#23

Pressed down shaken together

And running over; return sought to be a

parade, a

celebration of life but rather a

sour roiling wound in a base so deep, the

sheer avoiding nature the

self-centered take on my emotions

Makes the

wound spill harder, just seeking a

herringbone gold chain

An ascot and a waist watch.

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#22

For ‘a’ (lipogram)

ash

Valhalla paths  

ash

an amaranth lass

ash  

amass a charlatan’s grafts

ash

a bacchanal past

ash

acts as ass  

ash

a man’s charm bank

ash

vagrant’s caravan

ash

balm

ash

play

ash

a champ harsh

ash

gag gallant acts

ash

a watchman’s karma back

#20

It’s like trying to extinguish

A fire with rum and vodka and gin

To achieve a healed self or in the very least,

Numbing-amnesia;

It’s like trying to fly with one chewed up

Wing knowing you once were host to

A convention of clouds;

It’s being trapped beneath the surface of a

Frozen lake running your hands across its

Jagged chest for a fishing hole;

It’s the admiration of a fuchsia pedal trapped on the

Wet concrete against that grey face but a voice telling

You in fact it’s navy blue because it’s you lie, the perception

untrue, you omit facts for self-preservation,

like this is who are and will always be;

It’s a word or an action like a light switch

in a dark room being thrusted into

a bad trip at light speed, cutting lights,

blinding noises, loud mouths with sharp teeth,

A rush in blood pressure, cool beads of

sweet on brow and palms,

Faint knees.

#19

Like the knot in those

doubled-laced L.A. Gears

fused needed strength of jaw,

sharp edge K-9 to begin the

unraveling processes;

Like the scorched dusty throat earth

cracked puckered lips

pressing in and praying

for a fix;

Like the first thing seen

in face of alarm clock

stone but to desperately be

gold bullion;

Like the last joint saved for rainy day

mouth vibrates seethes saliva

makes dick hard

betrays logic

as a yellow flame whips

around the heart.

#18

simple glass tea pot

in the curled transparent handle

holds the equivalent static

energy from a 60-year-old

family quilt;

no one really dies. 

#17

Garish sunlight &

Pall of smoke

Country flag like blindfold

A bygone hymnal

The pen wrote the machine

The machine molds the pen

Bottom lines holy ghost &

Jesus gears

Behind the veil us

Now see

Stymied roots &

New names for slavery

Bright orange magnesium

Teeth hollow out an AC transit bus

drags black cloth

over factory lamps

#16

Its poppy season again #itslit,

look at US, we are all poppies here

ain’t we beautiful?

Yeah but look at them over there tho’, those

them half-breed poppies, Cali-prickly poppies

with that prickly poppy privilege, they think they

better than us, or them quarter ones too,

they ain’t real poppies! They got that soft skin,

they wilt super easy in the sun, they get bought

up real quick repotted in the house,

they don’t know the struggle.

It’s poppy season again, #itslit,

We are all poppies here, look at

US ain’t we beautiful?

But we mixed, half prickly poppy of

Northern Europe. I can pass man.

No one knows what I am, I can blend in, I can ignore

All that shit around me.  I got more access man.

When I look at myself I don’t see color. They don’t like

us anyways. I’m better

Thanna ol’ regular Cali poppy.

But did you see how farmer-john last week ripped one of

US out the ground for no damn reason, it was brutal, rolled his roots

Around his index finger and yanked him out of his socket,

stepped on him, dragged him around, then used a scythe

to cut his stamens off, man that poppy was mixed—naw!

he was regular Cali poppy. He don’t count. He count. Farmer-

john didn’t know the difference, didn’t matter to him at the

end of the day. To him we all look the same.

#15

I view a rose

everyday same rose

I scroll the length of it’s body

its wide spread and reaching pedals

one day it stripteases

it grows teeth builds a soapbox

and demands something controversial

it is between the nationalist and progressive but also

the atheist and messiah

I was the only viewer a twitch later

one million it whispered silent poems

about abuse and trauma,

it showed me its

a friend’s child’s birth, then a funeral,

Indica strains, travels around the world,

Afterschool brawls, violence, opulence,

fantasy, beauty and horror gushing down

its sepal to round of Adam’s apple

sometimes it solicits erotic encounters via webcam

in direct messages, it is the glass ceiling it exploits

the weak but in the same beat empowers it

all colors and genders but also reflects

self-hate and xenophobia

the rapper becoming irrelevant

hangs on for relevancy like a cobweb caught on a thorn

the seekers of self-worth make businesses here

my eyes backflip in place, the surveyor of dreams

realized, the purveyor of feuding families,

light

it scratches my corneas I want to quit the rose,

avoid it’s fire but I am so drawn to it, it fulfills the will

of my addictive personality caught in swings of an 8

it shimmy-skips in my subconscious

stirs up lust but also passages of inspiration, thankfully

I know I have choices still in this world where

choice is becoming either a revolutionary act

or a dying pastime. The mystery of life

is dead; a browned apple core

rolls against the wind.

#14

After Baldwin

I crave a secure mooring post

because freedom is too damn unbearable

life defined by emotional attachés

I’m not afraid of losing people

as much, being afraid of not being tied to

someone or an idea even is another thing entirely

the parent-child co-dependency,

lover to therapist-parent,

friend to bank account, like a solid wooden post

dug several feet into subsurface, its surety,

it’s a controlled environment yet I knew

as a child constant flux

traffic of parent’s lovers, tide in tide out

one post to the next freedom is fear is

the horror of loneliness

being out at sea too long without that

sure without that grounded,

but it’s so necessary now

not to play it safe, to let go, to uproot

and burn, to dismantle it all, to not inventing

something because someone says its right

I woke up with my mind

evolution on

slip of mooring line’s knot,

that slow drift from dock

open blue waters

the diamond dance of sunlight

a soft bell will play

a Yes to life