poetry reprint: “legerdemain”

“Legerdemain”

I was standing by an audience
Watching angels dance,
Standing here immobile,
Totally entranced
Then the sky darkened
And the girls looked up in vain
To the sounds of thunder
Almighty legerdemain

Walking along a city street
Hucksters screaming loud
Looking just to land the fish
Swimming in the crowd
Most people know these types,
These gangsters in the rain
Another case of unholy
Affixed legerdemain

Sitting still in the movie house
Trying to comprehend
The way the hero action star
Manages to survive yet again
He offers up the money lines
Square-faced acting feign
The audience is transfixed
By the actors legerdemain
—————————————–

authors note: Written on a dare five years ago and rescued from the garbage bin in a moment of enlightened hope that there was something worth keeping. Still not sure what it was.

cf

lyrical version of ‘visage’…

“scared to look”

(verse 1)

one singularly powerful moment
in an otherwise blase affair.
judgmental impression,
the worst kind of pretension;
punishment completely unfair.
a mystery face in the mirror,
nothing is quite what it seems.
wherever we’re going,
it best not stop snowing
i don’t want to slip off to dream.

(chorus)

so where is this going,
what are you gettin’ at?
am i supposed to want you
with no answer for that?
there’s all kinds of problems
you can’t even see;
why waste my time pretending
you give a shit about me

(verse 2)

ordered to demand salvation,
i want only what’s owed to me;
weaknesses are all the same,
easier to lay a backup claim
to things that i’m not i’ll soon be

(chorus)

so where is this going,
what are you gettin’ at?
am i supposed to want you
with no answer for that?
there’s all kinds of problems
you can’t even see;
why waste my time pretending
you give a shit about me

(verse 3)

last miles of freedom on asphalt,
fighting desire to stop in my tracks;
tired & wired & got lost on the way,
ditchin’ me nights you had promised to stay,
ya disappeared & now you want me back?

(chorus)

where is this going,
what are you gettin’ at?
am i supposed to want you
with no answer for that?
there’s all kinds of problems
you can’t even see;
why waste my time pretending
you give a shit about me

—————————————

Inspired by the most beautiful dancer I ever did see. Can’t bury everything all at once you know. Fuck it dude. Let’s go bowling. Oh, that’s right, I can’t. Damn POS spinal cord…

poetry reprint: “ecuador comes to mind”

“ecuador comes to mind”

walking through a darkened hall
ecuador comes to mind
i see her there somehow before
another present time
when things were strange and different then
and we were feelin’ fine,
our time was spent on restless nights
when ecuador comes to mind.

losing myself in someone else
while she is spilling rhyme
looking around for something i found
inside that lady’s eyes
it slips my grasp, now lost control
graspin’ shadows from behind
all of this and more i see
when ecuador comes to mind

held so tight you can’t let go
of foolish thoughts of prime,
searching for some secret cave
warily spending time
the shortest distance between two points
so often not in line,
scattered thoughts and scattered lands
when ecuador comes to mind