Blue.

Blue

The earthly nest swallows me whole-
It gulps me down, I’m bottom’s up,
I buy new pants at the store and refuse to wash them
For days.

You said you never had the chance to say goodbye
To the man you loved,
All those years ago, in late October,
And the sun was going down and the hearts were
Moist, and tears were moist, too-

Sometimes, the words get muddled and forgotten;
Sometimes, forbidden hearts are stilled,
And we drink down water in a cup,
And the cup is half-filled with water.

We pray that the time is right. When is the time ever right?
When is the hands of the clock forgotten,
And hands are not forgotten?

The bread is rising in the oven.
No one told me this would take awhile.

The birds chirp in the trees.
The wind has stilled; the cold shivers;
An airplane drones.
It is like being in a field of flowers.
It is like the silence is everywhere.
You are quiet in your waking.
You are quiet in your grief.

Never mind, you say. Never mind.
You shake your head. The sky does not bleed.

To a woman that has the personality of an Angel, remix

To a woman that has the personality of an Angel

You walk the Earth so peaceful, so graceful

Your soul gives off warmth like fire on a cold winter’s night

You care so much for others, into your heart you invite

Heaven protrudes in the sparkle from your eyes

The light protects from darkness, trust it implies

The heart you possess gives off a radiance of love

Like the romance that is felt from the release of a white dove

In God’s graceful presence, we are heart adorned;

Love’s destiny’s reason is a night that is scorned.

The smile on your beautiful face lights up a room-

A breath of fresh air like spring roses abloom.

To a woman that has the personality of an Angel.

I found this on my computer...I don't know if I wrote it or if someone else wrote it, but I think it's probably mine, not sure! Sometimes I write something and then forget.


*******

To a woman that has the personality of an Angel

You walk the Earth so peaceful, so graceful

Your soul gives off warmth like fire on a cold winter’s night

You care so much for others, into your heart you invite

Heaven protrudes in the sparkle from your eyes

The light protects from darkness, trust it implies

The heart you possess gives off a radiance of love

Like the romance that is felt from the release of a white dove

The smile on your beautiful face lights up a room

A breath of fresh air like spring roses abloom

August Hue Thunderstorm.

Thunderstorm

The trees stand tall as skyscrapers,
Bow down gracefully under a thunderstorm.
Raindrops fall below; tears splatter the ground
Like unforgotten rain, thunder sounds
Like the beat of drums.
I am not here, I am not moved; my heart
Beats like drums, fast and steady.
Houses stand tall against the storm;
Bears and rabbits hop out of their hiding places,
Make beds behind old shrubs.
Nature is catastrophic, cataclysmic; a farmer
Shells out a truckload of eggs from the hen house,
Sells them to the county store.
A woman yells at her son, who is carrying home
A bushel of apples; an old maid tries on a new outfit.
She hates living in the country, hates being poor,
Misguided, and judged; but she loves country
In the wintertime, when the snow falls prettily
On the ground, and the old woman down the street
Gives her a ripe new plum and a basket of
Wash cloths she knitted herself.
The storm lessens; the wind heaves in and out,
In and out, sounding like a harmonica.
Clouds slowly melt from view, into the August hue.

Flowers.

I forgot the sound of the grandfather clock, the way it mesmerizes in small doses. The doctor came in today to check on Bradley Shaw, who broke his hip in two places; his mind revels at the flower that was stuck between two pages, the sadness imbedded in the dark. The sound of her voice is the only thing that will soothe him; the sound of madness fills his soul. It is a sickness, a journey of words that flits through the midnight air and drops down on peppermint oceans; a sickness that has no words or sound or color, an odorless gas that is forgotten in waves-sounds are outside of sounds; light flashes in a bit of color, a hatred that is putrid and moves like steel and flame. Someone forget me; please forget who I am; please forget I ever existed. A ghost calls to me from the depth of the dark, it is me, who I have become. The sunlight falls in through the window; makes gold bars on the floor of the cold room. The woman makes Kool-Aid for the old man. And brings it to him in a paper cup. The sound of flowers fills the room. And lights the world with its gloom.

Make the Canvas Bleed.

A torrid voices of imagery
A fresh green crown in the grass.

Dapples lightly in upturned voices;
The birds sing songs in summer
Cows low to the low red moon;
I walk solidly on ghost footsteps.

Old doorknobs bend in June;
A baby suckles on a mama’s breast.
The cattails select John’s choices,
We don’t know if it’s a bummer.

I try to rhyme; we won’t let it pass.
The meadow is green in the cold snow.
Volcanoes spout ash from below;
The cold wind blows.

