The Attributes of Insects

Caught in strange insignificance
Running up bathtub walls,
Legs speaking terror
With desperate rapid motion.
Pray for running water
And beg for morning rituals
To end the waiting, suffering game.
How quickly forgotten
The attributes of insects,
The benefits of lowly things
And any comfort there within
Doesn't mask their ugly sin.
Perhaps the fear is justified,
Half awake with the dawn
And a waiting surprise,
But even in the white light of sun
The devil knows when he should run.

So Little Time

Ask me for nothing
Shove me through, shove me through
Until my ears tear off
And let the pressure loose.

Boundless measures given numbers,
But if they were nothing
Then nothing is the god
That we loved together.

The deer almost died
On the way home from her house,
The one I still think about
When I'm staring into headlights.

Separate lies at separate times
When voices shifted
Through selfish dimensions,
So much sci-fi, so little time.

Whiskey and Water

This all started
When I started on the whiskey.
I told you how it made me
Feel lighter and less young,
Squeezing life from the last
Of your worn leather hands.
Something split
In and out with it,
Like our visible habitual breath.
Even if I could convince
These angry man hands to turn
On the tap for the ocean,
The desert wants water
Without getting wet.

Food For Trees

Shifting visions of future movements
Where time will take hold
Like a tumor to your throat,
Feeding it's growth
To end the unknown.
Hypothetical breasts in your hands
Or maybe another man's
Straying from the lines.
Good and terrible gods
Will still give you time
To bring his grandsons
To his bones that feed the tree
On the hill beside the lake.
So far from kindred soil,
We may as well be descended
From worms; a need to resurface
Was never so plain.
Hard times come
With the blood in your veins.

A Tribute to Blind Joe Death

Of the river quickly running

Changing wind and facing warning.

Of religion's deepest roots

Splitting fast and shaking loose.

Embracing time with old and new

Shapes and patterns, plucked and

Strewn about the golden fields

Of the wild and untamed road.

No words speak comfort like

The rhythm of the horse or

The wheel rolling musical, steady and

Slowing to feel the pain of the years.

Come east with me my departed friend,

And venture still through silent hills

That shaped your past like a lover's breast;

Abandon with me the words of the west.

Water Is Pain

Hello shameful youth,
Return to me from rusty springs
Or a wet elevator ride
With a little less tease.
Chiseled and crafted too late
To gloat, a sliver draws
The same blood from eight
Years past when the outward
Expanse kept many at bay.
This nameless vessel has
More than one maker and
Guilt is setting sail
With the call of a loon.
Where are my maps?
My compass of blame?
This bitter lake is chained
To past and present the same;
The anchor is light
And water is pain.

Comforting Circles

Oh simple old friend,
Hurry quick to stop the hunger
That evaporates our blood
And rains all over us.
Oh simple old friend,
Make wood from wooden skulls
And hear the saints soliloquy
Created from the dust.
Oh simple old friend,
Stand strongly on your stone
And bring your rod down on the ears
Of those who wouldn't listen.
Oh simple old friend,
With insides marred by older men
Creating strength for running legs
Could leave some muscles poorly fed.
Oh simple old friend,
With insides vibrant red so real
From movement after movement still,
Still you pause to take this meal.

Vultures All

A bird to the glass
Will lead the flock with
Broken wings and peck out
The eyes of any creature
That sees a reflection.
I am no sparrow,
No sacrificial dove
And truth is the white shit
Stain on the hood of your truck.
The mask of intention
Is the pale blue plumage
That paints the raven's kin.
Vultures all, to some lower form
That gives their cause munition.