Time and Song, etc.

In the steel mines, the birds are singing with upturned throats-
They see the importance of being important.

I follow my heart with a recorder, life bangs on steel drums.
What I said was, “I can’t take the heat,” to the ballpark manager

And everyone else was fitted for a dress-to me, everything was simple
And workable.  I couldn’t place my agony today.  Where was I?

Time flies by.  Birds make time sing a double note.
I can’t find myself in a mirror, these words I hold dear to me.

With every living thing, I sing a simple song.  My work here is done.
I move on.  With a ratio.  Time stands still.  Everything is workable,

Plus food is needed for the stomach-
I heart today and yesterday-

I know no bounds.  What did I do?  To make time go more slowly.
What did I do to make you go away.  My heart aches for a sticky bun.

I wish I were far from here, a place where I could sing my all,
A place where time is entwined in my own hands.

The Park

Walking in the park on a lazy day afternoon-
Ducks swim in the pond, and I watch them carefully,
To make sure they don’t drown.  Willows whisper
To me excitedly-
I can’t stand them!  They annoy me!  The park is bright
With sunshine,
And I smell honeysuckle on each side of the sidewalk.
The honeysuckle makes me think of home,
For my mother used to grow them in her yard.
Honeysuckles rule the flowers, they are the queen of
The roses and daisies.  It’s the poet in me, I guess,
To know the names of flowers in my head-
I watch them move back and forth in the breeze,
Then I watch the ducks again, the tiniest one makes
Me think “Awww, how cute,” and I smile prettily.

The River.

The clouds come in from the west-it is bitterly cold.
The wolf is laying in his den; icy coldness made from silk
Pours from his nostrils.  The sun is icy, too.  Everything is covered
In ice.  The wolf’s stomach growls.  He wants some food.  He gets up,
And goes for the hunt-a lone rabbit nestled between a tree and a blade
Of grass is his target.  The rabbit sees and bounds into the forest.  The forest
Is practically empty, except for houses on either side.  No one is home,
But they, too, know about the wolf.  Who knows about the wolf?  It asks itself.
Everyone!  That’s why there are so few of them left.  The wolf goes about,
Looking for food.  It sees a river.  What is a river?  Rivers are wide,
And haunt humans.  Humans know nothing but fear.  The joy is in the fear.
The wolf dunks his paw into the river, trying to catch a fish-he tries again,
And again.  His stomach growls.  The wolf comes in threes, and the river
Comes in threes, over and over again, climbing higher into the sky,
The trees see everything, but the wind does not..

In Paris

The night falls on me mercilessly.
My eyes open and close like shades.
I went to the harbor and watched the boats
come in-there are lights flickering
In the windows of the boats.
I turned my eyes away.
It’s hard to watch this all day.
I start walking, my head bent forward,
and the wind flicks my hair every which way.
There are the sounds of boats on the harbor.
Some boats are big; others are small
As cars.  The little boats speed along like nobody’s business.
I walk down the street,
People scream my name-now, how would they know that,
I think to myself, they couldn’t
Know my name, for certain-I don’t know any
of these people!  I am an American, not
French, not European.  In the back of my mind,
I sense danger-the danger of an oncoming
Storm.  The storm of my youth.
Words come from my lips:  “I need to eat.”
So I go into a little café on the end of
Bridge Road.  Bridge Road has a lot of shops.

What the Eagle

The eagle soars with its limbs-I have not been outside today.
The hearts of dreams that I play, are withered in shades of gray.
Everyone says I should be a serpent, quick and loud-
But all I am is a toad.

Where are all the people, I ask.
I found my nerves at last.

I shoulder fortune like a lamb,
For lunch I want a ham.

I’m not an eagle, but I take flight.
In the dark of the bitter, and cold, night.

The snow is falling and the eagle is at rest-
Snow falls upon his nest.

To the middle, to the middle

Of it all.  He catches me while I fall.  

I can’t find myself
Behind the tree-delicious cakes in a cake shop, I have fallen
In love with baking.  

The old mother tells me she has a book of cakes,

And do I want to look at them.  

I said no, I shouldn’t be thinking 
about
Cakes at this time of night, or day, 

I should say, it’s only 4pm.  I have fallen
Off a cliff into an abyss, the abyss is in my garage, 

wrapped in tar paper.
Sometimes I watch tv at night.  

There’s nothing on.  
So I make up stories to myself,
That sound just about right.  

The middle is not about right.  It’s the middle, I said!
The middle!

I stare straight at the sun.  I’m not the only one.  

The Street, the Street

Where am I?  Why am I here?  My words are crystal clear.
The cowboy walks with his head held high.  I couldn’t find a way down
The dark street.

A man follows behind me, quickly-where can I go?
I am lost on the hill below.
Take me to a different place that is far from here,
Where I can be safe from harm.  Take me to a place that is forever warm.
The old man wants icecream.
His name is Seth.  Seth, call to me,
my beloved

Brother, call to me in the depths of the
night, night as dark as sin.  I might win.
I have no idea, nothing to contemplate.
Where did reason run off to?  I like to run
With the wind blowing my hair back.
It’s simple as this:  I have a boat,
I offered my maiden fair to ride it with me,
she said no,

she was afraid of the wind
And dogs.  There are no dogs in the water, I whisper to her.
There are no dogs anywhere!
My shout was lost in the wind.  The sun glares down.
I can’t see past my forehead,
I can’t see for anything.
I walk away from the boat and go down town.

The Key

The key was in my hand,
I walked through town-
My mind was thrown like a rubber band,
I have called my own.

Dreams are plenty here on earth,
Yet I have seen it for myself,
There goes a flower giving birth,
I hope his baby is in good health.

Old lady, what do you plead,
Your skirt hangs around your knees.
You’re the only one who can lead,
A convention just like these.

Take me higher than a bird,
This place is not for me.
I speak in hushed voices for the word,
I wish to God I were free.

Don’t drown in doubt,
We need to be paying attention now.
I know you can go without,
Another forbidden show.

The Corridor

The corridor was brown and thin,
This was the mess I was in-
Taken by so many glares,
My foot hit the stairs.

The dark was in the dark,
I could barely see-
My lighter lit a single spark,
And it was in front of me.

Take me outside, where it was warm,
The sun is like a hearth.
I have seen through the storm,
I have seen a mother give birth.

Tell me words that are spoken,
The bird has been flying east-
The vase I have broken,
The work was not my best.

The Eyes, Stares

The eye stares at me from a great abyss.

It is neither thin nor glowing.
In time, the eye will stop staring, but for now it is staring-straight at me.

The strange shadows of oneness have come back.  There is nothing that I lack.
Take me outside, and bring yourself into myself like a bitter rose rising from

The ashes.  I am rising.  I find myself glaring back at people.  I don’t like people

As much as animals.  Animals are properly trained-humans are not.  I have begun

My training in the springtime-there’s nothing else for me to do.  I am learning kung fu.

Japan is the place where I have made my home.  I love their food, their music,
And their dance.

What can I show you that won’t make you bothered by me?  What can I show you that will
Bend myself backwards outside of war?  I have helped myself by becoming something other
Than myself, I have become someone else’s property.  There is a sign in my yard, saying
For Smalls.”  I would, but I can’t.  It’s dinnertime anad I’m hungry.  Make me dinner.

Night comes, and I am sleepy.  People target me.  The hole keeps getting bigger, and bigger.
Light flashes in my vision.  I try to sleep.  Sleep will not come.  Help me dream.
In the morning, I take a ride on the train and return back home.

Bleed Me Dry

In London, I found myself huddled in the rain, wishing I were somewhere else-
A dog barks in someone’s yard, and I looked at him, all wide-eyed and wondering.
The cold spread through my body.  My coat was soaked wet,
My hair was matted.

I didn’t know where my home was, or where I was going.  The war had been going on for hours,
And the bitter cold left me shivering-in fear or coldness, I wonder if it’s both.  Time will tell.

Yes, time.  I have learned about time as a little child, sitting on my grandfather’s lap.  He said
I shouldn’t be there, I should be with my family in this time of war-time is a funny thing,
All numbers and circles.  Yes.  Time is hidden inside of me, like a small bird trying to break free.
I don’t understand this parable.  I don’t understand anything unless it is told by my grandfather,
I am but a child, trying to break free.  I never knew anything about metaphors,
I never knew anything about no words.

Sometimes the spectacles of life frighten me like a forbidden object trapped in the sand.  The sand of time.
There’s time again, I can’t find time anymore.  It washed away in the ocean, where the sharks are,
Sharks I am afraid of, just like time and all other things.  Where do I belong?  I don’t know, it hurts
To think about it.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s nothing to fear.  I am poor.  The poorness continues
To bleed me dry.  I am going to find a warm place.

Staring, Wrote.

The staring of the stranger is what I wrote about a winter morning.
Winter mornings are cold and bitter.  The sea of time stands open.
I am the hash of secrets; the secrets of all secrets.  I am torn between two worlds-
The worlds that drip like unforgotten eyes in the middle of the sea of ghosts.
I don’t remember ghosts.  I remember my mother, like a great ship on the sea.
I remember things shouldn’t come between me and the riddles…me and the rocking
Boat.  A boat is not a smile, I learned in school-I also learned I am nothing but a lamp
Post, a dragon who isn’t remembering anything but herself.  I am not myself.  I am the
Dream within the dream.  Shadows rise out of nothing and the dreaming is warranted.
I sweep the hair out of my eyes and gaze at the stillness around me, in the classroom-
My teacher is sweeping words across a chalkboard, and somewhere far away a child sneezes, in some other classroom like in Jamaica or Spain or Guam and I think to myself
What has become my life and why am I here, the great question, the question of all questions, and the thought of my mother comes into my mind and she is like the stillness of autumn, or like I said before, a ship rising out of the water-and then there are the actors
And they are better than me and there are actors who are taller than me and try to scream obscene words in my ear, above all else, the sound of the cars on the street, and lamps shutting on and off, and my screams ripping through the ear and no one can hear me-
No one will see. 
The staring of strangers exhausts me.  I am bothered by the cold.

