Form a queue

 The queue was often vertical though sometimes horizontal
A bench where people sat and worked on becoming friends
The training happened at night
flashing into day the beach and the sea

Heroes looked up knowing in their face
beach sand was age lines from wind and water that food of the elements
like sand was blown in a thick dust all over our identity
tanned and yellowed by the sun

Those heroes left these helpless humans
and their illusion of rights
crude and misguided expectations
in long rows and files waiting for a turn that will never come

survival was horizontal
Legs into motion
rushing at the window
for a chance at validity

No space for law
so enjoy this wide smile
anticipating the feast to come
over insane lands

People line up to get what they think they need
The lucky few that get in at the door
soon find out they have no vocation for it
Night exchanges smirks with dawn

For they truly know
feel electric darkness
Compose symphonies about the dying herds
waiting to have a label stamped into them

lingering sullen expressions, looking for a badge to wear
The few masters we adore get lost in the landscape
and all there is, is the line of people staring toward the entryway
desperation made love to idleness and gave birth to lethargy

Staring at what use to be the entrance
So few were accepted and so many stand at the door
And wait as night and dawn laugh their heads off
creating a decapitated morning

A nonthinking light
a default purpose
an ongoing complaint that has no response or solution
A life of undying indifference 

The unjaundiced sun arms folded
looking out to sea
Not interested in the static tensions
stationary woes and chronic anxiety of the waiting hoard

Social media injury

a word

what could it conjure
A speech 
who could a speech injure

An appeal
what kind of popularity can you garner
Secret hostilities we harbor
That carry outrage much farther

Your guts on the screen
No surgeon could cut it back into place
intestine kraken viewing display cocaine
Rubber neck urge predisposed brain

bleeding into the feed
How these sheep are pleased
Bloods a hot issue no stitches
distract the destitute from their ditch

Baking enmity in those screen set eyes
Throw in entrails and fry
seeing red past demurral
ruptured controversial

The haemorrhage takes on a life of it's own
Hyper micro videos turbo sewage drones
Sponsored and branded blood stained calamity
unbutton rage and consolidate artless vanity

supercilious and regurgitating the status quo
Woke asleep, eyes open -reflection closed 
haughty, plastic and jejune
overcloned and unimmune

The vagabonds and the wizard

 we dragged the hotel over land
Landlords and dogs stood by to watch
Wheels turned and rivers spilled
great groups of friends addicted to the sugar of the journey

Our buses and belongings bouncing off our tired backs
Movement seemed like food
Hundreds of miles of great steaks and soups
Immigrant hearts that would stop beating without motion

Telling ourselves to panic when paths become untraversable
Yet spending the greater parts of weeks
On flimsy bridges and roads
14pm sun put it's money in as well

But the river stopped the convoy from going on
The old antique dealer with a thousand dogs marched down
Down from that long driveway that was extended mortality
aromatic life growing along those terraces all edible
Down he marched and bellowed

Go through backwards you fools
The height of your journey and a surefooting
Only come from understanding
The long leagues you've already tread

A girl too short

 She reached up to the bar
But the bar was too far
she was disproportionate yet no longer clingy
How much of that was god?
How much her upbringing?

She reached up to the tap smaller
To pour herself a glass of water
Tip toe and whine She couldn't reach
pleading help yet unwilling to say please

Galloping indoors as if on a horse
Then into that screen fully immersed
Unknown to herself first

She would keep reaching
Like the sick for a nurse

For the cure for a spirit short in stature

The adult

 The clouds seem to limit
ambitious parents

Lost so lost
But guided like it all makes sense

The cross over from childhood
that exchange of chemicals

Those supposed goals for living
distilled in ridiculous consensus

We nod at the shores
Embarking as predictably as our parents did

Darker skies sow no seeds of relief
They promise storms in an impudent tone of voice

The friendship has grown for years
all importance was built eagerly by peers

Thunder rips and rams those clouds and pummels
Creatures of habit become furniture

Life raft

 A life raft

What I read on your face wasn't indifference
It was a well practiced patience
years expected to have been gracious
If our bodies are cities anger is sewage

