words

 Words are squeeze jelly 
transparent and sometimes coloful
wild and oily
these words

The goose chase

 I looked up father
some feign laughter to please your attempts at humor
So I'll swap you a smile
I asked your advice in earnest those pearls of wisdom

You sent us on our way
The campervan broke down
Your advice was always certain
these unmatching dinky holiday maker's tents

You sent us on a goose chase we happily drove
benefitting from each little accident or problem
Hope I thanked you effort driven old man
hammer and nails lets build something

for all of our flaws and our silly distractions
Thought I'd have a decade to see you off but it wouldn't be so
Thought I'd see you one more time instead we're bereft
No amount of prayer no, no hope to see you off

Division between us all
Unreasonable words
goosechase memories
a day in thin ambitions

Warped dedication to the road

 These tangled journeys humble me
jumbled junctions overcrowded thoughts
blocking traffic on the street of decision
Lampost duplication grid loop underground commute

Rules so repeated signs so imposing
No exits and freeways that encourage speed
Impulsiveness hand sweat on the steering wheel
Just cells inside of vehicles moving them around

The unconscious blood of the universe forming 
inside this self supporting megalopolis sphere

Like life just appears

 Life gave us hunger
hell life gave us an appetite
lapping up the drops
scraping for crumbs

your shallowest points

At it's height
the heart and stomach beat
for so many useless whims
we were delivered

Life invented us somehow
gave us this game of survival
at it's shallowest points we're still hanging on
At it's highest point ambition

Life gave you so much
marinating in your thoughts
raosting your options
you are delivered

Tonulus bay

 We could see the long pier running down alongside the bay.
The odd orderly phoenix palm and concave stately buildings
golden light overtook the tone of the coastal city and the buildings reaching out
the sea wall not a meter high but so uniformly straight it gave a feeling of safety

Large black sharkfin shaped rocks protruded from the shallows in the bay
appearing in strange pairs with no percievable purpose or application
The sand from the inland desert made the haze yellowish grey still
The static view of everything on that peopleless port was comforting

It seemed like existance could just be
could just check on itself and check out
Observe the world and all that is in it
In a fury of satisfaction that human themselves could never measure

What had built the small city or it's relevance to it's desert filled country was unclear
But the sandy breeze that hazed over the light and gave everything a salty flavor told me it was heaven
or atleast at the lower rungs of it clinging to some other much loftier realm up higher

