Years of pretend

 Don't answer the question
Take the worm off the hook
the life line is going deeper
dragged down by the sinker

Carp perches on the rock bottom
Above oily black seabirds get snagged
On old fishing nets
The past such a web

your personal racket
Volume and mafia
Scratching bags
and pro quos

Body bag 
Concrete weights
Boat all blood stained
slumber in the deep

Carpe diems
Flock conformity
left feeling like idiot beggers
Hats in hands hoping for quarters

Never coming up for air
Afraid to give away too much
Thinking the secret is safe
Alas its all out in the open

Never answering the questions
And up the sleeve just enough ammunition
So if cornered
you can tommy gun around the magazine

A story re-enacting itself
inside of the head 
A bubble of pride
formed from years of pretend

The fussy German

 The young man looked offended
He gazed amazed at his interlocutor
Eyes almost watering

Hint of outrage visiting his brow
Surprise and visible transition into mutual unease
Then he states the obvious, articulating his displeasure

He corrects each part of the interaction as if such an act was necessary
Perceived faux pas that don't measure against his cultural conditioning
Through the possible reasons this interaction was wrong in nature

Strategically he gives concessions 
Tells the interlocutor to go on with his day
And that he genuinely wishes him well

Which carries no value whatsoever
flooding the situation with another layer of surreality
The imposing farewell is a pair of scissors severing a string

Faces of Ymir

 Ive seen the face poking out of them clouds up there yonder

You say there are too many words

But there are not enough to describe that face

It imposes hollow eyes like something tribal

It tells me to question my whole life

friend and rival

It beams out from between thick crusts of abandoned cloud

It begs no pathetic collective it is whole except for a nose that doesn't fit

It promises rain and truth and strife and peace and god and then maybe some death

It promises those deep greys that scream flood flood from the bewitched sky face

It grusses the mountain and lets loose on the lowland

That face all pale and wiggly unapologetic fully fully that deiety

Some nestle in their coziest corners blanketed and deafened

Others seek the beginning of those inevitable thunder like drums

The ones the boom and hug the soul

The ones that emit fortune and wrath simultaneously

uncanny gloom building itself and the face still smirks

My spirit dances up there in the chaos

let me have mine these thoughts quasi furled dream unfolding

Hands go up and down with the deluge the face looms again

The smile and eyes wash the tarmac rearrange these streets

Torrential relentless, dragging what doesnt belong

Robbing its essence, as that thing did the city when the city was dry

The next line is hers

 The swing attached to the apple tree
The sandpit not too far off
Places so inviting where cheerful children play
The sun declared yellow Hovers aloofly in autumn

A far off beach north winds cool
Freedom cruises downward through
Eliminating the summer heat for my writing partner
The pen in reach the next line hers

The grass remembers her footsteps
Apples fall where beaks and worms meet
A page left open, a poem for a shortening day
The kind of world busy with children's chatter

 Leaves accumulating in patterns on the ground
Like a red carpet to the night deer or racoon
A small bird busy with it's own language
Jenny watches the morning give itself to the afternoon

Arctic winds steal parts of the summer
The rest of it retreats southwards 

Voyenachalnik ushyol

 We are lost
I see the remains of us
You all staring
wanting some sort of instruction now

I say these are the best of us
We are organized by region
we might as well be a religion
we don't seek the truth we believe we know it

But we are lost
Desperation in the eyes of our soldiers
Day is churning dusk
men are dizzied by their apathy

Make a little speech
stirr those last little sparks
Send them off on their last suicide missions
While I retire somewhere out of bomb blast range

And so it was
Later that night after fighting died down
I armed and returned to the spot
Sirens of their ambulances and security forces

I loomed in the shadows and listened to their voices
Then vanished
as if I had never existed

Pindomonhangaba nightmares

 The omen of the flying shadow crossing full moon
During the day we walked to the first park.
Thirst started to get the better of us
Then up to the bigger flat park on the other side of town
The palmiera saias were dying off
Not a reptile insight
What had they done with my brothers?

Wide avenues that narrowed down toward their awkward endings
like wonka corridors
Big restaurants 
Large signs no meaning
The elbow of a great river
The carcass of a bull washed up on its margins
Vultures are late

The palms are half eaten
Caterpillars are infesting them 
Because lizards dont exist there
Those noble fronds have missing filaments
Even the grafiti seems lopsided
I found myself disoriented in surreal winter heat
Back there lost in Pindo somewhere back in 2024

Brainwash drilling

 Round and round burning the air whizzing
Metal and sharp revolving
Through the wood into the wall
Each word into the ear

Buzzing diving it's sinking and biting as it goes
Smoking and entering
Friction and the dust catches
Flames burst 

The spin of it radiates immortality from outside
From inside compounded death
The message melts ear wax 
it's meaning going deeper