Tail tucked.
Eyes weary and watery.
A roadside dog.
A part pulls it to the edge,
seeking to shoot into the street.
Amid the roaring chaos machines
that rumble and surge
–shrill or silent.
A part pulls it back,
claiming the comfortably known.
A stretch of sidewalk free of danger,
free of metal monsters,
devoid of food.
Sitting at the roadside,
fear fades as its hunger heightens.
Until the dog is compelled to propel
itself in among the hurried humans
& their rolling death boxes.
someday someone will stumble on the stone
a stone outlasting skin and bone
a stone surface pocked and mossy
though once it shone polished glossy
brushing off letters worn shallow
on a stone face bleak and sallow
rendered so by nature and time
twins spoiling all not in its prime
they’ll read a name with bookend dates
and be shown they hold a common fate
should one become legend and myth
you’ll still not outlive your monolith
When it travels through the crack,
who knows if it will come right back?
Is it a crack in space or time,
or in the fabric of your mind?
“Maybe it’s matter” said the Mad Hatter,
“But if it goes in fat, it’ll come out flatter.”
The river twists through a barren landscape.
Filling with flotsam, detritus, and silt,
dragging death downstream,
it will pour into a bright, blue sea.
You should savor that scene,
but your view is from above,
and so you see a shit-colored plume
splaying into the clear, calm waters.
And you fear the shit stain
will spread across the sea.
But it doesn’t.
It seems to settle.
You never knew the clear and calm could
subdue those murky, mucky waters.
Running into an old gas station,
I found it but a thin facade.
I’d tripped into a simulation
coded by a tacky two-bit god.
I checked my watch, the world stood still.
Eternity lived on this back lot set?
Should’ve taken that damn red pill,
for this world has gone over-budget.
What are you free to do or be?
Can you set out across an endless sea?
What deserts can your mind go roam
from which your fears won’t send you home?
Epictetus asked, “Are you free?”
Can you stand, while others flee?
Can you escape the default mode
that’s locked into your mental code?
Can truth change your way of seeing?
Are you sectless in the art of disagreeing?
An old woman in a sari
weeps at the bus stop.
It’s 6am. Nobody out
but joggers and tired
telemarketers, heading
home from a night of
being Chad from Denver
to be Arjun of Bangalore
once more.
And this woman sitting
solo on a bench–weeping.
Shunning assistance,
her story feels clear.
There’s no space to
grieve in their home.
No instant free of
someone who wants to
fix the unfixable.
So she slips away
from a quiet house
to unburden her grief
at a distance from the
loved ones it might
rain down upon.
He was an old, soulless Zombie
I met in a diner out on Route 5.
He said he’d kill us all,
but I thought he was joshing.
Then when his music was over–
an ELO tune from the jukebox—
he lunged at the waitress and
bit her clean through the carotid.
It spurt like a shock therapy patient
had a ketchup squeeze bottle in hand.
The diner’s diners commented,
“Surely, that old, soulless Zombie
isn’t gnawing on that poor girl?”
“Poor child probably don’t make minimum wage—
even with tips—
and now an old, soulless Zombie has his chompers in her.”
It’s there.
Down deep
the dark deep
without at drip,
a drop,
or a peep.
Silent as a kingly tomb–
or a sleeping mother’s womb.
It sits as still as a blind mole rat–
but seething like a vampiric bat.
And if that door should open,
there is a truth unspoken.
It will go out to feed.
Spawning a terror stampede.
Gobbling, gobbling–no tasting, just killing.
No time to savor the fear it’s instilling.
It must feed.
Flat-topped tea shrubs
round over the contours
of ancient, eroded mountains
worn into low-lying lumps.
The army green plants
sport tight crew cuts–
the recently plucked.
The lime green plants
are slightly shaggy–
pickers will soon visit.
Tips will be tossed
over the shoulder
into conic, woven baskets.
Leaves to be dried in hot boxes
fired by crackling wood.
Crushed.
Bagged.
Steeped in boiling water.
Fusing into you.