Mouth.

The planet is an open mouth.
It yawns and rests-shaking and shivering in the cold.
Your life is not my life.  Your life is a life that is begone,
And not forgotten-your life is written in the pages of the unforeseen,
The computers that do not compute anything but of mice and men.
People are shocked by the sea of faces that span out before us by
Thousands of flowers opening, yawning-you think you know, but you were
One of the first, the first of thousands, of millions that spread before us like
Unforgotten eyes, the eyes of the untold.  I am not who I am.
My mother is a bittersweet taste in the eyes of sight, and the world is like me-
I am trapped in the world that is cold and dark, it is like a cage of nothing.
Where is the old world?  Why are people staring, glaring at me-like the night I can’t see. 
I am shadowy river, I am the dim and the dark and the clouds.  Clouds scurry
Behind me, before me.  My father is not here-he was never here, he was a shadow of himself, a glimmering cloud. 
The dream was something else that glimmers in the dark.  You don’t know that these trees
Are bending,
You don’t know that eyes are staring, like dim forgotten eyes that are breathing and distant as time is distant in this nothingness that I am or what I shall be.  The wind is not my breath; the eyes that will not see.
I am the dark, and the waves are bending…
My mother does not share the same sentiment, and she is lost in the shadow of herself,
Lost as if the tides are lost. 
This is not my life.   

Between the Flame.

Between the sand and sea and sky,
I take the eve and make them dry-
I try to find the past and fame,
And put them out to sea again.
In my heart, and in my eyes,
I make them take me by surprise.
And all the shadows that turn me bare,
Are forgotten for the want and wear-

In the dark, and in the eyes,
My fire shines upon surprise.
From where I am, and where I’ll be,
The night is here and we are free. 

From all the world, and back again,
The leaves turn colors and then they bend-
I don’t know when or where I am,
As I walk this forgotten land-

The trees are bare, the eve is cold,
And in your eyes we are not old,
In this land when we are free,
From where I am, and where I’ll be. 
I’ll sit upon a rock and gaze at sea. 

Walking in Space.

We are not whirling through space. We are space trapped inside of itself. We are space that is calm, that lingers in time- The rewards are like shadows climbing on walls. Hate is a word wrapped in the dark-it is a hand that shakes my hand. I am not the death that is seen inbetween, and the darkness that seeps Within- When I am at home, I am like a mountain that rises up out of the ashes. I am the night that folds down, down into the nothingness of time. Down into the nothingness of space. I see fame, and it is how I am-it is the space opera of tomorrow, the shadow In the dimness, the dark, the seeing… We have nothing, we see nothing. We are nothing like a light that goes on and off In an empty room. You think you care but you don’t care. You think you see but you can’t see. You trap me like a lion-a lion in the dim and dark and unseen shadows, And we are red flowers, folding like roses…you are greed, and I am not. I am the mountain. I am an empty room.

COMPUTERS AND MONKEYS.

COMPUTERS AND MONKEYS The monkey likes to type on computers-maybe he will turn into someone Important, a unified person that lives outside. In the night, the light shines down on you-in the shadow of itself, we are afraid to Be afraid. The night is not dim. I don’t know what will come from this, I don’t know if we will learn. I thought maybe We could learn to be a people. That the heart of the people is missing inside of us, That we are not dim, that things are not warranted-you call people losers, you call them And dismiss them, and the light is dim and you will keep him. Night is remained unseen. That chaos is not what it is, or how we are-and the night is left alone. The monkey is typing on a keyboard, all thoughts are dim. The cops try to pry me from myself, and the insides of myself are born of nothing. Nothing is nothing, and the shallowness…we feel, In the light, we are alone. The monkey types on his computer.

THIS TIME.

In this time, I won’t find myself looking outside of myself- In the doorway of our lives, my heart rests in my mouth. Inside and outside of time, the birds chirp in their nests- I discovered a way outside the glance of sight. In the inner mind, We weave words of wisdom. Clouds are shot down like a balloon. The words are rhythmic like meadows. I tell people good luck on Their destruction, that the easing of time is many-that the darkness Is not night, and my eyes are not dim-I see the monkeys around me, And thoughts are inside me, glaring like a forest fire, shooting outside of ears. I know some people have to be told to do things, to believe in something They don’t know. This is the willow, the willow is behind the willow. I am inside the ears that are not mine, and we do not speak, we do not find- I wish someone would come along and talk to me, and talk like shadows do. In the nights, the woods are dim, and in the night, creatures hear them… I am willing to do things for money, I am willing to walk home. Time has come without knowing; shadows fade without fear; the hunger inside is growing, And the light is drawing near. The willows are dim and unseeing-the eyes are unseen in dreams. White clouds drift by and I can’t find my way. But the way is not outside of the way. It is here we do not know.

Face In the Water Chapter 1.

1 1600 The assassin stared at King George, his expression stern. “Why do you want me to do that again?” he questioned. King George sighed and rubbed his hands over his eyes. He was very tired. He had stayed up all night, drinking, and he didn't want to be bothered by this man-he was paying him to do the job, and he had to do it, without complaining. He didn't like all the complaining, and he especially didn't like explaining things he didn't understand. “Because they haven't been paying their taxes. I have no choice but to exile them.” King George rose and stretched, letting his hands dangle at his sides. He shook his shaggy, brown head. He wished he was a blonde. He should steal money from the next blonde guy he saw. It would be interesting. “Do we have a deal?” he demanded. He shrugged tiredly; he was very hungry, and his eyes were sagging, and his skin was sagging, also; he was not a spring chicken any longer. He hadn't even bed a wife; he had many lovers, oh how many there were, he had lovers and he had beautiful maids and servants. None of them were powerful enough for him to wed. None of them were nearly close enough. And then, he realized he was getting low on cash, and left his home-he had to eat, or else he would die. He thought he had enough money saved. All he had was his mother's diamonds, and he didn't want to sell it. It was the only thing in the world. “Okay, we have a deal-now, where's my money?” The king couldn't help but laugh; laughter fell from his lips like waves. * * * “What's wrong with your eyes?” The knight almost wet himself. He stared at the assassin, wearing black clothes, a black hood over his face. “Nothing's wrong with my eyes, boy,” he hissed. “You know you go to give me your treasure.” He looked down at the assassin's hands, and realized they were furry. He was terrified, in shock. His mouth hanging open. “What did you say you're from again?” The assassin gave a shuddery laugh. “Didn't. I'm part Anglo-Saxon, part Spanish.” “Do...most of the Spanish look like you?” He shrugged. He was playing with a blade, wielding it around like it was a toy. Dangling it from his hands. “I was inside a lot. I didn't notice much of the other kids. My mother didn't like talking to strangers.” He scowled. “I'll say,” he replied. “What are you doing in my house?” “I didn't want you to wake up. I thought I could get away getting in and out without you hearing me. I guess I'm not as old as I used to be.” Breaking and entering didn't seem to bother him. Bellinmore Reed wondered if he was a pirate. The knight ran through the trees-his breathing was labored. He looked behind him; the stranger in the shadows was still pursuing him, even though he couldn't see him. “Where'd he go?” he asked himself. He knew the man was somewhere, running along behind him. He could sense him. His extra sensitivity was something he didn't tell a lot of people about, but he still had it, stick as stone, and it was in his mind and heart and body. He was a man, but no one who had to go through something like this. He hadn't done anything wrong. The assassin said it was because he didn't pay his taxes. He was a weird man, and had whiskers, and eyes black as night. The eyes followed him wherever he went, and it made him scream and cry and squirm. It made him shiver. He wanted to go home...no home had he. It was gone. They'd destroyed it, taken everything, and had even taken his family's servants. How could his family owe taxes? He didn't understand any of it. But they blamed him, the last living heir, even though they were the ones who had probably killed them, and blamed the robbery on him, and he was due in court. “I don't know why we have to leave home,” Allister Spencer sniffed. He ran his hand over his mouth, trying to blot out the images of the fire in his mind. The smoldering smoke; the darkness; and the ashes. Bellinmore Reed shook his head. “It seems like the King of Scotland has gone mad,” he answered. “He says the English are fighting farther east-he says we have no way out.” He shrugged his shoulders, looking morose. He didn't know how to tell Allister there were knights in the forest beyond the fortress. “Maybe it has something to do with Church vs. State,” Bellinmore suggested, making a face at him. He hated history stuff; and school. He hadn't been to school in years. He remembered very little about it. “Get your stuff together-we'll be leaving shortly.” He ran a hand through his hair, wishing he could cry openly like Allister; he couldn't, and he held still, and he ran back to the campground, and set up a fire. The cook's name was Meadow; he had scraggly blonde hair and blue eyes. His face was longish, and he had a long nose. “What are we having for dinner tonight?” he demanded of the cook. He had found the cook several months ago, wandering alone in the marshes-it seems he had misplaced his home. The knight took him under his wing, and bred him and fed him, and he turned into the glorious creature standing before him. He was learning, oh, how he was learning. The cook hated learning just like Bellinmore, and it suited them both fancy. They were great allies in times of trouble, and good conversationalists.

Stars N Islands

Stars and Islands

I am walking in the morning. The wind moves against the back of my
Neck. I am a habitat, I am moving-I think of all the animals of the world.
Tomorrow is like it is in the morning-and the night is sweet with its song,
Always moving, always in mourning. I don’t have enough money to get what I want to
Get, new clothes, or going on a trip to Ireland.

The airplane flies through the air;
And lands on a runway.
Night is calm, and burdened are we-
I see your face in my dreams.

Finches are on the island where Michaelangelo once lived, moving like shadows
In the dark. Stars come out to play. It is night, and the stars shine down.
It is darkness, and we are in the darkness, and we are like shadows in the dark.
That is glowing.