The possession of John grieves

 we tracked the criminal down in a side street. He wasn't afraid he seemed to dare us to shoot him.
I told him to give himself up. He got into the rusty old car before we could stop him. We followed him through the city. He almost gave us the slip, then he slowed on purpose as if he wanted us to catch him.
He made no sense. I told my partner Ralph to hold off on calling for back up.
We came out onto green open spaces near mitch ridge open county school.
He drove up onto the curve churning the grass up down to dark brown mud. 
The sun's poweful rays at the angle it was capturing it all like a kind of movie set. I braked and My partner and I exited our vehicles with guns drawn. The man on his knees, hands held high, his head slightly prostrate, but we could see the desperate grin on his face.
Some teachers and the headmaster raced down to see the commotion. We told them to hold back. 
The man said his name was John Grieves and that he had gone to this school. My partner protested, said he had also gone to this school. He said the man didn't look like the John grieves he knew.
I told my partner to forget it so we could get him cuffed, in the car and into a cell before he did anymore damage.
So I cuffed the man. But before I could lift him up, my partner asked him what year he was from.
The man said ninety six. And my partner balled his fists, saying it was his year. He said the man was lying. The subject just seemed too sensitive for my partner.
I almost had the man in the back of the cruiser. When the principal appeared out of nowhere with the yearbook.
My partner took it off his hands before the principal could even speak, saying that he could guarantee noone with John's appearance or name would be found in there.
I told him this was unacceptable, but as he was already scanning the pages of his year I let it go.
My partner Ralph looked up, staring accusingly at the principal. He asked him where his picture was. Saying he had a yearbook at home with a clear picture of himself. The principal said that it was strange because he knew Ralph well. John our perpertrator began a very unnatural bout of giggling.
"Look at the face where yours used to be, it's mine." John grieves said.
Sure enough there was a picture of John grieves in his long fine wavy hair and demented grin looking back out of that small frame on the page. The problem was the face wasn't that of a teenager, it was his current face, as if the photo had been taken a minute ago. A man of almost thirty.
As my partner Ralph uttered angry sighs of disbelief, a tear fell from his eye.
It hit the page but instead of a drop of salty liquid, it was a dusty ball that broke into tiny feathers as it hit the paper of the yearbook. I looked up as if some kind of joke was being played on us.
The principal was sprinting away as if the pin on a grenade had been pulled. His legs moving quicker than an animal in fright. John was staring at my partner's face leaning into him to expecting something to happen. 
My partner's head suddenly jolted up and I could see the eye from which the tear came out of was bulging and white, Pulsating with a dark shape floating inside it.
Just a white colorless blob, a pouch like thing that was growing out of it. which suddenly fell onto the page.
It was a membraine with a small birdlike embryo inside it.
It pulsated as Ralph screamed and screamed.
I could feel his raspy screams coming from the back of my own throat.
I tried to calm him, but his other eye began transforming. His screaming died down as his mouth started to close up. Then I started to scream against my own will. John our suspect was inspecting the embryo with his fingers.
My scream changed tone to something more birdlike. I stopped screaming and tried to talk.
My voice reverberated like the chirping of a bird.
At this the suspect John smiled in glee. The second membraine pouch fell from Ralph's eye socket almost bouncing on the yearbook. Ralph's body slumped to the ground, the skin on his face prickly like a defeathered chicken.
I pulled my gun and tried to fire. But my finger had already started transforming.
My arms and legs weakened. I was losing consciousness. John grieves took the gun from my claw like hand and started walking away, I too slumped. The shape of John Grieves slowly exiting my closing field of vision. Everything blurred, thus I was gone before I could say goodbye. 

  

Are you that dead trunk?

 The dead trunk holds onto the healthy tree
Not dancing like the branches withthe leaves on
Not shading the ground like the rest be
While the body is strong

There's one arm out skeleton and foreign
it's bark discolored patchy and lichen infested
Not truly alive yet not completely dead
How many of you out there are a dead trunk?

Sages of the mountain temples

 Sages sit between these burning fire pits in the temple
Their wisdom is tangible in lightening in their auras
Witnesses have new life in their eyes new dreams
Part ofteh truth that hunts kills and consumes demons

Sages whose life pain rages hotter like volcanic storms
These are the stoked firepits burning until sweat forms
Upon them under their warm cloaks salt and water
Their sweat now substituting their tears of years before

The villages below recieve their rain
Their lightening
And in the strong gale their laughter

Building on the high hill

 The chin is a cliff face avoiding fear
Look to the heavy rock fixed up there
Raindrops have fallen like seconds in minutes
wearing the rock face paler  cracked and finite

It is not time or rain wearing you down
Counting those miles to work car bound
And those cents off your debt a pity
Your rent in the shimmering city

Your house in that valley
In the shadow that God made
You want to build another story
That might peak over the holy shade

Build again on the high hills
Virtue catch up follow still
tangled in those fences behind us
We jumped and they fell first

Swimming in history

 short life for us to fuse it
Short midgets bathed in the classic music
swamps of  those old times touch
accumulating pride won't you speak up

switching communication styles
Almost foreign wild
Guides and keys to the locks
The boutique of flowers

Life is syrup 
wading through it
sweet every footstep forward
rhyme me until reward

Rex and the race to matrimony

 Rex ran this way and that below the willows loads
Avoiding the wooden coach wheels across the valley road 
On the low hill where the ceremony will be thrown
Mesmerizing colors of the doors and windows

