as the dragonfly…

“vocal mix”

there was old advice
playing on the stereo &
leaking out through
summer-set windows
while i was staring at
waters edge, watching
wannabe frogs get eaten
before they’re any use
to a french chef.

waking up off-schedule,
a broken-memory late-
night scene loses hold to
a new world, slightly
leftward of historical
precedent. catching as
catch-can, drowsy dragon-
fly can’t fly straight
during the month-long
drought when words
failed to show. slightly
certain mythology comes-
to-life in supplication.

old advice assuages a
symptomatic mind from the
underlying condition. at
best it’s good enough to
try & touch any immortals
happening to walk by.
happenstance counts as
much as controlled sub-
stances these days.

—————————-

long ago & far away…

“lost in thought”

of course you could become
slavishly obsessed. i’m not
much for that sort of thing,
but it used to be a free country
& who am i to tell you what
to do?

i’m under shadows darlin’.
& you told me all things are
impossible. i couldn’t agree & we
parted ways. names didn’t
matter then, & don’t now.

flying stingers
buzz everywhere as bees go
on searching for sugar,
ready to sting.

——————————————

Thoughts brought to mind by the destruction of the last bits of the past. It doesn’t take an exorcism, evidently, just a garbage bag.

the interstellar tennis match…

“the interstellar tennis match”

i wasted another afternoon
speaking to the dead, again.
words & words & words,
& more of the same. time
as mind under the unconquerable
sky.

i stopped caring for specifics;
there is a more exculpatory
evidence all the time.
i can live with that, despite
some evidence to the contrary
turning heads as if following an
interstellar tennis match with
extreme equanimity.

whatever is wasted in the strain
of the temporal seeks homeostasis,
same as everything else. peaceful
avenues once held mobs; ask the
de Witt brothers. piss-pot logic
& dime store psychology aside
(if only for a moment) it still
rests easier when it rests.
sacrificial qualities or lust for
blood or slip of the tongue all
seem the same from here.

the interstellar tennis match is
tied.

————————————–

Dedicated to Bento & Russell, with thankfulness as always. “Caute” indeed.

lateral fantasy…

colors looking back at you!

“baby’s flower from the beach”

there goes another sea-breeze,
same way wind spontaneously blows
form from somewhere unidentified.
superfluous explanation; words
aren’t wind but i feel it all the
same.

more a picture of detailed
flower; raised to be a corpse &
before that to stand still,
look pretty, with attendant judgment.
taken too seriously you’d think it
was entirely normal; what we get
from dirt & sunlight & the occasional
raindrop.

frozen motion of growth. we live on
music & sleep in chairs. we’re the
semi-gloss clinging & coating an
atmosphere. flowers, camera, picture,
opportunity, existence. it pulls the
living back from sleep, awakens sight
& sound. transmogrified beauty
forever.

————————————-

To her. I really do like that picture.

thinking of the time…

“playin’ possum”

lightning threatened,
steeped behind furnace quality
heat. i was
sweating serrated ninja stars
& scared of what probably
wouldn’t happen post flood,
music & all.

normality is an everyday
commitment. well
intentioned cloud cover
joins us on the surface of
the sphere; important pitches
will be thrown, just not
the kind that’ll put the game
out of reach one way
or the other.
not yet anyway.

i haven’t got any proper
identification & nobody
believes a word i say.
metaphysical capitalism turns
all the stories about ridin’ the
pine into something fiercely heroic
& occasionally beautiful.
the whole picture is one of
disillusionment with aesthetics.

feed the prayers to the
hungry, divine the water
from the rock; following along
a shoreline half of something
& partially somewhere else,
the only constant is my repetitious
drags on cigarettes that all
taste the same & arrive in
the same box.

sometimes the smoke makes
pictures in the wind. some-
times not, & it dissipates easily
either way. free agent
destiny inks a secret deal;
somehow we raised up with
all the righteousness we could
assemble & smiled under weak light
from a cigarette lighter giving
everything it had to pass
along the flame.

it was time to move.

