rum-dumb sailor,
bobbing in the horse latitudes —
dying dryly —
parched, in a fluid universe
he prays to the holy mother of Time —
prays that she have the courtesy to exist,
but she’s as silent as the wind,
and as invisible as the shore
What creates more and bigger monsters…
fear or drink?
boredom or loneliness?
Hell or High Water?
And when the Captain points the way…
How does one know that one has put the monster to the fore?
What lurks in the shadowed archway, behind?
Who charges forward to the tune of,
“Lead onward, oh ye of the pointy stick!”
And why does yonder illuminated woman carry a chicken?
It’s a snack too raw for the Night Watch,
but too small to distract a monster.
Source: Bart Everson https://www.flickr.com/people/11018968@N00
It feels like living in a sizzle reel —
a jump cut waking nightmare shot too bright
for gritty city scenes where off clothes peel
while below grates are steaming in the night.
Some words are words; some words are garbage trucks.
They carry steaming piles of dumpster lumps,
and all the rained refuse the dim can chuck.
Becoming too laden to make the Dump.
And that poor word is broken down in funk.
blinding white light,
followed by:
ice cream brain freeze —
above
&
between the eyes
like a red-hot poker
boring toward the pineal gland
some reveled in that feeling
others thought they were test driving hell
but whatever else it may have been —
IT WAS.
yellow light
of the setting sun
warms high branches
city unlocked,
birds and beasts return
to the background
crow perches
on a cast iron railing —
watching
wary people —
spring-thawed hibernators
rejoin world
bright flowers
bloomed, lived, and died
in my absence
i’ve got no time for silent shouts
they take too long to vibrate my bones,
and i’m not sure that Time even exists —
maybe in the sense that i exist,
but not in any REAL sense
mystical snapping fingers
keep slapping me up against the NOW
and it hurts in the incandescent filament of my soul —
the part that precariously wiggles,
under constant threat of sizzling out–
and — in doing so — would leave me a dull boy
In days before hell swallowed,
I’d sit on a bench reading news,
and watching how lead ducks followed
while marching down in ones and twos.
They went into shallow water —
floating time bombs, drifting slowly,
wishing they hadn’t sons or daughters
to die among creatures lowly.
“The end is nigh! The END is nigh!”
called a junky from yonder shore.
He was twisted and floating high,
and had too much of being more.
But now my window sits broken.
The land is flattened as my mind.
Moving lips tell not what’s spoken
from a vantage point wedged behind…
He held half-baked ideas in
his twice-baked brain.
He’d grab his umbrella when they
shouted, “Make it rain!”
–the umbrella he should have left for a
friend stuck home under the weather.
But his glasses were bent out of shape, and
he was hell-bent for leather
So, he couldn’t find his coat, nor gloves,
nor ass-less chaps.
And, thus, was running better late
than never — perhaps.
He couldn’t afford to miss the boat
that had sailed, my friend.
He needed his job, ’cause a penny
earned was one he’d spend.
When told he was skating on thin ice,
he maxxed out the AC.
All his blessings were disguised too
well for him to see.
He’d thought he was okay when told
he had stiff competition.
–the nuns taught him to fix that with six
Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition.
But they said his co-workers were
really on the ball.
He’d have gotten a Pilates chair,
but was afraid to fall.
When he heard the new guy was up-and-coming,
he got up and left.
He wanted to be thick as thieves so he
went out for a supply closet theft.
There’s famine in the heartland —
lungs full of the blowing sands.
People huddle near the fire,
waiting on the news, sans wire.
But the news won’t get better
by the time you get the letter
it’ll long since quit being news —
it’ll be lyrics for the Blues.