I want to go on a trip to see my friend. I want to see his silhouette marching down
The dark street, eyes like sparklers, moving in the dark.
The streets are lined with both darkness and sorrow; the street lights are lit with bright stars.

Stranger Things.

Stranger Things

He asked me why I didn’t come.
He didn’t see me walking ahead, my eyes looking backwards.
Some people claim they don’t know what I’m talking
About; I am a stranger in the mist.

We are a lot like apes in the jungle. We are clouds
In the mist of time. Some things are better than in your eyes.
We are like the lions that roar down the mountains.

I think, therefore, I am. I am missing, I wander down the road,
And look right and left for things unheard. This is destiny,
It is not my friend. I try to be friends. No one wants to be friends.

I try to turn things around. I look up and down. The snakes
Are curled in their dens. Most animals are hibernating, now.
I am not hibernating. I am new, as stuck as glue. Some people wake up
Much too late. Some people see what they want in their dreams.

There’s a child who doesn’t understand what we see. Who aches to be someone
In his dreams. He dreams of tall buildings, and time that marches on,
Up and over waters. And still as stone.

When Lightning Flashed.

Lightning flashed through the midnight sky-
On the evening I called you my love.
Against the fall of midnight eyes,
I dreamt of me and you in distant skies.

In dawn, I woke up to the sound,
Of heathen and the curled dreams,
And burdened of monkeys and other things,
I wake and see you in my dreams.

The dawn has come, and we are gone-
And night is over and time is done.
We are going upward to the sun-
But, this time, I went alone.

On the season of the sin,
We’ve known to become one within,
Our heart and mind that beats like rain,
And tender we move over the bend-

In this season, that does not end,
We are not burdened by the sky-
In our heart, we have not won,
But I see the passion in his eyes.

Today is Charles Darwin’s Birthday, and I am walking-

Kroger’s stands tall like a sentinel in the distance.
The yellow sun rises.
It is morning and I am walking to work, my hands swaying
At my sides-they sway to everything, the rising sun, the moon,
And I think about the distance from here to there.

I think about bacteria and how it was formed. I think about Charles Darwin on his
Birthday, he was born over three hundred years ago, and how he recorded
A sparrow’s song.

This song is for Charles Darwin, and his fascination, and his notes that he left
On his mother’s dresser. She was the one who found them, you know, not
The sailors, or the ones who seemed to think they were his colleagues.

I am walking, and thinking, and I think when I walk and the thinking is in the grandness of walking,
And I think about all the people who have work, and who walk, and who think great things
And change the sorrows of the world. This is more for Charles Darwin, because it is his birthday,

And I am waiting for my birthday to arrive and how the flowers bloom on walls-
And how the bacteria moves, and how poetry is moving, and finches are singing.

The Face In the Water-CHAPTER 1.

1
John Shubbard remembered the first time he saw someone else’s face in the water. It was nearing the end of August in 1978, and he was out fishing with some friends. He had just caught the end of a net and was bragging to James how many trout he was going to catch-James, getting angry as he always did, almost pushed him into the water; he stumbled, and righted himself; his ankle throbbed with pain. He twirled around to face him, his expression one of anger-the anger on his face was intense, and it made John cringe inside. He wasn’t used to the anger he saw on his face. James was usually a very mellow guy.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” he spluttered. “I could have fallen into the water! Don’t push me in!”
James Wilcox laughed-he guffawed and slapped his leg. “You’re such a wuss, sprout!” he declared. His grandma always called him sprout. John shoved him. James glared at him, his nostrils flared.
He looked like a fish who had jumped out of water and was having trouble breathing.
“Don’t talk like that about me!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know why you’re being so rude! We’re supposed to be friends!”
“Friends is as friends does.”
“What are you talking about?”
James winked at him. “You know what I’m talking about,” he gloated.
He glanced down into the water. He thought he saw the shimmer of something just beyond his reach, but he wasn’t sure. He shook his head, and frowned. Maybe it was nothing. John had a tendency to turn a lot of nothings into something. Scott Morrow put a hand on John’s shoulder, as if to steady him.
“It’s how he is,” Scott said softly. “Remember his sister? He ain’t right adder the car addident.” Scott had a little lisp and didn’t pronounce certain words correctly-d’s, and f’s, were always difficult for him. Jim’s parents abandoned him when he was a baby. John got a feeling it traumatized him to this day and he didn’t like to talk about it, but he knew how to relate.
Scott was lucky. His aunt took him in. John had gone to his cousin and then to foster care. It was a tricky passage. His relatives didn’t like him and he didn’t want to sound like a baby and ask for help. He had been homeless as a teenager. John’s parents used to hate him to death, and wish he were dead-they’d said so on many occasions. John nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
He narrowed his eyes, in remembrance. He didn’t like it, though. He especially hated the remembering part. How he was always to blame for the problems. How his parents hated him and wanted money to go on a vacation and how they didn’t have enough money and this and that.
He glanced into the water again-something strange shimmered on the surface of the ocean, then it was gone, like a flash of lightning or a piece of string that had drowned. He needed to get laid, but his mind was playing tricks on him again-he must be tired because it looked like a woman’s face had been in the water.
He was thirsty. He needed to get something to drink.
He said goodbye to his friends-they were fishing again, and James had calmed himself down, that’s how it always happened and James was calm again and able to think rationally.
James didn’t have any problems in his family and John wondered why he acted like that but he did anyway and it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his own-he jumped into his car and drove downtown to a bar called Sherman’s. It was an Irish/Country bar. He didn’t have many friends there, but there was a woman named Hope Peppersen who was always flirting with him and he enjoyed the attention. He wanted to sleep with her, but she confessed she was married and although she liked John, she thought it was unnecessary.
“Maybe I’ll see you outside of the bar,” he’d said, winking at her.
She’d nodded happily, laughed and tossed her hair in his direction. He’d winked back. That was how it always was when they were in the bar together. The bartender laughed at him about it. John’s mind drifted back to reality. He had walked at the bar and was sitting down at the booth and looking at a large menu. The stools were red and brown. He pushed his hair back behind his face and sighed. He was tired. He didn’t realize how late it was. He should have gone home, but he wanted to see if there were any women tonight and to get a few drinks inside him. Maybe he would get laid tonight. Maybe he wouldn’t. He was hoping for the best. He looked around for Hope. He didn’t see her at the bar tonight. At least not yet. It was still early. He thought she said she still worked, but he wasn’t sure. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers and the bartender waddled over happily. He was an overweight, balding man and had beady eyes and curly hair. He was married.
John sneered at him. The man was pitiful. He needed a weight loss program and some dentures-his teeth were yellow and crooked. John knew he was married because he had a ring on his finger. He thought the woman must be very fat and desperate in order to marry someone like that. John fantasized about marrying for money, but it didn’t please him. He could make his own money. He was going to marry a supermodel and live in a large house and have 12 sports cars. He wanted 12 sports cars because he saw a comedian with 12 sports cars on television and thought it might please him if he had some, too.
“What do you want, man?” the bartender asked him in a slow, slurred speech. John thought he had learning problems.
“I want a slice of pizza and a glass of Diet soda,” he told him.
The bartender raised his eyebrow. “Soda? In a bar?” he said.
“I’m waiting for someone. I can’t drink when I’m irritated.”
“Irritated?” he’d said, and laughed.
John didn’t know the bartender’s name and wasn’t about to ask-he just called him the bartender. John waited, tapping his hands on the table. It was brown and made from plastic. The chairs were plastic, too. This was a high-scale place.
Hope came in and sat down next to him. “Hey, guy,” she said pleasantly. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” John replied. He eyed her skimpy pink dress. “You’re wearing pink.” He sounded sarcastic but he was pleased.
She tossed her hair in his direction. “Yeah, so?”
“I thought you hated pink.”
“I like it, now,” she laughed.
“Why?”
“Because my husband and I are going on our second honeymoon.” She winked at him. “No imaginary sex for awhile, I’m afraid.”
John smiled at her and didn’t respond. That was when John realized he didn’t like Hope anymore. But, he still wanted her and it made him even more angry than he was before and he didn’t know why. He suddenly realized he got angry-a lot. And he liked it. He put her out of his mind and decided to concentrate on work. Work didn’t have heartache in it. Work didn’t have pain. He barely glanced at his female coworkers. It was for the best. He was going to have to get used to it.
* * *

The Singing Woman.

The woman sings in an open doorway.
Jealous is round like a key. The skeleton clatters to the floor;
A clock chimes. The government is shaken about anything.
We don’t know where we will go. Only that some houses
Have stairs, and others don’t. I thought everything was round
In the middle, and sometimes, the yellow daisy breathes-
I don’t care about the gentleness. I only care about the stiffness,
And the shadow that crawls on the table. She thinks she owns everything,
The world, and her children are in moldy, brown colors.
The rules are made from everything. She loses sight of everything.

She sings in an open doorway. Her hand is rotted, like flesh. She thinks
Things are getting broken again; and a man is walking on a roof. There are windows
In the house, and the house folds over, down-like caskets falling from the sky,
And landing on a blade of grass. The grass is like the cold in winter. The winter
Is swift. Everything is dry.

She has the pages of her book in front of her. She likes to sit still and count the craters
In her hand. Everyone stares, including the gold lion.

The woman is singing, she doesn’t sing.

The Mouths of Nothingness.