Resentment to purge
My Selfishness can't build outlets or bridges
It takes perspective and warmth
to keep from being frigid


What I heard in your voice 
It wasn't irony that I caught
But often distracted attempts at import
A caring despite tempers too short

We need somewhere
and with someone to vent
Each episode of disaster
efforts my mum's good intent

One Christmas perception
I rest in the blissful conclusion
Behind expectations and contention
I see the efforts of my mother's intentions

A piece of salvation forms
A life raft on a sea under constant storm
This thank you letter to the being I was born from

No rhyme nor compunction

 No trust in her eyes
fire in her hands
conflict radar
Fighting posture

At first demure
then fists raised
grin wider than a hyena
Laugh sardonically acid

A fall in joy
A loss of bliss
An urgency to repair
The offended stranger's composure

Offence was a game
a species of tennis
net on fire
grin to frown no love

At first demure
Then a testing 
With pointed aphorisms
and parallel nips

For age must be no fun
though sensitive egos are

William Fog

 The trees and pools
and minus 6
but the humid fog
takes it all away

Business trip
turned into a life
With neighbors
that appear

As the fog diminishes


Winter died that year
steam rose up like an empire
Prosperity lined it's wings
dragging clouds down

covering the land in a thick fog

The path forward is obscured
Nothing to know
Nothing to see
No seasons

Just a family on an island
The edge of Europe

Leaf of Christ

The grapeleaf

 Symmetry delicately tickled 
spread out upon the absorber God's son
life's own weave toward our hunger
abundance in design

all elements
sustenance and medicine
sculpted perception
ironic veins

Leaf of chaos

 The grape leaf 

An overcrowded room
music and lights instinctual dancing
Inebriation and insistant crapulence
screaming and bellowing

Euphoria  and stimulation
an infinite moment
ticking backward
Like into a glass

The view from your building

 The storeys of survival
In the edifice of life
The skills into jobs
the fruit into the blender

The phone and urgency
a plan for this human exhibit
time falls out of the hourglass
The sand falls like belongings
out of a suitcase

Collect old friends
like antiques
with all of their flaws
all of your yours

Aim for a tunnel in the sky
One that leads to an unknown future

Under the trolley-walls of beyond

 The old child the pavement wears
the moon and seventy years
over her desperate face in street lamp light
Abandoned life of one everlasting night

I've never felt so helpless she uttered in hum
under the hindered buzz and spill of cheap white rum
searching for trash to trade begging with guile
her gutter stained smile

The old chain of a child
the street written on her face all wild
with all the malice and majesty of folley
Her man comatose under the trolley

The one they collect cans in
Their first belly under god
The moon and death poke and prod
Just to see if she can still shake or nod

curbside intoxicated existence
The locals fiercely plead riddance
The ticks and tocks of withdrawl
The patrol car's ominous call

The chipped brick as much in her smile
as in her frown
The stray dogs they adopted attempting wily
yet remain on the ground

God has to answer for it she said sick
Mouth swears no pain did she self inflict
But dawn chortles from her mouth's smile headlong into strife
The walls of the world beyond are built in this life

A fly's luck

 you drone by 
circling the room
investigating the sofas
Investigating me

vying for a crumb
a light hum to the buzz
as you move across my field of view
Irritation blips on the chart

you zip around
diving and weaving
landing briefly
lifting wings

tumbling and landing
wandering over thread
 tasting the surface

The ghost and the word

 when I see you ghost
I can't see your face
I simply know not what you want
You hug the shadows as if they were more than me

Oh I see you crawling somewhere out of the corner of my eye
as if on the edge of a skyscraper
by the time my head is turned you are gone
But I caught a glimspe my ghost

And what kind of creature do you deem me to be
as you step around me
Observing me as if I were special to heed
What color aura is it that you assume to read

Likely some decades you slipped away from life's ecstacy
Or was it a century or two maybe
Why here now and why me?