Rex sprinted under the wagon missing the wheel by inches
The bride took her first step out of the wagon
The dog chomped through the stitches
Half of it left downward sadly sagging

The groom chased and chased and returned empty handed
muddy and disgraced
The priest stood alone under the pergola a look of distaste
distant barking as the wedding dog Rex continued to race

when eyes don't open

 Breathe life into this shade
I move to each empty room
vanishing sparks of life
I hold my eyes and hear the frequency

I open the windowthe blurry brighntess fills
What I cannot see before me
That certain light
I may only feel upon my skin

it holds me like a blanket
Permits me to walk
The bengal stick to find my way
the world in shadow

the mind in light

Fazemos oração a partir das pessoas

Fazemos oração a partir de pessoas

Pelo sagrado reinado da ação
erguendo essas vítimas das drogas, da pobreza e de si mesmas
o Invencível com empatia e compaixão
manifesta seu sacrifício

Pela mente de boa vontade e inteligência espiritual
elevando nossas vidas medíocres, reabastecendo os que estão vazios
enviando-nos adiante para acreditar na bondade que carregamos
e naquilo que podemos doar de nós mesmos aos outros

Onde está sua falsa fonte de cura?
Há quanto tempo você bebe dessa água?
Somente pelo santo reinado da ação
há alguma cura para esses tantos males

Aqueles que elevam outras pessoas
que lhes devolvem lugar e visão
com esperança e entendimento
destroem a apatia que se agarra aos seus ossos

Carlos Cabral Vieira, o ritmo de doar
na abundante Bahia onde a pobreza ainda vive
Raimunda dos Santos, cultivando e renovando pessoas
onde o caos e a adaptação têm ferrões e dentes

We make prayer from people
 
Through the sacred reign of action
raising these victims of drugs poverty and themselves
the Overpowering with empathy and compassion
his sacrifice manifest

Through the mind of good will and spiritual intelligence
raising up our mediocre lives refueling those on empty
sending us forward to believe in the goodness we carry
and that which we can give of ourselves to others

Where is your false fountain of healing?

how long have you drunken the water from there?
Only through the holy reign of action
Is there any cure for these dozen ailments

Those individuals that raise people up
That give them their place and sight
with hope and understanding
destroying the apathy that clings to your bones


Carlos cabral vieira the rhythm of giving
In the abundant Bahia where poverty still lives
Raimunda dos santos growing and renewing people
where chaos and adaption have stings and teeth

Florisvaldo-A fantasma de Cabo Bruno

 He turned down death street in rolling maverick
four cops in he back loading that abrupt mosquetao 
Hoarding the sort of hate that burns the stomach lining
That goodbye countdown window unwinding

surrounded the happy go lucky
The easy the easy just getting hard
cocaine slingers and charity beats prechurch squatter alleys
Against the wall burn the drugs pump bodies with bullets

the roar of the mosquetao to extinguish life
muddy graves no paperwork
souls grouped over that barren land
the silent samba of death

look into the eyes of Florisvaldo
the fire storm of violence coming over simpletons
dimebag dealing skinny legged youths caught with ink
No funeral just a debt of hard deep pain and grief

sweet negligence and hate easy easy simple
mesmerizing the drinker and bringing on
a string of consequences the changing colors of the opala
The barrel the order the abandoned body

The swirling void of pain and grief hidden behind vulgar music
evangelics narcotics and tittilating carnaval floats

Apothecary tongue

 I took the river walk to the apothecary
youth and elderly mixed into me saturated
tiny pills and creatures stacked in the wooden stands
distracted as we check labels some holding life together

nonnegotiable nostrum
give yourself a bill of health a reason for hope
awkwardly hobbling up the path to the next hill
With the east you pop a pill or a drop

The water in the creek is dark
Not from dirt but from depth
The strange evolution into middle age
the skin reflects the ills and years

give me these pills and creatures
who'll keep me fresh as the valley floor