Some days you wake up
with a mouth full of blood.
Some days you don't.
Those are the good days.
original works of parts
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.
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.
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?
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?
Solitary Refinement
I used to know what people did on weekends.
Where people went and who with.
I used to clap hands in dives and
pat backs and match light deprived
dilated iris blacks and catch ember breaths
close to campfire conversations fed
with shreds and bits of the week's shed tourniquets.
I used to know what people did on weekends.
By day or by night and it was cool
to be another particle wave
in the thirty sixth hour accelerator
set to collide and divide my mind
into a bubble chamber of spirals and aerials
alongside everyone else
trying to reach a more stable state and
exploding instead.
I used to know people,
dedicating myself
to the call and null
to the rush and pull
to the shrill and lush
to the bang and the buck,
but like hearts,
times change.
Now I only know me,
the hillsides once dotted with little fires are
so far distant I
cannot see, but know and take
some solace in not being
the last man on Earth
still walking beneath the stars
because when the wind blows right
I can smell the touch of their dressings
to gold and red glowing sticks
circled in stones,
wounds bathing in the heat, and
though I only know me
crossing time in single, determined, steps
I know I am not alone.
Where people went and who with.
I used to clap hands in dives and
pat backs and match light deprived
dilated iris blacks and catch ember breaths
close to campfire conversations fed
with shreds and bits of the week's shed tourniquets.
I used to know what people did on weekends.
By day or by night and it was cool
to be another particle wave
in the thirty sixth hour accelerator
set to collide and divide my mind
into a bubble chamber of spirals and aerials
alongside everyone else
trying to reach a more stable state and
exploding instead.
I used to know people,
dedicating myself
to the call and null
to the rush and pull
to the shrill and lush
to the bang and the buck,
but like hearts,
times change.
Now I only know me,
the hillsides once dotted with little fires are
so far distant I
cannot see, but know and take
some solace in not being
the last man on Earth
still walking beneath the stars
because when the wind blows right
I can smell the touch of their dressings
to gold and red glowing sticks
circled in stones,
wounds bathing in the heat, and
though I only know me
crossing time in single, determined, steps
I know I am not alone.
Rattle Bone
Tick tock
ting tan
tip tap top
schwit wak
shill stak.
All units of time.
Units and units and
so many units of time
enumerated in the
swish smack of
fluid against
aluminatic solids of
can bottoms and
foils.
I wonder who
my foil is and if
I will live
to meet them.
The thought crosses:
maybe I already have and
was too unkind
to greet him.
But I know
as the bones rattle
in the bottoms of beer cans and
handles turned hobbies and
visions turned
like clock hands when
springs unwind and places
beckon for presence
without a keep to store time
that I have many ways and
many roads still to go and
it's possible
in the inifitum,
the stupefying
space timed lines and
mulligan divergent wood
that I've
still yet to meet him.
ting tan
tip tap top
schwit wak
shill stak.
All units of time.
Units and units and
so many units of time
enumerated in the
swish smack of
fluid against
aluminatic solids of
can bottoms and
foils.
I wonder who
my foil is and if
I will live
to meet them.
The thought crosses:
maybe I already have and
was too unkind
to greet him.
But I know
as the bones rattle
in the bottoms of beer cans and
handles turned hobbies and
visions turned
like clock hands when
springs unwind and places
beckon for presence
without a keep to store time
that I have many ways and
many roads still to go and
it's possible
in the inifitum,
the stupefying
space timed lines and
mulligan divergent wood
that I've
still yet to meet him.
Settle Bone
I know I'm not
stable, by any stretch of the term.
I have things to harp about.
Strings to pummel
with pick and tooth and
notes to make and take and
rummage and make new again.
Adoration is
too often worlds apart
from worlds occupied and I
try to dance to drum sounds and
jam to foundry unsound.
I pursue the losses and
fire wildly at albatrosses and
karma sutric, copacetic,
vain glorious
loosed leaf
be damned.
Approachable in
stretches, dusty dirty
desert licked
horse skinned, but the
words of whorls courses
can't make bossness
out of card board and
glue fumes for days.
I am trying to imagine
a universe where
you never left and I never gave
reason to.
A universe where
the wire and finished wood
of the loom made a tapestry
somna-beautiful and we
spooned two souls cocooned
against the noise.
I am so
and thus
and such
that like as
to be
we are and
who we
so are
and so we
through this
maybe
for that
it too
and will
go back
come forth
divide
we were
and in
become.
I know
I'm not stable
by any stretch
and adoration
will not come
of it's own free will,
but I wish
and the wishing
is what I have
and what I refuse
to let slip.
stable, by any stretch of the term.
I have things to harp about.
Strings to pummel
with pick and tooth and
notes to make and take and
rummage and make new again.
Adoration is
too often worlds apart
from worlds occupied and I
try to dance to drum sounds and
jam to foundry unsound.
I pursue the losses and
fire wildly at albatrosses and
karma sutric, copacetic,
vain glorious
loosed leaf
be damned.
Approachable in
stretches, dusty dirty
desert licked
horse skinned, but the
words of whorls courses
can't make bossness
out of card board and
glue fumes for days.
I am trying to imagine
a universe where
you never left and I never gave
reason to.
A universe where
the wire and finished wood
of the loom made a tapestry
somna-beautiful and we
spooned two souls cocooned
against the noise.
I am so
and thus
and such
that like as
to be
we are and
who we
so are
and so we
through this
maybe
for that
it too
and will
go back
come forth
divide
we were
and in
become.
I know
I'm not stable
by any stretch
and adoration
will not come
of it's own free will,
but I wish
and the wishing
is what I have
and what I refuse
to let slip.
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