Getting Away From Getting Away.

sometimes there is no difference
between getting away with and getting away from
rays of black light illuminating the darkness
out there in the empty of the universe
clever ferocious and made up of nothing
so that I may reverberate it to sing
how could this matter with all that cold?
out there must die forgotten I've been told
because you must get a perspective
you must sit still to detect it
we are spinning at the same rate
and time and life demand to dissipate
a lot of contradictions piling up
dead soldiers on a mountain of doves
get me to get me out of here
a love of thusly seeing unclear:

this song reminds me of breaking hearts
and I am sick of faking arts
there is something to taking darts
there is something to moving parts
these words will get you into trouble
you pour them in and get muddled
only to get them back out won't be possible
you divide them and they'll still double
I imagine as a sun goes down on another planet
your death does not occur if you plan it

done and gone already:  eventually empty.

He Walks Very Slow.

The airport blues get you when you just wait.

He turned to me.  He told me.

My heart is living forever.

I said it seemed that way.

The body is skinny and brittle.

The mind left a note on the counter.

Paper stretched over a skeleton with drugs to exacerbate bruising.

Scrawled in wrinkle the years dance.

No one under forty has experienced the chill outside.

Ice and sand where a hole was dug for a cellar.

Us caretakers,

We climb in to test our belief in a ghost.

The light hangs with beer cans and cigarette hands.

No sign is given, we drink a bottle together.

I'm listening for the best last words.

I want them to be profound so I can erase the indignity.

When you just wait a glimmer of expectation dims slow.

I think he knows that he has been here for a long time.

I think that he says he doesn't want to turn around.

Because he doesn't want to turn around.

The continent of discoloration etched upon his brow.

That does not look real.

And the hospital bed,

 and the broken reservoir lid,

 and the grinding teeth,

 and the diapers,

 and the wandering eyes,

 and the smile,

 and the brief shine,

 and the ambiguous loss.

And not knowing where he is.

It is all right because he is home.

He left and we are waiting but he is home.

 

Just So So Just.

Electric death and we're all feeling it.

The pulse throbbing underneath the soil

like a magazine full of black and white images.

From the fifties where the people are gone

but the building still remains.

The bricks whispering cool serene things past,

the women wearing tall hats,

the men straight backed and sneering,

the children quiet,

the holes in the memories.

Everyone looking but not seeing

the cliff in plain sight.

Because all this is for posterity's sake.

Steaks and freight and Sharon Tate.

Studying the massacres to get it just right.

Writing a book about what went wrong

just so we can say the next one was just so.

We are all feeling it,

and yet,

not at all.

The Black Horse and The Planets.

Within the room they ask me:
Is it medication you need?
It is lamentable
just how presentable
this ghost is to my temperament.
And how terrible
just how bearable
it is to boast of a piece absent.
If you pick me up
the line will go dead.
A vector made corrupt.
Don't untangle the wires in my head.
Remember being the thing that you wanted.
Out there, out there.
Far away birds fly.
The trees dark and things caught in them.
I know that you have seen them.
I know the planet is giving us the run around.
These planets hot and cold saving themselves from fright.
These planets losing steam and too quick.
They get up and that black horse got me.
Remember when it hadn't.
Society has made it a shame to get down in the low between.
Medication has gotten somewhere in between.
Somewhere in between the depression and the expression.
A recession of genuine loss.
An expression like feelers and moths.
The moon is now the porch light.
Navigation nothing but spinning wildly.
And those poor creatures just whir and knock blindly.
Out there, out there.
Nothing so blind as yourself.
Is it hesitation you require?

There is an End.

Watching murder shows with my sister.
And thinking of my father.
He is telling me
should he fall behind:
these able bodied men
should drag him,
they should hoist him.
These able bodied men should place him in the trash.
Yet he shuffles towards a ninth decade and we hope.
And he is convinced I am a stereo when I pluck strings.
And he refers to me from across the room.
And I sit next to him.
He taps his fingers upon the table top.
He feels as though they're arriving from across the country.
Scrubbing his skin I am awash in the loss of son status.
The role reversal gets up and walks out the room.
Son status; the sun's radius.
I do not know my disgust.
I feel shame.
When I get him into shape I see that it is a disease.
It isn't him.
It is not him.
Watching murder shows and the droning fan
getting close and far,
close and far.
My father tells me he will blow this whole place to hell.
The murder show closes and the glow gets thick.

Serious For a Moment.

I've got no stake in heaven's sake.
I just watch from the shore as the waves break.
There must be dirt underneath.
Whatever bit me must've had teeth.
Keep digging.  Keep digging.
Leave the rigging out with what the wind brings.
Keep singing.  Keep singing.
Leave the bringer of the bell to the ringing.
There mustn't be much above.
From the dark wood an urge as a shove.
There mustn't be much below.
To where in the dark I mustn't know.
Keep loving.  Keep loving.
Your heart hovering just above me.
Keep moving.  Keep moving.
This life simply proving to be a good thing.

Nothing Seen, No Time for Vision.

When you are close I tremble.
Such density all held in a thimble.
And it is like a dark star.
The weight of a heart in a tiny jar.
I walk into flat night.
The treble of step without sight.
My gaze lights upon an apparition.
No seams without decision.
There was nothing there before.
From black heat stalks forth a carnivore.
These limbs are detached and consumed.
A raking shot of a blood plume.
I got lost in you and I knew
that when I died among the blood roots grew.
I don't struggle though.
Your gifts are things yet known.
Your hair, your eyes, your jawline.
A constellation to which my heart aligns.