———————————————–

Just something I’ve been toying with for a while. More later, for now off to impersonate Nick Drake & see where the day takes me. I would guess big box store, but there is always hope. To the cigarette man, and of course mt

take it…

“take it”

day-night express runs a few times
before a leftover roustabout from the
deep-sleep detox crew rises & shines.
taste the sanity before tidal flows
rush out; another dirty t-shirt
hoping to rise clean, washed out
anywhere but here.

wind & water conspire under a
brimming horizon. gunfighter sun
peeks over the forest line off
in the distance. nobody shoots back
& the planet spins & occasionally
wobbles while gunfighter sun
stands taller & taller. it’s
like that all over the planet;
happens in reverse too.

i want whatever that guy in the
mirror has. he doesn’t need it
like i do. he takes the hit,
same as me, but i swear he’s
forever getting more out of it
than i can take in at once. he
doesn’t need it like i do.

————————————–

we’ll start here…

“elevenses”

i lined ’em all up
by effect.
just go with
what you want;
opposite of
everything that
hasn’t happened.
that alone
s’enough for
celebration.

you can’t fall
from a wagon
when you travel
by boat.

oversize gag-gift
lighter was
all i could find
without searching
couch cushions. it
matched my smile
contemplating how
lazy i had become
to light this fire
with a joke.

between 7 tins
of legal madness;
i’m only a few
breaths short of
waking up
for the day.

my boat shimmies
in calm waters,
on beautiful days,
like this one.

—————————————–

Some know the delight in contemplation of the coming rains. Some never will. I’m not sure which I envy more sometimes. Ah well, bought the ticket…

marisol goes to the beach…

shadows on the sand

“shadow photograph”

quick serve pink-berry smoothie
on a spring evening trying
like hell to be summer afternoon.
speedball winds blow hair past
eyes until the sky cleared in a
equatorial tribute to
blue crystalline.

it ain’t exactly our secret if
everybody knows; pushing past
your front gate while you claw
at my back only gets us so far.
pushed forward by every
treasured gust of breath leaking
pressure from under the sky;
lack of laid path doesn’t still
our footsteps, four across.

shadows result from interception
of sunlight by the mass of
our bodies. on sand pictures
won’t give up any ghostly
figures traced on shore; it will
catch them in the shutter
speed of a certain instant when
our hands touched while walking
dunes under the clearest
of skies.

———————————

For Marisol. Thinking back to the beach will always be where you can find me.

quasar the vermillion dust (part 3)…

“it ain’t makin’ sense”

breathless.
waiting on leftover oxygen
(it shows up green
in the interstellar void)
for a fix. how to turn
blue-to-red in three easy
steps.

conditioned to breath.
it can’t be fought without
a fight, & even then you’ll
lose. it comes from the giant
convection ovens, hot & heavy
& everything the physicists
warn us to avoid.

highway signs are missing,
there’s no perspective.
relativity almost works,
gives the quantum mechanics
inspiration to proceed.
by now we’ve got a tracing of
a copy of a map.

cars sleeping beside the road.
not impossible
but not where we should be,
& nobody knows where that is,

drained of whatever energy i’d
swallowed. melting hours reform;
everyone feverishly transfixed
on a point in space-time
seemingly in need of redesign. i can
agree with that.

——————————-

Apologies for the absence. Life got hectic, but I will be back to posting more regularly. Hope all is well, or at least soem fair approximation of such.

maybe i was there?.?.?.

“one ’till seven”

deep elementary like artificial
amethyst crystal. strange vowel
combination’s identify a prime
possibility of speaking all the
right words with letters all wrong
& oddly pronounced.

put all my cash into something
i’d thought you’d say only to
hear back that you’d already spoken;
if we knew where darkness ended
i’d tell everyone i figured out
where the light began. lapsed
dualism is an aristocratic belief,
the rest of us know it’s just easy.
around here, that’s the same as
being done.

—————————————–

Before anyone asks, it’s about getting older, dumber, & stranger as the days drift by while the answer you seek seems to continually drift farther away in time, space, and locality. It’s not even close to fair, but then, what is these days? Enjoy the laughter, it sounds so much more real than the tears. Wonder if that holds true down the line? Que sara, sara…