With Your Midnight Headlights Off

Pick your head up and drive
A little slower.
Thank god this is over
As dreams move your mouth
Like an alternator belt.

Too cold to get out for the man
In the road, feet planted
With roots like a
Hollowed out baobab tree.

Pretend to listen, pretend to care
And flash your brights
So he can read his cue card
And whirl his arms in the air.

You said you hear him with
Your one good ear.
Hard earth and soft hands,
Coast to coast on the radio.

I asked him for a jump
From his gas powered lamp
But you were already pushing
And cranking on the wheel
As we barely miss the ditch.

In The City Of Saints

The stain on your oxford sweatshirt
And a beer on my bedroom balcony.
Absent minded, the intervention went
Something like a dance to a dead-pan waltz
So things are never as hopeless as they seem.

Everyone picked up and drove away with
Slow respect dripping from the exhaust
That was felt like a red-faced child
Inside the closet door, heart racing with regret
And fear that this time he went too far.

Sunken eyes see judgement as a curse
And save themselves in a chemical confession,
But perhaps it's better than the verbal rod
Or a switch that came from the mouth of a friend.
The truth doesn't know the difference between it.

So any outstretched hand that's cut
Is justice now for a long lost grudge
And traveling through time is a one-way show.
The only entertainment in this pious hell
Is a vision of the future that none of us know.

A Sonnet For My Sister, At the End of the World

Our mile high markers are reduced
To spreadsheets of dead space, and youth,
As bold as the future may seem,
Embrace the fear of an unknown place,
An unknown species of fowl or fawn,
An unknown matter of rest and
Learn to obsess in the shape of the grain
Or hills that hate could never have climbed.
Sink in slow and salivate for the
Spoken word of an ancient bird so
Frightening it gives man a reason to dance.
Give yourself four hands and greet
The earth's illustrious kin and when
You've met them all you can finally begin.

All Things That Are Moving

What became of those young bodies burning,
Rushing through flesh at a forward glance?
Time makes fit the knowledge of body
And the main course is always a little disappointing,
So spread it out for ages through darkness
And light and bloom through the terror
Of a windowless winter. Splintering shapes
And sanding the surface, such changes make
Lifetimes into moments and seldom does
boredom get a word in edgewise when
Celebration occurs with the changing of the leaves.
Absence takes shape in to models of memory
And men are boys again making calls
On the company dime from a calendar kiosk,
Where words would flow like the pain in
Our knees on those rocks beside the bay.
Returning and leaving and waking and dreaming
Will grip like the hand to the moving
Rubber rail, and differences then are
Differences now but nothing can contain
What grows like the sea.
Infinitely you and infinitely me.

Bring Them To Babel

Proud flesh masons put their work on display
So masochists can gaze and stain
Their pants with the wine of life.

Grip hard and push to smite the poor devils
That too often will sink in the
Sick stuff that we bathe them in.

The endless paper chain is cut a certain way
And those ill wives that don't follow the line
Should've known the taste of bread before it was made.

Teach them all to eat right and drive right and shit right
So growing is kept in a physical cage,
With clipped and dull wings only for show.

The only way out is to bring them to Babel
And lead them astray so comfort becomes a detestable thing
That keeps them away from the hollow shell.

The Daily Race

Run for cover under cover of changing skies
Creeping gray and spots of light.
These clouds connect to other concrete
That still hasn't moved though feet
Have stepped over many ages and many places
And have seen no man greater than the sea.

My heart's in the middle where it long left it's seed.

The daily race to beat out the best of the day
Pumps blood through the veins of this
Wondering organ so colorfully plain.

Start pissing and spitting,
Draining and filling,

So weak men finally have something to fear.

A Young Man's Armor

Red faced straight jacket and a chorus
Of excuses for an overdressed mess.
Seeing and speaking seem so desperately separate
And when tall and slender, stretched out,
Feels the footsteps in the sand,

A universe of doubt has it's eyes on you.

Sweat it out and inside skin that's
Swelling from the bee sting thoughts
About why the elephant is moving towards
The antelope and who the hell would
Give him hope of anything more than a smile.
Spitting up words and admiring curves
Is all that evolution allowed,

So take off your shirt and make your mother proud.

Nothing Starts If Nothing Ends

Brain matter longs for body temperature changes
And regular patterns of cross stitch bliss.

This subtlety is sin in it's conquering complacence
And sweats out the body into an unknown form.

Change
Me
Please.

Two isn't four and four is the number
That flowers should shed as they willingly end.

Layers of love that fall and re-form
Have faded with all the promises of fate.

Bend
Your
Knees.

Cut the straight and narrow straps that
Keep shade from the insects that live too long.

All the good ones come from a cold hard bone
That thaws with the melody of looking ahead.

Become A Prophet In Minutes!

The one night stand medical man
Makes a quick diagnosis for a lifetime of want.
Needs only run so deep when the surface
Was covered by over-zealous scribes.

The savior is time to look for salvation.

An unread script is the oracle of wisdom
That tells us how to feed a man

And love a man
And drug a man.

What mind have we to make these weeds
Then pluck them half grown,
Claiming the earth would be better off
Without them.

The ground is wine that's poured for thee.

All Creatures But Us

White tiger build nations
Stripes showing age and count all
the ways to feast so fantastic.
The apes make safe some future
Forgotten, but protect your young
Oh tired ones or they may be the mark
of old White's delight.

Fire is fire and rain is our friend
but such bitter spices invaded our soup
At the root of the flourishing tree.
The quick stripped leaves, inequitably green
And blinding the eyes of our predator's soul,
Will make men into gods and gods into me.