Out of the gaff

 The corridor was gray and moist Players walking up and down trying to maintain swagger in exhaustion A damp towel drops to the long wooden plank bench Eyecontact fierce, resistance, curiosity The limousine snarling in the second lane of the porte cocher Wheezing as it was almost forty years carrying the arrogance Through the front door cologned and cocky projecting a face A laugh and a pun later in the back with daquiri A fat tick behind the ear you could call a brain Some wouldn't go that far as the engine was still idling The front entrance full of human worshippers With numbered shirts draining them of any life purpose Failing marker pens and low zombie repetitions of their club anthems Wailing on and humming trying to outdo the idling limousine Praying and hoping that the tinted window would crack and a grace-saving hand would emerge to mark their life valid

Simon Bernard Elliott

Your disability is love

 You cannot touch the very affection you feel

The other person can feel your affection through your touch

Salty thoughts crack and spill solid crystals on the table

Where feeling meets yet disconnects

when you feel yourself falling in

Then catching a branch or  rock to stop yourself going under

When you should just let yourself drown in it

Instead you stay above the water of love

Breathing like air was expensive

Desperate like some new born mammal

You couldn't just be tender just open up

Let the flow of something strong take you

You get so close to understanding your feelings

Words and actions come together to sensualize

Then out of the blue it all stings and stinks

Like mold on a psychological hornet stew

The search for self and exiting the path

Has thou faced the mirror of self
No?
Has thou ignored it?

Has thou strayed from the path alotted you
No?
You didn't break out

You ignored both path and self
Going onward invisible
A smile that says you know

Eyes that say you've lived
Yet thou is just a screen watcher
Neither loyal to sacred veering

Neither interested in knowing the deepness
Maybe you proved there was nothing underneath
Taught me that my meager attempts also failed

Or I have come to believe I am further into my spirit
Than my sensitive skin
Privations self made or otherwise are sacred gifts too

Has though self sabotaged to know the world has traps
Have you deprived yourself because life deprives
Have you never wondered what lurks under skin and bone

Rio Bonito

 They own the land by the river
Floods have driven them broke
They didn't bother trying to adapt
Every curse was allowed to fix itself in

Two meter depth of the narrow stream
Zig zagging across the land
hydrating the cattle
irrigating the crops

But these folks didn't bother evolving
In their slow death name us culpable 
But we were simply visitors observing land
The crow's tantrum matches my laughter

Your shacks are falling down 
Because you have not replaced the boards
Or banged in tiles or fixed screws and nails
Delapidation is your attitude

The fields are overgrown with pest weeds
So tell me what does life owe you?
What right do you have to neglect your land
To fatten yourself and give nothing in return

Positano barber

 Italian Barber shop
Tiny space
The line was long 
A celebrity was served first

I looked into the glass
The back of the man's neck
tense as he used the razor
To clean the tiny hairs off the jawline

Lucertola

These pools full of life
Distracted by the freak waves that push through
By the late summer sun that recruits the blue
Burns the pavement of vicolo 

The thick rock walls as old as roman times
Housing lizards loose and foolish
looking over the turbulant pools
Toward the restaurants above

Each wave rushes into the pool
As if timed to the city clock
to the influx and out flow of people
moving the seaweed inward then outward

The lizard looks into the water
small minnows dart
Their tiny silhouttes
Sliding over the pools boulder floor

The water itself interferring with time
The sun analyzing it lighting it up
In the positano pre autumn
late morning of the lucertola

Winning double decker

 They say life is double decker
Coming in these sturdy amounts
Chasis diamonds rowdy
Anticlimax snacks
 tasteless loud

Who knows maybe a spot of luck
An imaginary ticket to win
Life is double decker
Chance on spin
Challenge and overshare

Suddenly the book is open 
There's your reservation
Hot ink on the page
stuck painted kiss on pale face

Double decker privilege
Something to share
Get a wanter or a needer
It all comes in and no way to deal