

has been the hardest thing
with which I've had to come to grips.

They are there and
I am here and never
the two should meet
in any configuration of a world
in which we both exist.

Cycler

Have you ever ridden a white horse
is a question that stumps me and I
lose my hiccups because I
am given so much pause
in vision.

I have ridden many
kinds of things,
in metaphor and the more literal,
that would qualify
as white horses
chemical and otherwise, but
what I can say

is that I have ridden a white rabbit.
My bicycle is
named the white rabbit
because when I am on it
I am in a wonderland of
song bird simplicity and

become one half of the whole
contraption.  One half of an equation,
one half of an apparatus,
whose variables turn math,
sweat, and blood into
the most potent speed
my head has ever ingested and
my thoughts soar
like avian "V"s across mountaintops
with enough tail wind
to knock on heaven's
snow peaked back door.

So, have I ever ridden a white horse?
Yes and no, but have you ever tried
to chase a white rabbit?