Monthly Archives: December 2022

Night Drive

One hundred ten kilometers per hour
the road is static, the world smudged
control is an illusion wrested from machine
blind faith in a thousand unknown things
moving through time and space.

One hundred ten kilometers per hour
destinations are no longer distance, but time.
If not the ending or the beginning
a long threshold, an inbetween
somehow ignorant of us in these moments
knowing only hope and nostalgia.

One hundred ten kilometers per hour
the steering wheel is grappled from anothers hand
while the machine it guides is thrown about.
The gears, shafts and wheels move only in absolutes
submissive to the violence of velocity.

One hundred ten kilometers per hour
is an absurd starting block for a box of metal
tumbling like a clod of dirt down a hill
all engineering and safety cast off like night gowns
the naked vulnerability brutalized and screaming.

Wrenched

Caked car parts
            thick with darkness
            dripping

                            drip

                            drip

                            dripping
                                a pool of introspection
                              soft echoes of the world
                            in hollowed tones.

  no one dares the dipping of a toe
growing
            undisturbed
                              save by itself.

the mended
                                          the broken
              both remain

the world flows through and spills out
                      all the same.

Jerricho

Seven times the trumpet sounds
seven times around
and with that
what was pillaged from the earth
is reunited,
a victory born of loss –
to herald a loss
forged in victory.

Shattered stone
cast like die
looking for lucky numbers,
while the whole world waits
silent and still
for revelation
the stars beyond run from one another
terrified to confront
any semblance of themselves.

Words as Weeds

We are bleached sidewalks in the sun
cracks counted in innocent fun
careless feet as deadly as guns
“your mother’s done, your mother’s done!”

Oft young words will burrow inside
find a cozy place to reside
in the cracks where even light hides;
from there it bides, from there it bides.

Seeds that use the darkness to grow
stretch their roots out and far below
where we break with more cracks to show
and so it goes, and so it goes.

When weeds like these we do impart
they cause our reason to depart;
if we take them too close to heart,
rend us apart, rend us apart.

Catch those seeds as soon as they fall
give them kindness in which to sprawl
and ask their source if they recall
their own downfall, their own downfall.

What seeds in them took root within
broke their spirit like newborn skin
and let them know it’s not a sin,
to start again, to start again.

Fortune

Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey

on the other end of the beginning
there can be found only resignation
the planting of oneself.

Forgiveness, nurturing and
eventually dead dreams decompose
flourishing in the compost of our lives.

Enriching the time we have
sending our leafy limbs outstretched
embracing the sky

Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey.

Earl Grey

Where the clouds drop
and dip into the streets
they find mystery;

city blocks that disappear
as a tree felled against the river
carried away with it’s rage
dragged beneath the surface.

In slow drama
the world becomes a blank face
wholly unforgiving.

From within the current
we can only ask
“is this what always has been,

blinded by a sea of clouds
severed from the world?”

The city
through the fog can only reply
in a hurried whisper secreted away,

“All dreams die in the sun.”

Planning for the Future

If these are to be the last of our days
I will tick through them all in slow seconds
never so bleak as to call out the hour
but aware enough to know the minutes.

Every moment respected and cherished
I will stay with them as long as I can
while able to wake, early and witness
these last few sun’s to rise on human eyes.

In our end the sun will not set upon all things
only on all things that include ourselves,
so as we come now to disinherit the earth
let us make it better for those that remain,

for what concern is time when it is good?

Lemon Tree

I can taste the years
            transcribed as fruit
          bites of indulgence
      bursting with what was.

I chew on them in restless moments
              squeezing out every ounce
        yet still
    those faded flavors
taste ever sweeter.

What will today taste like
              once devoured
                        digested
            sewn in my mind
        to sprout, bud and flower?

Have I nourished this fruit to flourish… or sour?

Today

This is not the day tomorrow will surely be
there is too much stress, anxiety, even guilt

over all the greatness yesterday should have been
had not the days before that been so difficult.

If I could, I would reject the bed, lift my head
march out the prison I’ve resigned so long to stay.

I’d eat as if there was an adventure waiting
prepare myself for anything that comes my way.

Should there be no courage in the day to challenge
I would fashion some reverence from the stale stone slate.

Days do not wait for good to happen upon them
we must carve it out and try to shape something great,

but this is not the day that tomorrow will be
already today has gotten the best of me.