You are the picture of a photograph.
We realize the still sound of the
Brownstown.
Tomorrow is not a bent spoon.
I am alone.
Birds flock on heels in June.

The wind is a sixteen bottles of symmetry;
You aren’t mad, but you aren’t walking quietly.
A torrid voices of imagery,
Talks to me and the cold wind blows.
You don’t know that I am angry.
You don’t know that cattails bleed.

OK.

I never had a father who bothered about me.
We whisper words of wisdom; and shelter where we speak.
I never had a family that wanted me,
Never had a shoe to wear, or anyone to care;
I found my way through the uncertainty,
And laid my head on the floor.
Whispering words of wisdom,
I can barely speak anymore.
All the meanness of the dark,
And the shadows of the dawn,
My head I still hold it high,
When life is overdrawn.
The birds speak gently to the sky;
There is no one who hears.
We force ourselves to live our lives,
Without knowing why or where.
The planet is a memory, of spinning voices
And doubt,
We try to speak the words are bleak,
And I can’t scream or shout.
All the roads we walk upon,
And all the greed,
Are turned out in a whirlabout,
And we don’t say what we need.
I lay my head upon your shoulder,
And we walk on the grass.
I don’t think what we speak,
And the crowds are rolling fast.
I never had a father and he never had one, too,
The sky is molted; the volcanoes erupted;
In a field of blue.
He never said what he didn’t say,
And then he went away-
I look outside and stars collide,
And we are all OK.

I Am the Electric Guitar.

I am the electric guitar.
I strum you down a field of flowers.
I strum you when the harp has stilled.
I take you home and fill you with music;
The sound of your crying wakens my cat,
Shadow.
I found him in an abandoned lot late one
Afternoon,
And the sun was shining on a brick wall.

I am the electric guitar.
The words flow fast from my lips,
And the river flows and the sun shines
On the tabletop,
And my heart declares that I am in dire
Need of showering.
We are the news.
We are the apologetic.
I bought you at a pawn shop in Brooklyn,
You spewed songs from your lips.

You said you weren’t naïve.
I didn’t believe in naïveté.
I don’t believe in anything other than
My truthful words,
Burnt brown from ashes.
She said you would not melt.
That the cheese would melt the
Sandwiches,
That the landslides of commerce
Have not been broken into.
That our house was not put up for sale.

I am the electric guitar.
I speak words and worlds are tuned into shades.
We turn down the bright blankets
On the bed.

Don't Dwell.

A gazillion stars you said were words,
Wrapped in your arms, the flowers you picked
Strewn out into the relentless universe.
You said you would be home by noon.
You said you were not done working at Walmart’s,
Two women named Diane as cashiers.
You bought a package of cigarettes;
You spoke to the woman who spoke Spanish.
I called my mother on the telephone and she
Wrote down special names;
Specific dates and times related to Vietnam.
She said she didn’t like Vietnam War
Anymore,
Didn’t like the old ghosts living in her closet
And shooed them away.
She said it was long past their time.
She said nothing was more flushed than
The familiar face of rage,
Spilled out lonely and naked on dirt rags.
We bought a couple of washcloths at Walmart,
And everything was coming into place.
Her mind was good, and destiny was not done.
She knocked on the doors of nursing homes,
And told us we couldn’t walk,
Couldn’t talk, find things in a lily of the field.
My mind was made up.
I would work on Broadway. I would sing and act
And freshen myself up to live daily,
My mouth pursed slightly, singing
A bad song.
You said you would come to bed.
You said a lot of things.
You were working on your backswing.
You were pacing up and down the stairs.
The house was old and seemed to swallow people.
The house was old and it seemed to swallow horns.
A gazillion stars you said were words.
Broken and plucking on strings.
The stars are pinpoints of eyes.
They are of the old worlds.
The laughter that is beaten dead.
The man that could not find the time to make others
Laugh.
The calmness of it; the other side of the ice,
The earth that spoke to people who listened,
And sighed quietly as the world slept.

On Iceland.

She sighed and the still of her voice
Was a boom box on center stage.
Her words burn like torrid images,
Of sultry lanes and burning microfilm.
She spins through the galaxy;
The planets twirl and whirl
And we are walking on water.
I plant rhododendrons; geraniums;
White lilies and broken bells;
The cold is in the cold,
The wind hollow and we find our way
Through the nakedness.
You said you wouldn’t find me
Anywhere to sit;
Buildings sit like islands on crabgrass.
The wind is whispering,
Sad and lonely songs through the trees.
We cut the grass and the grass is watered daily;
We cut down trees and they wreck havoc
On Iceland.
The sun is shining on the shore, our shore,
The place where we met and dreamt
Big dreams-the place where we found
Inner turmoil and broke through the acid
Rain that flocked the clouds.
We talk to the clouds-
Sing and clouds are reborn,
In the bitterness, the simplistic
Time,
The houses were reborn and given
New names.
A new star was born in the sky,
Purple and veiled as a promise.
The still of her voice moved mountains,
And the West winds was stilled.

