a hot spike of adrenaline
sluices into my blood
not a shot, a squirt, or a drip,
but an adamant flood
if you can find someone who gives
you that kind of feeling
without fearing a certain death
but, still, with mind reeling
Hold on!
I snatch a coat from hook on my way out.
The gusting winds are rattling the panes.
The sad line of tracks, when I wheel about,
suggests I’ve made little by way of gains.
The cabin keeps me ever near at hand.
I walk and walk and yet it won’t recede.
The slog is slow as if I’m in quicksand;
I lean to snap my chains, and so be freed.
But chains I cannot see, I cannot break.
My sisyphean lean does me no good.
And through the air there falls just one snowflake,
but there’d be more before I reach the Wood.
The cabin wants me back; I hear it call.
I buckle at the knees. So goes my fall.
From out a rocky mountainside
juts a sinewy limb.
Its existence appears brutal
and its future ever grim.
It hangs on by roots pinned in rock
dangling over the edge.
It’s splitting up that rocky crag
as if an iron wedge.
It feels the wind that whips around
that abrupt precipice,
and when the clouds envelope all,
it must feel perilous.
But never will that old dwarf tree
bemoan its cliffside fate.
Or curse the addition of a
hawk’s, or raven’s, weight.
I
granite domes
bubble from the flat lands,
earthly zit, or
beauty marks written
in topography
II
the foothills
spread from the mountains
like ripples,
echoing from
the cordillera
III
four horses,
standing on the hilltop,
as if meeting,
but with no common
vision or purpose
What is overproduced & under-desired is cheapened.
We live in a world that does not want for information.
Perhaps, if we had to carve our words into stone —
or press them into clay tablets —
and had to carry said tablets around,
we’d be more careful what we said,
and people would be more eager to read it.
There was a bold florist from Vietnam
who was graced in great measure with aplomb.
There was nothing quite like
how she rode motorbikes
with eight thousand flowers, two kids, and her mom.
Poetic License…
a permit to say strange things in strange ways.
It’s not quite Bond’s License to Kill,
but, sometimes — merely by using words —
one can deceive people into thinking
that conveying meaning is one’s principal goal.
It’s not a Double-Oh License to Kill,
but it does let one write in secret ciphers,
with each reader providing their own key.
What mayhem might be unleashed by one operating under such a license?
Ideas are like keys, unlocking new
versions of you. It needn’t be a new thought.
It might take twenty-three exposures to
an idea before it slips and twists
to pop the lock — unleashing a new you.
Why not the first time you read a concept?
Who knows? Maybe, the last time all pins weren’t
aligned. Your mind wasn’t in a receptive
state, or you were missing a vanguard thought.
I only know that spring-loaded mind “pop”
has always come with a sharp exhale, and
the feeling that I’m forever transformed.
I tore up your world, remaking
it in a style that was my own.
I wiped the crown from your King’s head,
and painted myself on the throne.
Your cast kept me good company
when I felt like being alone.
Your story became the sum of
my knowledge, both known and unknown.
For these sins and so many more,
I refuse to ever atone.
Cities pretend to sleep.
They fool us.
Eyes close.
Darkness settles.
In the deep of the night,
a city is like a kindergartener during nap time —
fidgety and mischievous.
When Tokyo’s trains shut down at midnight,
far from hibernating in suspended animation,
the city traps people in a dimension
that most people never see —
a headachy, eye-rubbing,
fuzzy-minded
land of waking dreams.
