The red ghost of me

How I trickle
fumble and tickle
the hair turning red
The man of me mad

 Embark onto the pavement
Broken city all okay
My masculinity snake like
slithering up the cracks in the pavement

Know me by another name
lost and hopeless
Found and godlike

Peeling back the clouds
Just to find their lightning
Extract the strom
From their inevitable storm

Embark on the wayside
Hairy and sasquatch like
Hostile and warlock like

Eyes as these
See what you hide
Eyes like these, now lo
get to know you inside

Endless thread of disquiet

 I couldn't guess what they were trying to do
It's a life, a machine
get a grip
fidgeting with some small object

anxiety such a gift
tapping in and out of
Hey drone agitation
I can see your new hobby

On a thread on a screen in some pent up implication
That reads under the title
I can see the shape of the attempt
Life is a rush you want to disprove something

Sit with yourself restless and unable to just to be
Influenced by the live wires and pre tweeking teens
coming up and splashing their half truths and dreads
All across the little reality they hope you'll check

Golden stork

 The feathers have grown
The bird is magnificient
The baby cries through the wall
The beak extends over years

The plummage is majestic
The grace of the bird
The pain in the infant
Soon flight will be expected

Night is dry morning humid
Eyes imitate
The bird spreads it's wings
Falling off the rail

Taking the upwind into the sky
Golden feathers
Gone into the sunrise
Gone from our observation

Encroaching and disobeying

 Outside the fence
Poking pines
stinking eucalypts
Trees and undergrowth conceal me

Pull a cigarette from pack
Time has no authority
The bell will go
 but we will stay 

Duties have no authority 
Strict voices calling people
Angry at broken boundaries
Poorly maintained fences

Need dark shade
Or direct light
Just not the greys
Just not twilight

A place where rules massage obedience
Into believing structure is safety
Yet even the air itself disobeys
Fast-growing exotic trees pushing through boundaries

I light the cigarette
Smoke flows and fluffs across the fence
Voice fades behind me giving up
The man connected to it is gone

Undesirable pariahs emerge from the undergrowth
Wary and troublesome souls
Slipped beyond the limits and structure
I draw smoke into my lungs and exhale

For a moment the fence shrinks
Branches scrape against its wire
The stragglers disappear between the trees
And the voice has no volume to warn us

Colorless veil and bad coffee

 My coffee tasted like shit this morning
Age had been yelling at me 
From the moment I woke
To this current sentence I'm struggling to throw on the eye

Tasteless boring coffee and no expression to the back garden morning light
My dog looked up with pity in his eyes or atleast thats what I chose to see
My energy plateaus bleakness slowly manifests like a big colorless veil
It tells me about my past like it can read into my mind and it's memories

It doesn't jeer or taunt, it just matter of factly reiterates the disappointment
It lays down the situation and the acidic aftertaste of the coffee stings the mouth
I do not try to diminish or deny the elaborations of the colorless veil
Infact I have to strain my brow to be bothered at all

Despite the growing apathy and sense of stinking staleness a sense a slight optimism
For if all those years contained the most daunting and abject desolation
Then surely tomorrow was going to shine super brightly in comparison
That is if I was seeking the difference and not the familiarity 

Casa de repouso(house of rest)

 A terra da fazenda terminava
Pernas pesadas nos levaram para o bairro
Ruelas estreitas onde viviam aposentados
Cuidando das barracas de suas camas

Uma longa fileira de casas geminadas
Conduzia para dentro da vila
Ao longe, um velho atravessou a rua
Passo de caracol sobre o asfalto

Onde meus pais moram, ouvi uma voz dizer
Com quem ele estava falando?
Cortinas escondiam o conteúdo de cada casa
Por trás de coloridas cortinas de artesanato local

A nuvem se estendia diante do dia
Observávamos formas que se moviam lentamente
Dentro das casas cujas portas estavam abertas
Velhice e resignação

Planejei minha saída daquele lugar
Mas agora meu corpo estava cansado
Minhas ambições mortas, eu seguia mancando com a perna boa
Para preparar uma xícara de chá dentro de um casabre vazia

The farm land ended
Heavy legs carried us into the borough
Narrow lanes where reitred people lived
Attending stalls from their beds

A long length of connected cottages
Leading into the village
In the distance an old man crossed the street
Snail pace across the tar

Where do my parents live I heard a voice say
Who was he talking to?
Curtains hid every cottages contents
Over colorful local handicraft curtains

The cloud stretched out before the day
We observed slow moving shapes
Inside the homes whose doors were open
Age and resignation

I planned my exit from this place
But now my body is tired
My ambitions dead I amble on my good leg
To make a cup of tea inside the vacant shack

Left for me

Bear necessities.

 The bear necessities

I felt a tug at my jersey.
Something hauled me out of my hole in the trash heaps by my shoulder.
I heard shrieks of laughter as the twins laid eyes on me.
Their father’s crooked grin and reactive laughter. I played dead to not freak them out.
I felt the lift of the foul smelling wind and whoosh I was in the back of the pick up truck.
Among the broken furniture that Mr Barker intended to take back home to his workshop and fix and repolish.
The twins looked back at me from the cab's back window as we got onto the freeway.
I sat up and watched the landfill disappear.
We pulled into a long dirt oil stained driveway then into a garage with its own yard.
They leaned me against the garage wall and the twins poked and prodded me until my stuffing started to come loose and the white candy floss material started to fluff and burst from my seams.
And as I was slowly emptied of my white cloudy puff, the banging of the hammer and the chiseling sound of the saw continued.
The twins lost interest and soon I was alone. I jumped up and collected the stuffing that had fallen out during the interaction with the twins.
I pushed it all back in. even the humid sickly parts that had become sodden in the last rains. I slid under the front gate and hobbled the five miles back to the landfill.
I passed the tall sycamores whose autumn leaves would make the highway look like shit.
I passed the small convenience store where there were no middle shelves making the customer the center of attention.
I passed the empty parking lots of real estate offices that were open but unmanned.
My knees got dusty as I took a shortcut onto the long winding Landfill road through the weeds.
I got to see the real world. Lady bugs, small spiders and butterflies.
I came out onto the landfill grounds. I made it to the edge.
I realized in the back of my teddy bear brain that I wouldn’t be able to find my old cubby hole.
I embarked across the methane badlands and found a convenient snug hollow to tuck myself into.
As I tucked myself in, I felt my sense of self leach out. And slowly my vision escaped me.
The last images of the hyperactive twins disappeared. The last echo of Mr Barker’s fatherly voice was gone.

And that was that I was gone. Yet I was still there.
And it rained again that night.