First part, Dragonbane.

The light was bright.
The soldier wanted to be in it.
They left him alone and put his body in a big brown box. The soldier saw this from where he stood, swallowing hard and making sure his mind was ready to accept the consequences of his actions. Everything was so bright, it hurt his eyes.
A man walked into the room. This was not Death. Death did not wear robes; did not have purple eyes. Death was nobody’s business; nothing else was nobody’s business. His eyes were wide and afraid. His heart was lit with a gentleness that couldn’t be described. His mind was calm. He was forced to think about different things.
“You can’t leave,” the man said, weeping.
The soldier put his arm out to touch him. His hands went right through him. “Well,” he declared. “I’m dead.”
The man chuckled and nodded. “You were tortured when you were alive, forced to do something you didn’t want to,” he said. “Now, how do you feel?”
He was having conversations with a Shadow. One of the Shadowmen. They rose from the depths of the night and overtook the dawn; light spilling onto the grass. Gosh, the light was bright. Brighter than anything. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I want to yell. I want to run. I want to jump and play. I saw the light. There is much work to be done.”
“That is why I stay,” he replied. “I stay here, hoping for something else that isn’t what I am. Hoping for a glimpse of redemption; a glimmer of peace. I go around, and speak to others who have the Noise-this is what they call those who are wicked.”
“The ones who see the dead?” he asked patiently.
“Yes.”
“I have so many questions.”
“I know,” he replied, honestly.
“Are you always looking?”
He was startled. Shadowmen never got startled. They just were. “Looking for?” he pressed.
He shrugged. “Things, ideas,” he replied. “Nothing that I know about. Nothing tangible, nothing real.”
“What is real?”
“The sky. That is all.”
“Are you almost ready?”
The soldier smiled. His eyes crinkled. “Almost,” he answered harshly.
The white wizard stood over the soldier’s grave. His shadow overtook the entire length of it, and his mouth twisted in a snarl. “I tried,” he told him. “I tried, Harry Barrow, I really did. I tried to bring peace and prosperity; all I could bring was chaos.” His face was shiny with tears.
The wind picked up. He looked up at the sun, his eyes still shining, and something dark crawled across the sun and everything shimmered in a weird, shimmery haze. The white wizard had never seen anything like it before in all of his life.
A soldier appeared in front of him. He said, “It’s Harry.”
The white wizard swallowed hard and reached out to touch him. His hand went right through him. “Hello,” he said. He let his hands dangle to his sides. “Sorry, Harry, but you’re dead.”
“I know,” the soldier replied. “They told me after I went into the light.”
“How is it?” Ellerhynwyn asked. He cocked his head to look at him.
He shrugged, bored. “No difference from being alive,” he answered. “The only difference is, we don’t have to eat a damn thing-it’s not mandatory.” He chuckled. “I can make a pretty mean soufflé, though.”
Ellerhynwyn nodded. “I bet you can. You feel weird about death?”
“No. I felt more weird about life. Being a soldier taught me to appreciate life. To live again. I thought I would never live again.”
“Because of what?”
“Because of things I couldn’t change. Because of whatever was happening in the world. The darkness. The evil. I can see the relics from here. They’re not so tough; they were Merlin’s, that much is for certain.”
Ellerhynwyn smiled. “We wondered about that,” he said. “Goodbye, soldier.”
“Goodbye.”
The man shimmered once, again; and disappeared.
The sun was high in the sky. Everything had color around it. Everything was beautiful. Ellerhynwyn felt like magic.

Wasps and Clocks.

In tales of old worlds, we are strong and relentless-
A chord that struck the heart.
The worm is made from flesh and flesh is spoken
From strings like balloons. In the old death,

My heart is made from corn melted from flesh-
The words are spoken in tales spun from old
Wives,
The hearts beat like gilded black wings.

A cloud of angry wasps.
A tourniquet that is spun from old dials.
We hear the world, the whispers of words;
Our eyes lock, and the bell bangs twice.

I am waiting, forever waiting.
Sentinels bleak and relentless.
Follow sad rhymes, ancient as anything.
We creep across the marsh of old hands.
I can’t do anything.
I can’t say anything.
We locked eyes and couldn’t find anything hidden
In the shadows,
The shadows marched from strands of wool.

