CLOUDS
“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.” ― Marcel Proust
CLOUDS
THE NEW
How grateful I am
For what I have lost
Things
That every sad stranger
Who knew bitter beauty
In the time of their lives
And the life of their time
Refuse to console me
What comfort I get
From what I have lost
Gravity
Light weight of memory
Breadcrumbs now blown
Halts a bitter return
To the time of my life closer to empathy
A free-range emotion
An organic heart
Clarity
Lies just out of my reach
Far but not futile
The antidote to speed
Toward the time of my life
Defuse melancholy
These moments of pleasure
Rip through the pain
This triumph of measure
For all things gained
Are mine for the taking
Mine to be strained into
Clear water basins
Homemade elderberries
Are the best kind
Trust the elders who challenge the worried
Who question the juice of manufactured berries
Squashed like bugs
And tagged unrelenting
We can hardly lose to the ignorant
Coughs are the rugged cries of the resistance
Temperatures rise inflated by insistence
This is not a time for blind obedience
This is a time for ripened romance
The lure of the anarchist
Not so frightening in a handshake
Among the resistance
This is the time for brave berry picking
Noting the ripe and the bruised from living
Gathering for the inevitable
The common great listening
It will come slowly free of insistence
When the hearts and the minds
Coalesce in an earthquake
The planet gives up its right to tsunami
When the people wake up
When they are armed with
The love of themselves who speak with disarming
Of peace and enclosure
Respect and the disposal of war
Plant an elderberry or ten
Become human again.
Stop coughing. Note the scars
Bring nothing but change.
Pick elderberries and be brave again.
Be ready for the strange.
Go forth and bleed. Again and again.
It’s a star we possess in the end.
DRUNK
I don’t sleep until I’ve drunk
all the wine to sea level
until I’ve come down
from the mountain
alighted on a limb
I don’t sleep easily when
I refuse to give in
secret lives make me hunger
for rare is the time
a story is realized
without the wine
when it comes, this sleep
this battle I’ve waged
silence reacts like
a dream uncaged
sober, I wake to what
the muse demands
sober, I write while
the cats eye the day
we miss you, they whine
in the creeping night
your drunken unburdening
your nail-biting ride
to a story you’ve
unearthed at the bottom of a glass
while we sleep in the daylight
and you are free at last
a paw needs licking
a head needs kissing
the rule book’s in place
and as she ages
they give her the floor
write a story, they say
until you can’t anymore
we’ll carry on leaping in
late night intent
while you carry on making
your way to repent
tomorrow is always a fickle thing
bravado or Zen is challenging
the secret of life
are cows not so far
from the writer
we trust or we don’t anymore
it’s the path we’d rather
a sober collective or
a bloody bother
I don’t sleep until
I contact the courier
I don’t sleep until
I drink the blood of the warrior
1.31.18 nyc
AMONG US
I think of you
In the low moments
The space between torment.
I think of you
Like a list for the market.
I have that. Don’t need that
I must stock that soon.
Eyeing that bloodline of
The red, red wine.
The glass like a broken marker
Of unsaid regret.
Coffee beans in Sambuca
Dark and perfect.
I think of you
I think of you
Fingers crippled into caves
Of unsure revenge
Covering the keyboard
Folded, dilated, saved.
Crossing the Rubicon.
Wearing the wrong shoes
For a miscalculation.
Does it count
When I am up late
Betraying those decisions
I made to choose.
I think of you in revisions.
I think of you
In stories once written.
The page like a nightmare
On its gentler way
Flying down slowly
To save a dark day.
Who makes the incisions
When friendship is torn
You think I’m wrong
I know
I know.
Does it matter
This blue unintentional
This sudden redeemable
This this uneventual
Collision of disregard.
I think of you even now
Conniving inspiring rewiring
Despairing on cue.
Foolish me foolish you
I know
I know
It’s battle fatigue.
Embraced at the airport
Like long lost friends.
You left me no choice but
To choose in the end
The history of one over
Small angers of another.
I thought you were bigger.
I thought you were tougher.
I’ll miss you for now
Never forget your voice.
It’s stuck in our song.
You have no choice.
Make the most of your secrets
skulls piled under lampshades
Rugs pulled from the eaves
of regrettable he-said—she-said
Another conquest will come
In a while.
Be safe little monkey
Think longer and harder.
Beware the pedestal
Reject the martyr.
Beware of the longing.
Remember the embrace.
Love yourself try harder or
You will lose the race.
I think of you often.
That will not be erased.
For Carmen, in space.
EASTER
KEROUAC