She puts words together, one by one,
In sentences brown as bone.
She goes walking, down one street, and up another-
She limps.
Her eyes are like pools of nothingness. She bends and breaks.
She opens her mouth and calls out to the morning,
In the ancient winds of time.
Burdened by the years of hard labor, she cries out to her dead lover,
The skull Hamlet left behind.
It was not hers. It was not his. They were gentle in his wake.
Death was not something to take, to bring back.
The spirits were left behind in closed doors. Someone thought she was
Wrong, that she couldn’t stay away from the broken doors.
Someone thought she was jealous, and refused to give her any bread.
The bread comes from the oven.
It is the soothing sound of her father’s voice that wakes her up, every morning,
In time for school.
She acts like she wants the world. She acts like she owns it. She knows nothing,
And pieces words together on a string-one drop after another, a pebble falls
In the water, and sounds are dripping everywhere.
It is the rain, the color of the rain, and the mood that is everywhere. She doesn’t talk
About open wounds, only the rape, that was cold, hard, bitter, and filling in her
Mouth. She doesn’t keep her promises. She is the echo of lies in the hearts of everyone,
In nothing, everywhere.
Her mother is dead, and living, breathing-
Her father gasps on a table. She is dead, and nobody moves. The lies sing like the lions.
Sometimes, things knock on the doors, like skulls, and hatred is ripped from flesh.
She hates the people who move her, and the sorrows are like tears gone dry.
She is dry as a diaper. The lion weeps from far away. A star falls from the sky.
She thinks most people are morons.

Broken Time.

The night has been broken into the minds of us.
We dismiss the shadows that move like grass.
In the wind, the whistling sound comes again-
Like a ghost that wanders in the willows.
Emotions? Are like a sieve, that waves.
A daisy is on the windowsill.
A hand taps on someone’s window glass.
The panes are like tears that come like rain.
Down the mountain, the wind comes.
Down the mountain, we don’t know anything.
My mother is a little hectic. She watches her mother
Go upstairs, falls down the stairs-one by one,
Legs twist with hands. She is like a water current.
Time goes, it slows-things move like shadows.
There is the dark place, the place we can’t go to.
The place in the heart, beyond all time.

Why is there so much hatred? Why is there so much sorrow?
I went to the library this afternoon-the woman’s eyes narrowed
At me, as if she wanted me to leave. I held out my hand,
And she took my money, but her hand was not my hand-
My hand was hers. She didn’t understand the way of the world,
How it was for young men and women in the army,
In the navy, in places that are foreign as the mind. The mind is all
We have. Like a creative fox.

WHY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

“You’ll get forty dollars.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “All I was doing was looking at the paper for a job-” She shook her head, dizzy and confused. She didn’t know why she was dizzy, only that she was. It irked her. The irkness was in her mind, and it quieted her.
“Shut up. You know the paper regulates those things, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re one of the few who still know about them.”
“I am one of the last,” she confessed. “That’s what they told me in fifth grade.” Her mind traveled back to the time in her real school, the real school she had before she found out about computers and what they could do. It wasn’t a good idea to talk about the aliens. How they crash-landed on earth and destroyed the dinosaurs. It was an accident, they said in the papers, long after it happened. They wanted to help fix it. Well, the wars came, and everyone knew the wars started because of the dinosaurs.
“Well?” the pimp was staring at her expectantly. “You’ll get a lot of money.”
“A lot of money,” she said. “Yeah. Forty dollars, first, then-”
“More than you have now, that’s for sure!” he said gleefully, and chuckled behind his hands.
It had always been like this. Ever since her mother had been taken away-she refused to call her mother a criminal-strange men had approached her and offered her money. She tried to go to a community college for three months, until the feds found out and took away her credit cards. She got several credit cards, and bought a small car with it-she thought she was going to get a job right away, and didn’t. She fumed at her family for forcing her to be in this situation. It was forced upon her because of the crime rate. Forced upon her, she insisted to herself. Forced upon her; it was not given to her. No, it was never that.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll do it. I don’t got a choice.”
“None of us do,” he said. He led her down the street and into an alley. Shadows crisscrossed across the pavement. Pain in her feet, and the painful memory of trying to block out all those other times…the times when she was weakest. She didn’t know why, even though her daughter asked her why. She thought about her daughter in a half-bored, half-amusing, distracted way, the way a neglectful mother would think of her lonely daughter while she was fucking some dumb man.
She was alone in the enormity of herself, in the largeness, the grandness of herself. She was an overly large woman. Her daughter was an almost nearly byproduct of a rape, because the man didn’t want a fat wife-he wanted a skinny wife, he put emphasis on the word, she remembered with a sneer. She wanted a daughter and had one.
She couldn’t go that one route, what’s it called, artificial insemination, she couldn’t born her baby in a test tube because that was supposed to be a secret. She knew a lot of secrets. She understood how the world worked in her own special way-the psychologist said she was special. But, she wasn’t. She was trapped. It was in the Before-Time that Reanna thought about suicide, before she was born as a Hybrid, when she was floating in space in a test tube-that was how they made humans now, in a test tube, and put them down on a manmade planet that suited the aliens purposes, to be looked upon, and studied in such a way that was credible. She didn’t know what the aliens looked like, but they planted what they looked like in her dreams. She could feel them when they did it and she was being born in a test tube, feel it creeping on the edge of her mind.
The only thing that was outside of free will was forcing their thoughts upon hers. She thought she could feel their thoughts sometimes, in the way that their thoughts moved fluidly like water, slow and unearthly like the glowing of the lights. Sometimes, she thought about It-the thing that was more horrible than actually committing suicide, the actual thinking about it. She didn’t think of suicide in a way that she was going to actually do it, but she thought of it in the way that she actually wanted to do it but wouldn’t go through with it-she thought about the how and why and the liking of it and what other people would say about her after she passed. The darkness of suicide was always there, and the anger was there, fresh in her mind.
She didn’t approve of anger. She thought it was bothersome. She remembered once, her mother said she never got angry at anything, ever, that the anger was not how she expressed herself. It was, what they called it, the Remembering, the Time that was Before-After the Before time, and how it was sequestered in the rhythm of her life, the life that was half-lived. She had a half-lived life. She knew it now, could feel it in her bones.
The taking of one hundred pills or more, and dying in the living room, was romantic to her when she was living in the cold place underneath the floor boards in the man’s house, and the man called Todd came and fed her twice a day. She soiled herself. She was his pet; he was called a pimp, and she had been fourteen when she came To the Bad Place, and would be nineteen now. She always thought of her life with her parents as Before; this was Now.
The Days passed, longer more than ever, and everything seemed like a dream, or stepping stones on top of one another. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears; her ears were covered in crusted blood. She’d had a few ticks, and a few bruises. Her eyes were blue. She stared at them in the mirror in the bathroom in the basement.
Made faces at herself in the mirror, and squinted her eyes shut tight. She knew what the days were because they had left a computer in the basement and she turned it on and watched it hum to life, and she wrote stories and played poker and War, but she could not connect to the Internet to ask for help. The Internet would have been a great deal.
She remembered, a few years before she was kidnapped, she and her classmates had been learning how to use the computer and she was a fast typer, typed almost 50 words per minute.
It was the strength, those memories of good times that kept her alive, and everything inside her mind was shut off when the kidnappers came and made her strip for money.
They let her go outside, but someone was always with her-Ronnie or Howard or Denni, she was the worst, she was always getting guys’ phone numbers and wanting to do them and she took them down to the basement and sent her, stumbling, up the stairs to the living room-Boner was there, and Clyde. Clyde wanted some, but Boner said she was too young for the job-said the cops would come and find them, cos she was missing for a long time.
“You a missing girl?” Clyde asked her.
She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.
“You wanna come home wit’ me?” he asked her. “You won’ be missin’ no mo.’” He chuckled, and Boner slapped him upside the head, and they glared at each other. Clyde snorted and stomped out of the room.
“Look, girl,” Boner told her. “I know you think I want some. You ain’t getting none from me. I’m in a committed relationship, okay? You safe wit’ me. I don’ need you, but you git some bones on you, gi’, you be a good one for my clients.” He smiled, as if proudly. “You be her dodder.” He nodded matter-of-fact like.
“What does she look like?” She sniffed, and wiped her hand on her nose.
“She real big,” he told her. “But, she pretty. She has red hair, kinda dirty, but not pimp dirty like Wanda.”
Reanna’s lips curled. She loathed Wanda; she was a terror.
She remembered Wanda, and how the woman didn’t know she was in a Dream Capsule. Stupid woman. Everyone knew that. How come she didn’t know it? She needed to talk to her counselor. She never did anything without talking to her counselor. Everyone was against her. She knew it. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I’ll take you, gi’,” he promised. “I gotta take somethin’ home to my wife-otherwise, I ain’t getin none o’ dat from her-nor you,” he added quickly, as an afterthought. She rolled her eyes. He grunted asset. “Get in, girl.” He shoved her in. the car sped away. She was tense. She settled against the seat and tried to enjoy the ride. The car stopped. He pushed her out and the car sped away. She watched it go and went inside the tall, nondescript building. It was a pale brown. The windows looked dirty. Everything about the place was old, drab, dirty.
“Are you Reanna Chanceitt?” the counselor woman asked.
“Yes,” she managed to whisper.
“We’ve been looking for you,” she replied.
She promptly burst into tears.
“Who was looking for me?” she asked a few minutes later. She wiped her hands on her jeans. They were dirty. Most girls didn’t wear jeans anymore, they wore the plaid dresses that were authorized by government officials-the aliens, she was told.
The woman looked surprised. “Why, your parents, of course!” she replied.
She blinked. She didn’t know what to say. No one was allowed to say parents. “What do you mean?”
She looked away, a little embarrassed. “You know. Parents. You look like you don’t know what I’m talkin about. Like it wasn’t implanted in your brain like all dem odders.” Reanna was amused. She didn’t know counselors talked in that way-most Foreigners spoke eloquently.
“I don’t. We’re not supposed to talk about that.”
“Oh, yeah, well,” she fumbled. “They changed the rules, now. We got some bad peoples coming in, the Pope had to act fast.” The pope was big and had a big chin.
She frowned. “Who’s in charge around here?” she asked. “I thought it was the Mayor, now, after the little problem at the post office.”
She nodded. “Yeah, the scientists are trying to bring the dead guys back to life-as zombies.” She shook her head and tsked. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The good lord’ll fix it, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, sure you’re sure. You were sure three thousand years ago, weren’t you, during the Civil War.”
The counselor was shocked. “You’re not supposed to talk about that!” she said in a hushed voice. “We’re not supposed to mention War-the aliens are listenin’ now, what if they do th’ hangin’?”
The girl looked down at the floor. “I forgot.”
“I figured as much. We’re going to have to fix you, girl.” She nodded her head. “We’ll take care of it, right away.” Her eyes looked distant, sad, as if she were staring at some great distance, far away. She sniffed. Reanna sniffed, too. It was going to be a long day.
The paperwork was filled out, and then the parents came and took her away-to the Dream Time, the reality that was more based on reality than actual reality, based more on a calming realization of fictional thoughts being pressed against hers. She was being brainwashed, it was certain.

