Category: free verse

from hard knocks to new teeth, day 6

It seems some points of pain have subsided
unless it is that imagination
has come out to play with white cheddar puffs
and memory insists on influence
getting inspiration off its caboose:
was a fantasy ever so fancy
as to predict a bag of cheese flavored snacks
occupying half of an afternoon?
Another as this will not come again;
revel in every salted stumble.

soupy morning scene

let’s intuit the crow that flies ahead
is a she who cannot take anymore
from he who flaps about fifty-five yards

behind, cawing through the soup, Oh Baby,
How could I know a couple bourbon snorts
those six or so months of mornings ago

would graduate to what you call a habit?
But onward she flies, crossing the river
along which a sister lives in a fir.

Or the crow in the lead could be a he
trying to escape a mate’s dark sayings.
Or they could be brothers laughing at life.

gonna test them all if I must

the ball of heat rolling along
a dry section of ground… come on,
section is terrible; sucks bad,
come on, what about dry terrain?
Obviously, it’s gonna be

damn dry now – but where else can balls
packing heat as this beachball-sized ball
roll along without a pansy
summoning volunteers?
So anyway, the ball was

rolling along though not so fast
doing what good proper balls
were from the genesis blast
intended to do, which was and is
to roll along and saying ‘sorry’

no more than once in a mauve moon.
So where in the dickens did this thing
intend to take a curvy journey?
Seems there is a sighing sagebrush club;
sighing hardly the word; more like huffing,

something like, “why did we bother
to memorize dialogue lines?”
Suddenly the ball quit rolling
and piped, “yeah I’m hot stuff alright,
but I’m hardly an arsonist.”

Testing a new Technique (and maybe a magical key)

As always eyes gazed blind
at the phenomenon most obvious
which means a repeat ladder clamber

and make the missionary fuzzy, as in,
there was a fuzzy missionary
and this fuzzy missionary’s bosses

decreed he journey to a distant country
fixed as though screwed in a tropical sea;
alas the fuzzy missionary’s bosses

were in the dark about secret weaknesses
which for a fellow were not abnormal,
but for a missionary, even a slick

missionary, this kind of concealment
could hardly honor the reputation
of the boss even bigger than the fuzzy

missionary’s immediate bosses.
Well, hindsight, spilled milk, and all that jazz
indeed amounts to surplus info, much like

the marijuana in Washington.
Once he sunk his senses in coconut meat
and slid his toes in seaweed, it was finished.

If I Could Draw 2

so a wind hauling a load of loud
examples of mainland bluster
chose the worst junction to clobber words
in the process of trying to sketch
a quaint illumination, hoping
to shed some sense on a personal stance,

knowing under the blankets the same
desire as ever softly slumbered.
Meaning to say: truth is I see
the loud wind possesses pull these days,
and many a fiction excursion
converts this universe to Iowa.

careful with these

The revelation remained in hiding
until simplicity declared
they should observe caution and care
no more and whatever happened
to the upcoming tale’s primary

character would have to be
his or her trial or his or her
ascent into his or her true
bliss where fear was not able to breathe
or propagate; where accusations dealt

out of authority’s mouths were
repulsed well beyond garden walls – though
ivy vines and leaves shivered and quivered
along their stalwart homes of stone
acute foresight formed for the stable.

there is no conscious meaning in this piece – I’m just trying to get back to the freewheeling style I once knew

Thorny thoughts arrived en masse
and set up a veritable
sea of tents
as though to show those within
the fortress their hopes and prayers
would avail them little
but fleeting moments

of escapist buoyancy
brought by small squads of bright rays
born from the ocean of illusions.
The true sunrise threw
splashes of melted silver
across the waters which lent
glints to the tips – by the tips

are understood as what the tents
emit from their pointy tops.
Of course many in the fortress
flung all they were into the arms
belonging to general panic
which always maintains infinite space
across its desert which knows no border

nor minds that the rains by far
prefer forested clumps and fertile
riches dressed in juicy suits
of clovers and their fields dark and moist
– same as bees, many of whom
boldly plucked idea bundles
from a lady locals know as Bess.

2014 #281

the bog ought raise concerns
only because none who believed
they were head to toe upright
returned from that sweltering swamp
the same as when the wave
of overwhelm made them slide
face-first in and well ahead
of the slippery collapse
the spell was with a rolling ho-hum cast
and this is how it is forever
so if the eternal doesn’t bug,
go on and eat your way to the bog
found behind that veil to paradise;
all you do is follow the dark trail

2014 #247

Little did a certain neophyte
poet possess a speck of occult
insight about was that a concept
invoked as a skim brand of joke
was anything but a joke to a certain
distant, completely real person
whose entire vessel network
had got so hot you could swear

you smelled brunswick stew when
he walked by if he’d walk by because he
wasn’t walking anywhere
but he was sitting in a swivel chair
and plumes of steam shot from his ears
evidence of which had easier voice
out of one ear as the other ear’s
window was muted by a telephone

and peppered words born for coarse
oration moments bore firebrands
as they were put to work, saying,
“I call because there’s a city
council woman I must suspect
is a witch and it isn’t as though
witches don’t piss me off enough
but this witch is on a crusade

against the slightest sometimes personal
vices a guy might carry on when on
his porch and harming no one.
I’d get into deeper details
except I’m already starting to get
really pissed off just thinking
about it as if I wasn’t
plenty pissed off already.”

The words turned their flames down when the voice
from the pissed off office began to reply,
starting with, “well that would piss me off too
and believe you me, we deal with pissed off people
every day. It’s what we do. It’s why we exist.
Can’t tell you how that pisses me off, that we
have to exist for pissed off people.
I’m always pissed off soon as I get here,

find my desk still cluttered as it was
because my secretary was too pissed off
to straighten it and I was too pissed off
to find the words to tell her to get lost.
Understand your witch problem,
city council witch, the worst witch
species you can find if you ask me
but then witches piss me off too.”