When I see you flow off the wall gracefully
You make me want to build a shrine
The hindrance of your existance you say
somehow stuck in this timeline

Unable to translate the esoterica
or divulge the secrets of death
The unreadable image
The unknowable truth lest

The focus of the presence like sermon predica
my very language in dream translated
An instant perception, shards of an old life faded
A light from somewhere the past collapsed

to the woken moment
a world asleep
and ghost who I'm host to 
homage in lament

The inner sight the eye that sees both ways
I see you ghost undesirable
The churns of my existance give you shelter
 this dark fog that each letter forms

This dark fog emitted from the finger
that captures the likeness of all through ludicrous word 

Salt over the shoulder

 

somewhere through the key hole of middleclassdom
snug into privileged cuddly
Habits of a new sophistication foreign and ugly
reaching back toward that battered way of life
from a life of plenty
through a slang, a laziness, a void in one's identity

Well if I could be more
i'd rub it like herbs into steak
Like salt into wounds
like dirt into eyes
chords into tunes
hard deathly lines into runes

Like a contract 
tatooed into the skin and rediscovered at winters end
An arrival banner at the end of a race
a new car as it pulls into a drive way of bushes and envy
A salary will you push you up toward it

your face expenditure
your voice advertising
your life a rehearsal
to endorse this game of ascension

The tractor wheel's bride

 duty controls footsteps
guides her down the same path
until footprints became a path
and the path inevitably became a trench

The familiar labyrinth of one woman's routine
each corner presenting a predictable sight 
as she rounds it into that part of the day
walking in the air of her existance

repeating as if to affirm
even as offspring deaf
even as husband transfixed
by his own midlife inadequacies

that trench a frown
Constantly downward
and into the mud
and duty
Pretty martyr

The trench runs thin
familiar and dim
a purchase metal and shiny
helps you forget your heart
That calls like telephones once did

The muscle, mouth and stomach

 metal and sweat
freaking out on the effort it takes
to push out breath
to push out metal
and invite strength into my arms

the mind has its own friction
as does the joints
and crazy opinions
that press together so hard
To smash into shards

yet I remain whole
every vigor
My greatest failure
forgetting how to imitate
and sinking into the puddle

That is the secret sauce
the psyche a power a thousand times the manada mind
the essence of me squeezed from a few confused decades
Into a rhyme of vein and insight
Into an energy that every hormone and chemical support

that marina trench mystery 
In my longitudinal fissure 
Running up the questions of life
And pumping them into a meat grinder
so I can fry them and sustain myself

So that I can pump Iron
become solid 
see over the horizon
and walk there on solid legs
anticipation flex flex flex

The never sauce
That I can sense
With my olfactory assiduity
My eye's knife and fork
The oven on my tongue

devour it slowly

not a crumb be left
even a prayer from the blessed

could not marinate it

As it goes to the center of my stomach
To help me conquer a world asleep
shake it all up awake
burn it just to extinguish its flames
Then dine on it again like a eternal furnace

 

A statue of a city

 It was rainbow through
all a pale blue
one day you might see it all again
Your eyes falling out of your head just to reach the color
cloud brushes the high altitude land

somewhere near the smell of rain and new life

The city was polished and columned
A level of prestige
A pond of a day abundance
roads well lined with stately cyprus
screaming to be back in Italy

farms around soaking up the chalky deluge

smiles could age
not through this season
we through a disc that consumed the sky
and put us into a humid trance
dodging the sun

We've landed in a paddock
where the face humanity is grinning

Romantic investigators

 My police car is dirty
after the chase
it was an incredible offender
vocation in fact

the structure was burnt
reports were written
the coroner and forensics fell
during post tragedy lorn and smitten

Before caffeine

 dawn thunder
splattering 5am
the gloom
pulling the day through heavy cloud

it's all fresh and moist
like a salad
under the drizzle
It broke into the night

morning rises
rain falls
thunder bathtub
floods of fame

A scattering of showers
that beg for boiling coffee

A little product with no purpose

 You the statistic
defensive redundant irrelevant
arguments forced upon you
the divine duty to consume

A number to be collected
reshared and targeted in every campaign
Our panel of experts to push numbers
increase sales, be the purchase

The tunnel vision
a pipeline of opportunity
Can we count you inside
sliding down into financial dependency