THE FORCE THAT MOVES.

I am not the force that moves inside of me.
The hatred flows in my heart.
It is the heart. The heart that is the word.
The love is casual as glass, like a spider when it comes down
The mountain.

No one knows about dates-this date, that date, everything is about reason.
The reason that is the wind, that blows in imagination down the mountain.
We talk about pine apples into the night. You steal kisses with a glass eye.
Shadows are dark, steeples are dark, darkness is dark in everything.

She is going to be fullgrown. She is going to be a lion.
Those are my predictions, I wrap them in soft hands.

Metaphors In Clouds.

He thinks she is the woman in the tomb.
I don't know the name of the tomb.
Someone brought me a newspaper and stuck it in the mailbox.
The wildflower lays broken on the sidewalk; people tiptoe through these lies.
I have ideas, they whisper in my head. Some people think they know what they don't
know, that their wives and husbands adore them. Then, changes shift forms,
things are moved to change-someone gets a job; someone loses a friend; a new one comes
into focus, comes into the picture. This is the picture I didn't know about,
I couldn't understand about that was looking back at me right from the start.

All of these people are like lawn gnomes. Things are gifts in the dark. I am not
a miracle worker, a slave, a Barbie; I am not your politician, someone to strike the dragon in the throat-
I am the one who saves the dragon, I am the shadow in the gust of wind that moves
through the trees, the apes are free, they have come to seek their revenge.

I don't know where my father puts his glass towns. I don't know where the light
is as it shines through the trees.

I know the forgiveness, in my mind. It is not in my heart. My anger is vast,
like the ocean, the night sky is flung away from me.

I look out of my window. My hair is flung back from my face. I close my eyes,
and think soft things. Sometimes, I think about what it would be like,
if the government actually fixed things, read metaphors in the clouds
and the sidewalks of the world. How large the world is. How real. It is not safe from my father, my lover, my enemy. Some people are enemies. Usually, they are small like bulbs of flowers.

Sometimes, a person jumps out from a bush to scare school children.

Life mocks everyone.

Then, the tomb is brought back out again. My mother is no longer here to take my hand. I don't remember her hand. I remember a blank wall, staring time, memories are latched to ghosts. Ghosts that I have not seen, the tomb is like a word.

I don't want people to talk about me behind my back, to fuel hunger in my veins-
these veins are red, distorted as time. Time comes back.

IN-BETWEEN DREAMING.

And then, people like me, are thrown from dust,
to dust-and then crows are called in for a murder trial.
I am awake to the sound of the trilling of birds out my window.
Destruction is like misery. It is hard to see, to hear-
a telephone rings, and begs goodbye to me. He is a wanderer,
the sound of summer in darkness, the sound of hands moving back to me.
The ghosts are woven in strands of summer magic, as if I believed in magic at all.
I am nowehere, Ohio, I am the state that drifts outside of who I am. My mother
ignores me. My father is distant in my mind.

Time does not become me. It is not who I am. My friends are not my friends. My friends are set in stone statues. It is the sadness that brings me. It is the rape
that is fresh in my mind, how tired I am. Some people read and speak in English,
other people eat their daily supply of bread. He was not my friend. He is the betrayer. The speaker of solemn words. Of pretend condolences. He is equipped with
nothing. His mind dreams about nothing. I wake up and the birds chirp in my window. Everything is like it was. He has his children. I have my bread. It is supposed to be okay, I am not reminded of anything in between dreaming.
From my father, I forget, from my father, I have forgotten. The shadow lies in the windows of time. The windows of destiny.

It is what it is what it is. It is from a far off state I have never heard of,
the place that is wrapped in paper chains. The sky that is colored and dipped
in red, the sky that is translucent in its wake. We are woken. All things are woven,
including despair, and the darkness that lingers here is strong like lions,
and beauty is written away with a colored marker. I am accused; I am the accuser.
I stand before the trials of the court, and shadows whisper to me like spiders,
in broken things.

Different things in the news tremble like a collage of voices.
I don't spit. I move like wind and tears.

The voices of the wind
call through the trees-this is the memory, this is the yesterday.
This is the time that isn't mine.
Sometimes, I think about when I was little,
and I was fishing with my father. My father, with the big blue eyes,
and face stained with tobacco and tears.
He spat on and on about the war,

how stories were woven from stars, and musicians sang for their food only.
That they never had any families, or spoke their minds freely.
War is not
free. It stems from the dinosaurs,
from science, from the act of being alone. I am alone in my grief, alone in the way I look at things.

From seventeen years ago,
I let you go, and my basket dropped in the snow.
I ran, looking ahead,
backwards again, and forwards-then, I was in prison, and my neighbor with the flaming
red hair set me free through his destruction.

He went on, and the memories of pain screamed in my mind,
I was like ghosts, and truth was destroyed.
Marriage destroys things.
It destroys whole families.
It turns humans into balls of mistrust, lies, hatred.
No one can see my pain, see my memories, my tears, or why people want me dead. They ignore me. I am homeless, the one whose innocence was kept silent. She moves on, in her grief, and doesn't know me, wants to steal my things. She has everything. I am a ghost, I fall in myself. People will never fix their problems. They will always enhance them, become them, and the dying will be sent to the scavengers.

Bad Behavior.

I tried not to be in love with lightning-
the way it tiptoes across the sky, and dashes into the clouds.
The clouds are angry, like lions, they are selfish and unnerving.
They are not petrified. I think our ancestors were petrified,
that they were unified in the realizations that all things are kept unturned.

My words are not my sorrows. They are not thrown into the piles of rocks
on the ground, they are not the brokneness that my life has become.
I try to make up new things for children to play with, and keep the thoughts to myself.
A young girl in Spain tries to take my boyfriend; tries to open a can of worms.
She is selfish in her reasons, as planes fly into buildings and heads are buried
in the sand. She moves like lightning, her thoughts are fluid as water running through
the stream. She thinks she is home. She writes fake letters and puts them in jars
and sends them out to the ocean, hoping to find some peace, some serenity, some inner
home.

She is turmoil. She is the sound of the ocean that rings with the voice, the sound of
summer.

This is summer. Things are in summer. A man and a tan and a pile of rocks-
he jumps on his engine, and turns it on, it sounds like firecrackers in the stillness.
She says goodbye to her words, to the night that is dark. She is like a ghost.

Apes Are Angry, Jealous-

I am a ghost that moves in a mountain.
No one speaks and no one is heard…
All around me are the shades of colors,
Locked in a dream. This is like my nightmare.
I type and I type and the words are thrown like shadows
Across an empty page-this is war, the war of temptation.
I spoke of yesterdays. They are like golden days,
My father is in Canada, my mother is far away. My wife
Doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore. My neighbor thinks
He knows me, but he doesn’t know that he makes me cry at night,
He makes me wet the bed. I look out the window and stare at a stream
Of flowers on the broken lawn. I think about our ancestors,
Who were not our friends-they are animals, and the animals speak to
The sky, the ground, the meadows filled with flowers. He doesn’t think about
Anything but his own selfish ways, the ways that are the center of the self.
He pretends he cares. He is the pretending. He makes mistakes on purpose.
He tells me lies, lies, and goodbyes. He doesn’t know anything about
The whispering of the pines, or how the ghosts of apes move through the
Mountains, through the colors and the cold and the dark and I have to tiptoe,
To try and understand, to not be in love because I am forced to.
He didn’t move on. I forgave him, but that thing is still undone. People move like
Tombstones, like shadows. He thinks he knows, he doesn’t know.
Only time will tell. Only time will move back, and forth. The reading is in the
Fire that burns selfishly. He is dead to me. Dead to my ears. My ears are
Burning as the night is burning and the lies burn in every fire place in every household
In the country. People force me to procreate, to be with nothing. Why? Why?
Why are these things happening to me, why can’t I stop them, why am I forced to write
In a diary that doesn’t understand me, that has blank pages?
You’re the ones who force me to be this way. I sit quietly in the dark and tears spill down my
Cheeks. The wind moans; no one hears me.

What Is In Riddles.

You said words are hard, they wrap around things unseen-
That distance lies in riddles, and things in between.
Nothing else will work out, quite well in the end.
This is the world we’ve been trying to mend.
I don’t know about the other ones, only we play pretend-
The flowers in the garden don’t want to grow,
Nothing is a seed that will be forced to overthrow.
I don’t understand the negativity or what we comprehend,
Why books have to have middles, or antiques are what we send-
Through the shadows, and the lies, and the hurt and goodbyes,
You tried to make me see something in a mystery.
I don’t want to go where you will go, except in time it will show,
And tomorrows are sorrows wrapped in a vine wrapped in misery.
You went to the ocean, and the ocean sent you home,
Your life was like something we weren’t even shown.
We fly like a flock of birds, and speak in sad rhymes,
The lion uses its wings to hear of unheard things.

THE KNOWING.

