All the innocence has just left my body
Angels wilting as sunflowers
Along roads striped in yellow
Blue skies dotted with white exclamation points
Into dreams I’m trying to fall back into
On a hazy morning bed
With a slight smell of campfire
Tinglin’ my nostrils
And a ladybug slowly crawling
Six legs at a time
Across the roof to cannonball onto my chest
Where is this spot that exists between dream and reality
The viscerally imaginative soft stuff
That shakes shaggy ground free of complaints
And sunsets clear morning’s dew
From cobwebs shining as if testing new approaches
To similar corners, similar filters, similar dreams
That sit still and recoil while inhale meets exhale
And spring meets autumn
And one meets two
And a shoe gets worn through by impermanence of space
That’s always been growing up and chopped down
And eaten and fed and counted and weighed
And slotted into a spreadsheet marked with scales
Ranging from zero to ten with a save button
That creates multiple redundancies.
When the only request is for a tiny piece of convenience
For just one moment.
And in a flash,
With feet firmly planted securely on uneven ground
And hands held out in wide Namaskar to this beautiful world
A little droplet of rain shall fall perfectly
Upon a freckled upturned nose holding thoughts
Of a sunny day and all the rays of life shall shine down
In abundant warmth like a ticking clock
Chiming in at every quarter hour.
I’m beginning to like the taste of ink on my skin
Bleeding in black
And letters wrinkled symmetrically
With stamps that now stick
To the wings of an unnamed messenger
I have envisioned as Hermes
In a short and stubby auto
With running shoes and arch supports,
And a stripped button up
With wings emblazoned upon the breast-pocket.
When you hang around here
I roll in second gear
Not pushing too fast
Caught in the wind
Days roll by
Into weeks and miles
When your hanging ’round
Baby, let’s roll around
And my parking brake
Is the great escape
City lights and the vista
With music on easy beats
Blotches
On fingers
And everywhere else
Yesterday I was a man
Today I have no sin
A better man,
A bigger name,
Confessed and over spent.
Am I awake?
I’ve pinched myself
I see with my two eyes.
Yet here I sit
Under used
And selling ideas
For a much bigger plan.
Scoring and packing
Dicing and slicing
Thickening and serving
A letter came today
To say
I had a missing cause.
I had a note
That filled me up
With angles and
Ink blotches.
My heart crawled in late
To the after hours disco.
I wore too much black,
To little eye liner.
I had leather soles,
Not these leather souls
All the latex and spandex
Kids wore like charm bracelets
Around their wrists in play.
And I didn’t jingle enough.
Lightly stepping
Digging
Height adjustment