This is not the age of redemption.
This is not the age of old worlds.
Crossed out, we move on-
Old ghosts are hung from silver doors.

The windows are spoken of anything,
Anything is derived from flesh.
You told me we wouldn’t go back.
You told me you were tossing and turning
In your bed,

That your tears were not fresh and burning.
The wildflowers burned.

Everything was burning from shadows and
Spots of shadows.
I looked at the sky and a rainbow appeared,
Stark and naked and full of wings.
The grace was not in anything.

Things Etched in Stone.

Hunger is not my middle name
You are not my face, my brother-
You are etched in my dreams

Eyes are burdened by colors
You tell tales and spin wreckless dreams
I fear not the face of anger
I fear not the face of redemption

Torn apart by weathered hands,
Hands are aching and bleeding,
Red and golden as dreams.

We fear not, the corn,
The hunger is temptation.
The temptation is greed.

Greed is unified.
Unified in our grace.
The stem from the rosebud
Glows downward,
Empties out into the world.

Hunger is not me.
I followed the woman down
The stairs,
She hisses at me like a snake-
Her eyes are bloodred,

Mouth is twisted.
I model myself after JFK,
The man who was destroyed.

He said, Fear not the temptation;
The eating of chicken.
Fear not destruction.

The commerce of it.
The letting down of it.

The letting down is easy.
Everything is destroyed.
We were all in the middle.

Resorted to Something.

I pick myself up and dust myself off.
The poem is in the oven.
It is about to be taken out.

You tell me the bow looks pretty in
My hair; you tell me you are here for me.

The ghost snakes around closed doors and
Old windows,
The flower blooms bright on the windowsill.
The silence is in it all.
The way you walk. Your heart moves in

And out, painstakingly slow;
I look at you and time slows to a
Screeching halt,
I look at you and I can’t speak any words.
The words are not my words.
They are the words of the wind;
The light and the dark,
The sunrise and sunset;
The last man did not appreciate me,
Would not tell me I was beautiful;
I don’t like to speak in past tense.

I didn’t want to speak to him at all.
The worlds in old houses say goodbye

And transcend upon, up on slow mountains.
The hills and goldenrods are made pretty.
The doorway to heaven reaches up the stairs.

The beat of my heart heats up the
Night,
Achingly slow and the moon shines down.
His face is smiling like a penny;
His heart swells like a balloon.
I don’t want to make you breakfast.

Overtakes The Sky.

I am the last. The wildflower runeth.
The dawn overtakes the sky.
The clouds rush sad as rivers,
And the cold is deep in things.
I wish I wasn’t the rushing tide.
The wind moans still in autumn.
You told me you wouldn’t speak
To me of mountains, rivers-
Blessings run coarsely through
Matted hair.
People are jealous of
Things that I say,
Jealous of my written words.
I can’t climb inside and outside,
Back and forth-
Your friendship means nothing
To me now. I never learned how
To speak. We don’t know what
Words are spoken,
In the language of suffering,
The commerce of suffering-
We yell at everyone,
And speak in songs,
Words too broken to be heard.
People are envious of my scars.
They bear the burdens of passion,
Of Zeus and his wings.
The light is heavenly in the sky.
We are aching in our words.
My thoughts are flightless.
My mother sleeps in her bedroom,
And a cat yowls outside.
No one hears me screaming.
No one hears the words, like blood,
Pouring from my echoed
Soul,
The long-lost soul of someone
Who says goodbye.
Goodbye to this world.
Everyone wants to fight, anyway.

The Woman Has Flabby Arms.

I told my teacher what all the
Fuss was about.
She mentioned climbing stairs.
She mentioned stirring potatoes in big pots.
She mentioned old homes,
Withered weather vanes.
Knocking on closed doors.

The woman has flabby arms.
Her hair is gray, wild, shattered from
Rocks and hard veins.
Blue veins swim like rivers.
It is not a hard thing to comprehend.
She told me she liked to walk on the water.
That noises were too much for her.
She couldn’t take the criticism.

The mouth is open into a song.
A sob, the wind moans.
She walks on happiness.
Her friends move the world.
The world is movement.
She sees noise.
The movement is in the noise.

She is not an old woman.
The house belongs to her.

Sometimes, I sat out on the patio,
And looked at the mountain behind
The backyard.
My mother’s voice comes in my mind
Sometimes.
My Uncle Stan, a teacher, said
The river lacks movement.
Everything lacks movement.
The movement is everything.
Her words are sharp; they carry no momentum.
Everything is white in the quiet night.
Her heart is a microwave.