Of all the things that were created,
And the hands of clocks are turned backwards.
The guitar player plays at a pub in London,
And wildflowers bloom on the darkness and mist.
I thought we weren’t going to be here more than usual,
That things are tempted and not created-
That the fields and wildflowers are in full bloom,
And nakedness dances like urchins in the living room.
Light bounces off the fireplace. The night has come,
And shadows march across me, around me, through me-
People forget time, forget watches, forget bread,
The eating is not sinful. We are ghosts running against
Time, we are respectful, and we are dead. We are clocks
That spin around and around, and the sun melts into
Shadows. Someone sleeps in his cave, a dog barks at night,
The wind whistles like a train in a shimmering light.
My mother is awful, my father is dead-I have no home to call my
Own, only the night lingers like mistakes. The moon
Burns brightly, a lamp shakes, and bones shake like lightning.
We run away, and we run, and we keep running until guilt
Keeps us back.
No one sees me, no one knows.

SOCIETY.

WHAT IS SOCIETY

And this society, the one we live in, where people in wheelchairs
Are thrown into the trash;
And people named Mikel are picked on in public,
Carry picket signs down foreign-sounding streets, like Pickled Eggs;
Deviled Hands; High Street, the name rolls off your tongue.

The words are like plastic sheets put on a brown couch.
How autumn quickly changes into summer, and summer and winter
Are both entwined,
And monkeys are both riveted by words that are spoken from old vowels;
That the sounds of summer rain drift softly through the dark,
In the dark of the night, and the night

Drops like a monsoon out of Japan; and the Emperor was angry,
And the entire Atlantic Ocean was angry, and it was angry with its voice.
How people think they are not in a society, and how the society
Gets back at the smart people, and the dumb people get everything,
Especially the blondes and men interested in art.

Sometimes, the museums whisper softly at night, and the night
Calls down to the dinosaurs in the museums;
How the museums are like parts and ghosts wander around
In the dark, like softly moving shadows,
And how some people are homeless, and not breathing,
And breath comes out of me, and is me and NOT.

I don’t know what to make of this, what to speak of this,
In the words that pour from my lips, the lips that speak the poetry-how kings
And queens mock me, and think I am grand, but no one sees
Me stand in the shadows, unless I destroy entire empires…
My mother thought it was a bad idea, not a good idea, that ideas
Shouldn’t be put in society, shouldn’t be spoken of in classrooms.
Sometimes, even the walls are dim, and sometimes I can hear them.

"I'm Hungry!"

My eyes are like wildflowers wrapped in straightjackets.
Lions sleeping in cold cages; falcons walk on the tips of lakebeds.
Sometimes, when I dream, I can’t speak, I can’t see,
Anything but the blindness of my eyes staring at the back of me.

I hear about the soldiers in far off Guam, the country with the name
That sounds like twin cities;
And how we live, and the things we do, sound like list after list after
List;
Sometimes, we read magazines; sometimes, wives take cereal to their
Husbands in boxes,
And how old men named Marc and Liam think themselves better
Than others, and waste their money on the tracks, on gum, on
Whispers in the dark-

The stars, late at night, are like eyes that stare down on the world,
And watch over it, watch over it, waiting, and how Michael and Charles
Are like shadows that pour down stone walls,
And we think and we think but we can’t find the words to say.

“I’m hungry,” she said, and he brought her cheese and wine on
a gold tray,
and the bird outside wouldn’t chirp,
and the room refused to breathe.

GATHKA'S PROMISE.

Gathka said she wanted a normal daughter-one who was without physical perfection. A scientist would call it a genetic mutation; the regular population called it something else, they called it Normal. The word itself has been around for more than two thousand years; it was only in the last five hundred years that the definition changed. Gathka supposed aliens had something to do with it. Aliens had been visiting the Earth for hundreds of years, even before the birth of Jesus; they’d made claims of the cavemen, the dinosaurs, the wooly mammoth. They even admitted having something to do with global warming. Their ships ran on fossil fuel. Gathka supposed other races lived in the universe, but the kind they met were intelligent, smart, fast, their minds were faster than any computer. It was amazing to watch. Gathka sat behind the desk, nervously stroking her fingers. She always did that when she was nervous. She was a tall, blonde woman and had large, blue, cat-like eyes. The human race mutated after seven thousand years; the only things that changed were the length of their earlobes, and their eyes, which was more cat-like in appearance. Gathka was an anthropologist major in college, and had studied ancient humans-humans from the Electric Age; the Golden Age; etc. 10,000 years before that, the saber tooth tiger and other animals roamed the earth. Gathka highly suspected a meteorite did not kill the dinosaurs after all, but it was simply a genetic mutation that span over time.
She turned. A whisper of sound. The doctor entered the room. He was tall, muscular built, and had broad shoulders and thick, brown hair. Gathka couldn’t help but stare. He looked almost identical to her husband, except he had blonde hair and was much taller. He ran a business in New Jersey. They were from New Jersey. She smiled thinly and rose to her feet. She straightened her dress nervously. “Hello,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, doctor.”
“You’re one of the few,” he began.
“One of the few, what?” She raised her eyebrows questionably.
“One of the few who aren’t going to go by Artificial Insemination. We have a huge sperm bank. We even have some celebrities, some politicians. Quite a few writers. Still no?” he asked.
“I promised my grandparents,” she explained. She hesitated. She thought it was silly explaining this to a doctor. She didn’t have to explain anything to a doctor! It was her body! It was her decision-and her husband’s, who was eagerly awaiting their first child.
“You promised your grandparents what?” he asked. He wasn’t being impatient or condescending. He was being kind, generous, and offered input on the best way to take. She had made up her mind. She was firm in her revolution, in her decision.
“I promised I would be a Norm,” she replied. It was a strange thing, to be a Norm when everyone else wanted to be Abnormal. It was weird. It was ludicrous. It was hard to imagine, but it happened, very rarely, every so often. In society, being different was wrong. She knew that now. She suspected it for a long time, but humans were conditioned to think and feel a certain way, and everyone went with what everyone else was doing. If someone did it differently, they were considered a Normal-or, a Norm, for those who wanted to know. It was something that happened, changed over time. It was ridiculous. It was absurd. But, it was how society had changed. They were different. They were a lot worse. The crime rate, especially, was ridiculous. A few murders among the Abnormals; the Norms had good behavior, but there were few of them left in the world. Few and far between.
“I want to have my baby the normal way,” she told her husband the next day, over tea. He had come home, and he stroked her shoulder. He was home after a dozen meetings at the office. He was a lawyer, one of the best in the state.
“I know, dear,” he answered. “I do, too. I’ve been doing research. Many couples gave birth in hospitals. Can you imagine such a thing? That’s where they performed surgeries on people! Can you imagine!”
Gathka could. “What about their genetics?” she asked. “Their genetics just appeared out of nowhere, like magic.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe people lived like that. It’s so funny, seeing how they dress, and what they wore-”
“How they made their food,” he finished, giggling.
She nodded. The Norms ate food, still; the Abnormals lived off of energy from the sun. The sun was a large thing, and radiation was recycled. Always recycled.
Gathka gave birth to her daughter on September 8th, 3443. It was midnight. She decided to give birth at a hospital. The building was virtually empty, save for a few Abnormals who were having their regular check-ups. Some Abnormals liked to act out their lives, and pretend they were something they were not-many Abnormals begged to have a disease, even though disease was wiped out 900 years ago. She sighed. Being human was very difficult work. A lot of thought went into every day activities. Her thoughts were slow, muddied. She had trouble breathing. She brought home her daughter after being three weeks in the hospital. The doctor was puzzled because the baby had come out of the womb. Most mothers who were brought in to the hospital born babies in a test tube. It was how it was, how it shall be-she suspected he thought she was slow, numb, dumb. Maybe all three.
Her husband was gone again; gone to a business meeting. They decided to revive businesses after the last of the wars, due to the wishes of the government. Her husband laughed every time he heard the word, government, like it was some kind of great, colossal joke. One of his ancestors had died in Vietnam. That could be the reason for his case of the giggles. Maybe it was genetic.
“Hello, sweetie.” Gathka sat on the floor next to her daughter. She was broad, bold, insidious. She was eager to learn more about her Norm daughter. She would take it one at a time, however.
“Hello, Mom,” she said, smiling broadly. “Look what I’m doing.” She pointed to the toy animals spread out on the floor. “It’s Noah’s Ark, Mom. But, I don’t have a boat for them. Can we buy a toy boat next time?”
Mom was an old-fashioned word. The Abnormals called their parents “rent” or “rents.” It was an old trend that span generations. She smiled at her daughter and watched her play.
“Sure, honey,” she said, smiling down at her. “We’ll see.”

