last night, the night before

send me dizzy up the stairs,
but i fall down. all
around me, they're tracing white
lines on table tops.
asking me, but i always,
almost always, say no.
and here i am laughing,
telling myself lies.
a little further away from
everyday, every day i live.
-


scrape bottom down
this rutted road
made old by winter
and the big trucks
that just can't sit still.

two trains coming,
running down river
tracks ripe with coal
folding like bricks
around the bent hills.

pass the pipe and know
we will never know
what it was we felt before
our old souls knew
new shoes loose in the gravel.
-

wind and words

the wind is a sucker; chasing it's tail
indefinitely, finding cracks and alleys to run
through, corners to howl around, always
running after itself.

if you had a tail you would be
like the wind; always ahead of and behind
yourself, essence
of an incapturable moment, like sunlight.

if you were like sunlight, what would that mean?
would you glow with truth? hide behind clouds?
interfere at your feistiest times with electrical signals?
if you, words, were like sunlight, would you provide good
clean energy, or would you simply burn?

no, you are more like the wind
perpetually unaware of your beginning middle and end.
unaware of your own existence, unaware of the wars
fought, lives lost, treasures gained, thoughts shared.
you propagate yourself in a thousand dialects,
a thousand ways to say the same thing.

nothing, has ever, or will ever, change.
the wind will chase itself, words will pile up and mean nothing.
the sun will glow red and disappear, swallowing cultures, and people,
and planets.
the wind will still chases itself, and words will still pile up and mean
nothing.
nothing at the end of the world, will not know,
will ever know, and has ever known...

-

crockpot piss on a blackspot
your thought is nonstop
so cop-out and block
the nonsense you incensed fool.

-

if i were hamfisted
i'd buy a bag of peanuts
and see what that was like.

-

your lasso is a truth lasso
wonder woman
your lasso is a truth lasso
asshole.

keep it upstairs

spend your time passing by strangers and forgetting

them. wired resistant, but out of flux, and too much

reality weeping through the glass.

Ride

in the half-light half-baked morning
said our goodbyes, watched the street
signs blurred by distance fold over
the horizon.
car tires grinding snow
to slush and forgiving the road
for beating back.
neck bent to the wind hurling against us
as we hurled ourselves against the great
green kansas tallgrass.
blacktop unfurled behind us stretched beside
and inside the lines, lions teeth chewed
the rubber, spit out a constant hum.

the apricots are coming!

kinder hands stand on their own
let me be a magician
a magic man that can hold back his smile
and drop it on you like a ten pound sack of rice
i don't want to rush to judgements
or judge the rushes that grow along the river
the horse tails and catnip slipping into the pool
just down past the junction, where the crooked moon hangs all night
like a vagrant light that steals beauty from the still pines
shouldered like a soldier's musket
tightening the belt, adding new notches
spring won't be coming round here no.
it won't be filteing the coolness out of the air
the ice out of the fog
the lightning strikes hair splitting end of the world
is coming
is falling tomorrow
on the beginning of the last march, or last aprils apricots
rotting.

monsters of time

there's green eyed monsters
and brown eyed monsters
and lovers who don't know your name

there's time to be changing

and times to be changed

and neither can be re-arranged

theres scribbled down wishes
and played out day dreams
and chased down ideas of self

theres lies to remember
and truths to engender
of portents to somebody else

so time runs you over
but time don't get bolder
it simply stays the same

and it washes across you
til you lose all consciousness
and fight to regain it again

but you can't fight the darkness
and you can't guard the light
you just watch them both do their thing

and you keep your hope distant
so it won't have an instant
to creep up and hurt you again

oh, there's green eyed monsters
and brown eyed monsters
and lovers who forget your name

and there's times to be changin'
and there's times to be changed
and these two can't be re-arranged

close your eyes and die.

shards of the kitchen window catching the sunlight
it's sickening to watch it fall, ten stories down.
it's sickening to go after it, to be among it,
crashing your last couch.
laughing out loud, because what else is there to do?
close your eyes and miss the sunshine sparks?
that lone dog wandering the parking lot?
might as well smoke that last cigarette
drag it in with the paint fumes and carbon monoxide
running up off the street.
might as well hold your hand over flame to feel pain
one last time.
cuz you ain't feeling nothing at the end of this ride.
call your sister, your mother, your father, your brother, your friends, your wife, your kid, your grandma, your lover, your other lover, your dog sitter, your baby sitter, your baby sister.
might as well have bought that lottery ticket, that last bowl of chronic, might as well have gotten one last jerk in.
but man! what a way to go!

or, ........