Whipping (day 966)

Footsteps.
I got feet moving madly
Focus swinging heavily
Into night hoppin ’round

It’s a free thing
Holders making loose
Letters whipping over
And settlers digging in

Whip my whispers through the air
Spitting gamblers on the wave
Yelling mercy
Mother! I beg mother, MERCY

Flow, let it flow
Let gold reign on down
And madness kick me so hard
I leave my footsteps burned of sin

Dragging Left Wing | Chapter II (day 923)

IV

Ritual is what makes us so easy to perceive. But she pulled me away from what had always been designed; a teacher of thought and logic, of expression, of impression on my mind. But she was young and full of piss which drove me up the wall. After-all, what was I but a callused sitting stone washing away in the early light of a new winters day. My teeth were clinched and dragging along my feet I made my way up the paisley covered silk pressed firmly on the wall.

[I didn’t mind that she had taken over the top drawer of my burgundy chest of drawers, I didn’t mind that I found her panty-hose draped about my table lamps and the backs of my chairs. In fact, it added to my manliness, it fit right in with my Winchester typewriter – half filled with mumblings I had managed to emit amidst the booze and fucking and freezing air that curled my lungs up into a gait so tight I forced my thoughts to relax the fingers on my mind]

But she was there, full naked visage to luxuriate my mind into a casual saunter amongst peacock feathers, top hats, rhinestones, and suits with chain watches and glittering eyes with too much joviality. I had no choice in this matter, not like I cared one damn bit about the mess she enjoyed making of my bed. She, like I, was full of eyes that pulsed – praying for something she didn’t know how to verbalize, a feeling she didn’t know how to mentalize, a desire she didn’t know how to materialize. Her eyes searched the bottom of empty tumblers, her eyes found the cobwebs reaching out for life, her eyes danced with the streams of light that flickered through the room catching elements of history that spread like the lost ghosts echoing through our minds.

We dove into our fury like lovers we’d always wanted to be. We pushed those warning thoughts to the backs of our minds so we could hardly lay trace casual thoughts that appeared on our tongues. Life was good like this, it lacked the severity of the dying grid that forced mothers to sell their children for some sweet pudding and a souvenir to take home and place so thoughtfully on the pathetic mantle of desire’s dream. Neither of us was following this path, nor ever dreamed we would, for it was a withering dream fed by fat pockets, a machine that mimic’d zoo-keepers begging city council for more tax money to feed the wild and elusive buffalo they hunted for pass-time with foreign dignitaries.

V

I crawled out from that room and tip-toed down the wooden hallway laid flat with fading rose carpet that left spaces between it’s dying glory and that crushing 90 degrees up. Striped wall paper marked unevenly by portraits of bygone entrepreneurs.

[this is what we had taken to calling those devils who thought nothing of selling their souls for profit, that crude and lewd crowd that scantilized fashions and sourced the inner most pleasures of human soul. Even animals treasured the pure delight and unrelenting pursuit this basket-case crowd so freely expressed]

From the roof hung cob-webbed chandeliers bought at the nickel-and-dime store half a block away. “They look good,” is all we could say every time we traced these steps, giggling to ourselves. We didn’t care, our world didn’t depend upon such trivial matters of the outside world, of such trivialities so coveted by the people we laughed ourselves to sleep about. Gutteral expressions that splashed around the ivory colored ceramics.

I thought deeply about the sound of my wooden healed shoes echoing around my mind’s voice, shifting glances and kindling old romances while strutting with poise. I winked and nodded back to the gaping voids, the children of my finesse. I am neatly hand drawn, sculpted with imagination, created with the artful eye that dares to draw outside the lines.

[but oh, I thought about the land I came from. The cold street corners with auto-mo-biles and two-bit barber-inos, with fancy ladies strutting on knockoff stilettos practicing their how-ya-doin looks. Nostalgia is a soft sword when it piques the tendons of your heart]

VI

I never knew to meet her, but I always met her there. I always stopped and stared and waited until she could find me through the haze. She knew it too – she confessed one intimate night – all smiles and flutters and oh-yes-it’s-him stares. I liked those moments, letting it sink in, letting the leaves fall to the ground after upsetting them in air. Without fail, a smile the spread into a softly blown kiss so thick I could breathe it in and heavily let it curse through my veins. This was the tingly moments I came to love and learn.

I found casually my sorted seat, to file away my thoughts. A square-topped desk with hash marks set deep within its long history as a peacemaker, a romance kindler, an easy ledge upon which to sit as orders filled the air. It wasn’t so big that I could harbor much company and still keep my affairs in order, so luckily I carried my leather bound estate about to sort up my rapport – so easily spread about the square that I’d begun to call my post.