THE RELIC BORN OF ANCIENT LINES

Characters:

Anwon Price, magister
King Wandron, ruler
Delila, troll
Egg, male troll
Anwon Price was a great magister and used magic to heal others. He was not well himself. He had large eyes and a beaked nose. His mouth was long and thin and frowned a lot. He walked down a dark, shadowed road. The moon was out. It was night. The wind moaned softly. A creature darted up to him, and grabbed his hand. “Sir,” he said, breathing heavily. “Sir, may I request your service?” he asked quickly. He was trembling.
“What?” he said, with a start. “What’s the matter?”
Anwon peered closer and realized he was talking to a troll. Trolls were strange creatures. They had wide foreheads; dark, parched skin; and eyes as black as the midnight forged from darkness. They were strange, idiotic creatures, and Anwon wanted to avoid them at all cost. Tonight was no such luck. “What do you want?” he demanded. “Money, time, playing cards?” He was impatient. He wanted to get back to his job of buying and selling brooms. But his conscious refused to let him.
The troll thought about the last gift. He shook his head. “No,” he spluttered. “My friend stuck his head in a tree-”
“You want me to get him out,” he finished, nodding his head. He rubbed his hands together eagerly. He was greedy, greedy about the money he was going to make. “I would like seventy shillings, please.”
“We don’t have any money, but, hurry, he can’t breathe!” He threw back his head and howled. A long, emerald tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye. He sniffed. He was about to throw a tantrum.
Anwon Price nodded his head. “Okay,” he said. “I guess you’ll want me to be a hero, then, huh?” He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
“Yes,” he said. “Please.”
Anwon looked into the troll’s eyes and saw what he saw in them. He picked up his bag and hurried down the path towards the darkness that swallowed them. They were in the darkness for awhile; it was almost black around him. Dirt crunched under his feet. He was not wearing any shoes, he had sold it for a broom back in Oddscreak. He shook his head. No one wanted to pay him for his services. He was worried about food, because he was getting low on funds. He had a magic bag and he could pull a seven-tenths shilling out of it every few weeks. It worked, but it would not do to sustain his current need of food. An apple cost almost a whole shilling. “Where is this troll?” he asked him. “Where is this dummy?”
“Over there.” The troll pointed to the edge of the woods, and tugged at his hand. He had claimed he was a teenager. “He’s stuck in there.”
Anwon couldn’t help it. He burst into peals of laughter and shook his head back and forth. He hadn’t realized how much he liked trolls until now. He slapped the troll on the back. “Okay, runt,” he guffawed. “We’ll get him out.”
And Egg couldn’t understand why he was laughing.
He slapped the troll on the back. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he exclaimed. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Okay, first thing’s first, how did he get his head stuck in the tree? Were you playing a game, or did you put him in there?”
“We found some honey in it and he was trying to get the beehive,” Egg explained.
He nodded. “I see, I see. Well, stand back, and let me do my work.” He pulled a long stick out of his robe. Anwon wore a robe because he thought it made him look cool. The other kids thought he was cool. They asked him to perform at birthday parties sometimes; he hadn’t done it in at least four months. He tapped the tree. Nothing happened. The wind still cried; darkness swirled around them. He tried again. Still nothing. The branches of the tree shuddered. He decided a better tactic was at hand. He banged the troll on the side of the head. He howled and the tree bulked but did not release the troll. Egg was getting impatient. He hopped from one foot to another.
“Hurry!” he complained. “We need to be home by sundown.”
Anwon was confused. “Why?” he asked.
Egg shrugged his shoulders. “Because,” he answered. “It’s when we eat.”
Anwon thought he understood. He took hold of the troll’s legs, and pulled. The troll fell back on top of him. His breath was nearly knocked out of him. The troll stumbled to his feet, gasping and clawing for air. “Thank you!” he exclaimed.
“What’s your name?” Anwon asked him.
“My name is Delila.”
Anwon raised an eyebrow. A female troll. It was almost unheard of, especially in this part of the country, which was called Graywhereland. Anwon thought the name should be changed. He didn’t understand why the king allowed such a beautiful place to have such a terrible name.
“Thank you,” the trolls exclaimed. “Thank you, very much. Would you like to join us for a feast?”
Anwon’s stomach rumbled with hunger. He rubbed his stomach. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay, I will go to your feast. Where is it?”
“At Captpot Hall,” Egg explained. “In the Rion Forest.”
Delila took his hand and tugged him deeper into the forest of trees. The stars appeared in the sky above them; it must be well past midnight. Delila was skipping. She wasn’t bothered by the fact they were in a magical forest. It was a magical forest and many creatures lived in it. Including the Waggabeast; the Biggabeast; and the Trilyabyte, they are kind of like lizards without a tail.

ARE BROKEN LINES.

ARE BROKEN LINES

The night is full of stars.
What I see, is what I see-
In it is what darkness brings.
The highway is full of cars.
And the night is full of stars,
The wind constantly sings-
Silver things are lined with trains.
The sun is dry when it rains.
I’m all for money, when I got a honey,
And it is what night will bring.

There are lines in the broken road,
That goes on forever-
All the things we remember,
And sand through hands that are poured.
Like dreams and shadows, moving on
Night beams,
And sorrows are woken in a dream.
There are lines in the broken road,
And it goes faster and faster,
Like a shadow in the night.
The sun is filled to brim with light.

All the sadness in the stones,
Are broken, at last, and we go home-
We see the tides that are coming in
The ocean.
They are broken, and the lines go on forever.

What the Boy Knew.

The boy did not understand the importance of books. His mouth turned downward in a slight grimace, and he looked at Teacher. Teacher had gray hair and green eyes, they seemed to stare at nothing, a lot of times. Brian wondered if he was well. He did not look well. He looked very sick. He climbed off the stool, and looked at him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought I sent you home. I told you not to come back. I dismissed you!” He clenched his fists. It was not a good idea to anger the Prince of the Emperor of Jennsen, but it was important. The Emperor had taken him aside, and told him to tutor his son. He was bound to obey. Obeying was what Teachers did; that was how they survived in the universe that was harsh and cold and cruel.
Teacher waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I understand you do not take things seriously, my boy,” he chirped. “I have come to help you.”
“Help me with what?” he asked. His voice trembled like the Western Winds that rose from the South, and settled in the East, and everywhere in between. He owned everything on this planet, from the vast forests of Straighte, to the Inland of Eucalydies. The planet was monstrous, far larger than anything the Settlers had ever found. They settled on the planet thousands of years ago. The oceans were large-there were only two, but the water was angry, choppy, epic. Yes, the word would work. His father was gone most of the time. He wanted his father to be at home, so he could play with him. The maids and servants and the neighbor boys were not fun to play with, they made fun of him because he was rich, and he did not have shabby clothing. His clothes were made from the finest tailors in all of Jennsen. It was ideal for the prince of an Emperor to wear such fine clothes, and he definitely was made of money.
“You are the son of an Emperor,” he said in a thick voice. “You are supposed to be educated, elegant, endearing-you are none of these things! Look at how you walk! You walk like a duck! A duck!”
He looked around in abashment, and a sword hung on the wall. He grabbed the sword, and started swinging it in a clockwise position. “This is what you are supposed to learn, young student!” he cried. “You are supposed to learn how to duel!”
Brian shook his head. “I do not understand,” he said. “I am supposed to be married, and breed-that is what is in my Histories.”
Teacher stopped cold. He put down the sword, and stared at him, his face bold. Brian thought Teacher looked a lot like a duck. His hair was long and gray; his face was long; even his hands were like webbed feet, they stuck out tremendously. “How do you know about them, boy?” he demanded. “How do you know about the Histories? Only adults know about them, not children!”
“I followed my father.”
Teacher nodded thoughtfully. He saw it now. Brian was one of the Oddities, they were the ones who always had to make trouble, who didn’t appreciate Order, or anyone who could lead. Teacher cocked his head to look at him. He had to help him, before the Empire fell around his ears-or, his throat, for people who did what he did usually had their heads cut off. Brian was not like the Others. He was special. He was the son of an Emperor, and his life was spared. “Listen carefully, boy,” he said. “I know you see things, you think things that are different. I want you to listen to me. Do not tell anyone what you think. Ever. If you want to live.”
Brian’s eyes widened in fear. “If?” he echoed. His voice sounded loud to his own ears.
Teacher nodded. “We are at war. We have been at war for a long time. Real war stopped a long time ago, when the Emperor’s son, Temptess, discovered Magic. Not the real magic, but…close enough.”
Brian wished he would elaborate. He did not. He continued, “I am your Teacher. I will teach you how to read.”
An hour passed, and Brian still did not understand books.

Bitter Salt.

There was a three-story window that looked out
At an abandoned parking lot, and the faces looked in

At a crowd of spectators, all mouths open, all smiling.
The people were like rounded things, and the noise of the party
Was loud and translucent, and the Shadows of stone
Moved and no one could move.

The speeding train on the subway, was like the wind,
And it moaned like the wind, and the sound was awful-

And the teacher threw his temper out the window,
At the running cars, and the sound of the night was like
A whisper of trees that pounded on the forbidden grass of
Things,
And the silence was like a firecracker in the night,

And all reasons were not like shadows in the grass,
On the edge of things.
Some people are born bitter; and die a bitter death,
And people are too demanding, and bitter.

This salt is like the ocean, and the ocean is bitter because it
Holds all the fish, and sometimes, the fish die,
And the Gulf of Mexico is like a round circle in the middle of
The ocean.
Everything is treated with respect, and respect is in anything,
And all we have is our bitter bread, and the salt it came from-

Wings, His Mood.

His mood is like a shadow, that moves swiftly on
Its wings-
On abled beast, his harp it sings,
Like shattered, broken things-
In the dark, we weep like stars, and the night
Is a spell of words, and sorrows are broken,
And time is gone.
My mother said she was not a part of anything,

That she is not the part of the world that is between
Things. She speaks better than me, her thoughts are
Relinquished; she said she gave away medals once,
And a harp, to her next door neighbor, who had three
Cats, and seven pigeons that pooped in a well.

It isn’t like me to beat around the bush, and not say what I
Am supposed to say, it is not like me to speak,
When no one speaks, and everything is spoken in
Blades of grass, and Nature is wrought with the churning
Of the wind, and the clouds are taken like sorrows.

In and out, the harp sings like sorrows, and everything is folding
In the grass, and the spring is folding, and the light is folding,
And everything folds with it. The fear is there, the fear is sharp
And bitter as blades of grass, and we are far away, and far
Away is close to us, and everything around us is sharper than
The eye, and what we see like burnt pieces of wood.

The forest, the trees, the eyes see from far away, and everything
Is far away, like the roaring of the ocean, and the shadows
Pound at the doorway of the old house we lived in when I was three,
And the mother, and the father, and the brother, the tallest of the elms,
Sits back and watches everything drown.

The water is like Shadows, and the serpent opens its mouth, and
Everything moves with it, and in it, is the tongue of the beast,
The night time that speaks of stars, and wisdom, and trees.
My mother thought my life was not supposed to be like yesterday,

That we are above what we are, and death is not the end. Only the beginning
Of a forgotten war, the fiendish fiends, and all hope brings. Everything is what
It is, and nothing is what it seems. We are not the warriors of the night,
Of the screams of children as they play, and the pigeons scream from far away;
We are gone, and we decide, I open the front door and let the sunlight seep in.
Guilt eats me alive, like something that is a tree that stands tall, and guilt is not.