[visitors were few in such an office – as much as my notoriety was known – though they did come and disturb my thought in the heat of its best battles. The drunken fools who’d had too much were often such throwers of folly, but hardly I, who’d set up here, could curse them what they’d bear]

[note: to read full epic follow dragging left wing]

What To This Love (day 906)

Did you design
My heart so pure
So reckless its pursuit
As love and laughter
Were sought to
Hold forever after

As it were
To lay me down
Beside such tender angel
My heart it beat
Like dancing feet
Strong laid wooden floor

What to this love
I heard above, nay saw above
Clouds parting for thy sun
That hit us both;
Shone angels eyes and
Filled in dear mine own

What-To-This-Love

Frosty Morning Saunter (day 891)

A motionless saunter through the cold grass leaving footsteps every bloody place that I go and picking up my feet without tying up the laces because the gloves on my hands are too warm and the air is too cold but the path ahead is shaking and quivering in unrelenting uncontrolled mastery non-mastery in spite my insistence on leaving my hands out of their pockets to fight this urge to cower and shelter from the brutal elements hoping to bridge the gap between strength and toughness without too many frost bites but this is ok because I read about it in a book that told me I should and it told me it’s valiant and it told me I can walk on coals with bare feet too because the skin between my toes is too soft and could use a good toughen up but oh my look at that large dog walking down the now covered in leaves path about to jump up on me because I treat it like a human being and acknowledge it’s existence for who in their right mind wouldn’t want to jump up on me with such an acknowledgement but you know the dog is so friggen big it’s like a young man feeding must be expensive is all I can think as my steps trace up the frozen tarmac slipping on the thin layer of ice hardly visible and highly wavering but all is good because I’m about to peak this crest and stand for a moment on the highest point and survey my kingdom for it is my kingdom for it is my kingdom for it is my kingdom that I survey due to my commitment to walk the coldest slippery path in all the woods in the mornings before the dusk has settled in and after all of the leaves have come flying down to the maker of their fate named gravity and decay and decomposition and footsteps along the singletrack path between the naked branches of thinner than I thought birch trees awaiting the bounty of springs sunshine because I’m not ready to give up on the year yet I’ve got plans to formulate and materialize and time to waste and sleep to never catch up on and a nice warm cup of coffee around noon because I’ve begun to let down my guard for certain things as I raise my guard for garbage and consumption and waste and destruction of our land this land my land my kingdom I saunter through on this cold frosty morning good morning world good morning world good morning world get up and go now take it off.

A Poem For the Pretty Girl to Fly By (day 773)

It’s not long now before you go; wings spread open wide
Lifted from your feet and swept through blue skies aside
Over hills and deep ravines shall you soar a graceful glide
For all the while, as love and life be with you by your side
Gremlins and their evil minions will run away and hide
Leaving gone, far be gone, like retreating oceans tide
Oppressions game, an evil name, laid down to end it’s ride
And off and off, up, away, beyond, gone away it slide
Peace become up high so far, to life that’s open up so wide

If There Was No War (day 685)

If there was no war
Lions and cheetahs as friends
And if there was no war
Chimpanzees would sure be free
If there was no war
My happy feet’d take me to thee
‘Cause I’ve got love baby
Love enough for you and me

Can you image life without a wall
No distraught to make it tall
Or foes to climb at all
It’d sure be a funny thing
Calling what mine mine
When the whole world was shared
Yours and mine together you see
Friends at last we’d always be

If there was no war
No holes would mark and scar the land
And if there was no war
No poppy would be remembering for
If there was no war
My happy feet’d take me to thee
‘Cause I’ve got love baby
Love enough for you and me

Now if there was no war
No war to pick our pockets for
And if there was no war
No war for few to fight the many
If there was no war
My dog would open up the door
Welcome in the buffalo
Roaming wild and free
A sea of peace for you and me

Slowly Melting Away (day 684)

On my better days
I get up before light
Put on my trusty runners
And head out to the path
Where my dog and I
Dodge frozen twigs and poop
Nimbly dancing along
Snow covered trails
Slowly melting away
Causing the walk to be
More like a slide
Through slush

On my better days
I get out of bed
Ignoring the softness
Deep within the sheets
I ignore the pillows
That drown me in comfort
And the warm pocket
I’ve been heating all night
Testing first with my hands
Then my timid feet
Touch the ground

On my better days
This is truth
Though, today was harder

Faintest Scent (day 650)

Into the faintest scents of memories
The world whispers it’s answers
Up and beyond leftover thought
That faintly caress hovering fading light

[Past shuffling feet
That arch through cobblestones
Past empty mouths
That gape wide at silent sidewalks]

Like smoke in humid shadows
With careful fragmentations floating
Full of unanswered love letters
That lingering gospel subdues
With spoken promises

A shifting presence marks its space
With hidden answers carved into air
Whirl winds here collapse time
And carry fading light into darkness

If Would Play (day 592)

If there were stars that I looked upon daily
Would you flounder them into a field full of wheat?
If clouds floated hither, where you and I’d gather
Would the sun break them free from their plight?
If all the birds sang on from their high up perches
Would the music reach our ears as we strolled?
If the path at our feet turned from soft grass to dirt
Would we still walk hand in hand through the trees?
If I looked in your eyes and whispered into your ear
Would the stars keep us together every night?