I Dream of Chromosomes.

These times, I see, in reverie,
And shadows march like stones-
Things belch like chromosomes,
And I walk alone.

Shadows move like songs that sing,
In the heavens and the tide-
In this light, we will abide,
And tender-light will bring.

I think we are not what we are,
That the light is near, and we are far-
We travel now, and walk a mile,
As the elephant will docile smile.

The night is like a walking song,
And we move, we move along-
All we have is all we are,
And the light is near, and we are far.

The squire is moving like a birch,
And the birds will chirp like lonely things-
Temper is what it brings,
As we move about, and wander, search.

I am gone, and you are not done,
And the light is over and the coldest stone,
Moves again, and moves again,
Like a willow in a dream.

Orphans At Midnight.

They said I could not write. That I am not here.
That things are not things and we have no rings.
I am not haunted by the depths of things, that move like
Water and shelter and are not gone-
The barking of the dog wakes the farmer, and he rises out
Of his bed the next day; and sometimes I sit and stare out
The window and think about the rising and falling of the ocean,
And nothing is sharper than stone; and nothing becomes
Nothing, and everything moves and is stiller than the shadow.
I do not remember my childhood, only the memory of it
Is still and wide as the nightmare that makes up my life,
And I am forced to realize I am not dying, that I have not
Lived up to my name. Everywhere we go there are speakers
Of oceans; everywhere we are, the words are quick like
Stones, and my name is on the lips of everyone in Italy because
My friend is the Chancellor’s wife; and I try to pretend I don’t
Care, but I care about the flowers and the hills and the trees
And how everything is nothing, and nothing is everyone in between
These rocks and crevasses and people think I do not have anything,
That I am an orphan like midnight.
They said I could not write. I could not spell words. I could not spell
Thoughts that are meshed inside oneself; no one represents me,
Because the tectonic plates are gentler as stones and nothing;
And I am this nothing, and people give me funny looks because
Of the scar on my forehead, that I did not do, and now my mother
Is in her house; she thinks it was my fault, and I was a child,
And I am not greedy about anything.
They said I could not write, and it is not midnight, either, and skeletons
Walk like birds.

How Dragons Are Not Here.

I talk about dragons in books; and books rhymes with nooks
And everyone hates me because I am a strain, and my voice is
Like a crocodile and I have sharp teeth and the bones melt with bones-
Sometimes, things are broken, and promises are made, and people
Weep, and the canyons are deep as oceans-
Sometimes, I do not know where the canyons are made, or why
They are made, only they are there, only the opinions of things
Are driven out of the land like coyotes, and some Americans
Do not like take-out food, especially not Canadian, French,
Canadian Bacon-I think I like oranges on certain days; I think
I like this or that; and the snow falls down on the Himalayas and sometimes
I look for Big Foot or someone else, someone who is not quite so simple
In his words, or for men with big trucks and yellow gardens,
And how they sod the fields, how they grow corn-some of the corn
Is shaped like diamonds, and some men break their backs on them;
Some of them are tall; others are short; others are like children in their way
And as ghosts; they tell me I cannot speak for them, but I end up writing
About them, how they troll, how they move, and their movement is simple
Like the tides are simple and the ocean is larger than itself-
And how wallabyes look up to us and badgers look up to us and the sounds
Of summer is larger than our eyes, and my teachers expect me to pick up
Their paychecks and not spend it; and how Mr. Millan, the man from the Bronx,
Was shot at the grocery store and he had a limp and it makes him cry every
Night, including on weekends-I do not know about words, only about the spelling
Of them; like the Spelling Bee I won in sixth grade.
These dragons are kind of sort not on my heart or mind and I am forced to realize
Something I have come to know,
That humans are not humans at all, just plants, maybe, like talking trees,
Or words that come out of books, and birds sing their song,
And I am paler than lightning, and lightning is quick and brown and moves like
Sand-
That some sands rise out of nothing, and nothing has become of it. I tiptoe this nothing,
And people don’t want to hear me speak. I ask myself why, and thoughts
Linger in the dark.

People Are Not.

People who do not like others do not like
Books.
People who do not like others do not like flowers,
Specifically daisies, wildflowers, roses-
Some roses are purple and red;
Others are sworn into strategy; that communication
Is not who we are, and we do not know about
Tomorrows.

Some men and women do not walk standing
Upright; some men and women make amends by
Seeking out the truth;
And the nozzle is turned off, spit out of a valve;
Greenland and Ireland are all wisdoms that speak
When others speak,
And ghosts are adventures of the forbidden seekers
Of this night-
Sometimes, songs rise out of the night, and shadows
Are shadows and Nature is Nature, all wrapped in a riddle.

The riddle begins to speak and communication is what
We speak, and sometimes the words fall in rhymes
And rhymes are spit out of worlds. Some things are not left
Unsaid, some things are left unbroken, like a watch
Dangled from a chain, and other things that we do not know,
Are forced not to know-

Nothing is the matter, but all is made of matter, and wives
And dolls are pretty much the same, and trees stand tall as the sun.
Some people speak. Most do not.

People who do not like others do not like books or birds or songs
Or strains of grass, and people who do not like words are moving
Like mountains, sad and remained like bitter waves that
Break on the shore of an ocean, and sometimes people have problems
With death and poverty and we know it not,

That ghosts stand on oceans and look down into them. That some ghosts
Do not live, others die, and warriors and knights are stiller than the night.
Some people do not like other people, some people do not like poverty.

Something Taller Than the Sun.

You’ve got nothing but the sound of your own voice
Reaching to the infinite, reaching to the sadness that
Lacks in your grace-
We are tall as buildings, and everything emulates inside of it,
Outside of it like the falling and rising of the wind-
Everything is the wind, and yesterday is the wind also.

That the shades grow taller than the sun,
And the moon is round the sun;
That these words are round, and we are not afraid,
And temptation lacks creation and everything in between.

That people do not force realization upon the politeness of us,
And the grandness that is tall and pure.
And the country rises from ashes, and speaks to us of ashes,
And we are not what we speak, that we are not weak,
And nothing is weak. That the world is not round,
And we are not round, and we can talk to the words on our lips,
And everything is insistent, that nothing is whole and sacred
And the words are emotionless things-

With the Rest of The Dreams.

In the dream of redemption, the harshness of the dream is withered
And remains on the vines-on the herald of dreams, we walk among
The tall trees, and teach the Elk to stand proud and strong-
We teach them to communicate with the rest of the country that is
Not the country, and these houses are not tall, and stand tall as wildflowers;
Moving in the grass, the trees are barren and grown; this is the system
That is not known, all we have are other pieces of shadows made from
Taller things; all we have is the lack of speaking, and the speaking of
Shadows that delve further into the being; that these tides begin to move,
And everything moves in it and outside of it; that they do not understand
The swift, moving tide, and sparrows are fallen on the ground near my feet;
That the language of redemption is torn from roots and grain, and I talk
To the warriors who bend and strain and everything is ridden of the light
And pain;
The moon pours into the window; that shadows are lutes, and words are nothing
More the strain of colors; that people are stupid, nothing more than shadows,
And society is not what is meant to become,
We have our secrets and they are not the gold and the cold and the words
Are like whispers in haunted castles;
I live in a castle, it is outside of these walls, and reading things is nothing
More than the temptation of being-
That the temptation of being is a language of something that is something else,
And people are eager, and force other dragons to shape and move and turn;
That the shadows and tides yearn tomorrow, and we go with the moving train-

On Metaphors.

The metaphor is spying on me,
In the classroom, outside of the classroom.
Mr. Cortez is in the living room of his house,
He is afraid to go out-
He teaches Spanish to ninth graders, to college
Students, and gets a lot of money.
All he cares about is the money,
The feeling of money in his hands, the feeling
Of the wind through the mountain.
He knows about destruction; the destruction of
The rain forest, he knows about the peace,
And the beginning and end of it.
He has given the land to the man in the black
Hat, who looks like Abe Lincoln, but is not;
The metaphor is spying on me, and is jealous
Of my accomplishments, but accomplishments
I have none, and so she is after the fruit
I harvest in the winter.
Without food, the human race will perish,
Dissolve into the big nothing because it cannot
Love, cannot die; is forced to wonder why.
Old men walk around old coffee shops;
They are only old because of the telling of it,
The teller of tales, the redemptions of things.
Everyone is a bully, they like to bully and be reminded
Of a time when bulls and deer and the antelope were
Free, and not chained as they are now;
That they are not chained to film, that they are not guilty,
That they do not wonder lonely down barren
Marshes in the summer, and the summer is not wet
With dew, and that goodness is nothing, means nothing;
Everything is a language, spun of spider webs.

LIKE THE WIND.

All your heart belongs to me like the wind
That moves in the sea.
Your eyes look at me like glass,
The sorrows fade and do not pass.
I like to see what I can see, in love’s enchanted beauty,
All these sorrows we do not grasp,
The words are felt and do not turn.
Like the sorrow, we will yearn,
And are trapped forever in a wheelbarrow.
The sky is yellow. The harp is yellow. A bird hangs
From a brush in the sky.
A tear drops from your eye, and you sob and cry,
And you cry.
I know you’re stuck in a rut and can’t get out of it.
Your life is in ruin and nothing can be done about it.
No one wants me here, the life is what I fear,
And the tables are stacked up together like the birds of a feather.
I can’t hold onto life anymore. I’m stuck in a dimension,
Another door. It’s just another day, another word on
The floor. Like a carpet stuck full of pine needles.
We don’t speak without discussing it first.
We don’t have a memory of anything outside of us.
The first day begins and the next one ends and it resumes
In the middle, and life is not felt, and the sorrow is
Gone with it.