You can smell a rat a mile away?

I have never been careful…far too boring. Starting fires and playing with matches, perhaps. But I assure you, I will not burn down my own house. It is comfortable and my friends know where to find me.

I have opened up my rental on the other side of town...I may be there for a while. It is quiet, not that I mind a good party now and again.

It is a peaceful coalescence that I desire.

p.s. with all the finger pointing I can barely hear you anymore.

The ink hasn't even dried yet.

A hollowed out tree hides
a mystery in feathers.
The hoot-hoot sound
claims your ear.

You hear it and climb.
Pull out the twigs and
twine that connect it
to the vine.

The wise old bird
caught the worm,
that early riser
has lost a turn.

Get some fucking sleep already, you crazy mother fucker.

p.s. 1:16am: an answer, let's see...Divine Intervention. Adam can sing so lovely.

Roadside crosses are the result of unyielding left hand turns.

Most of it is gone now.
The rain having pelted the remains
the final time.
I passed by yesterday
and felt what could have been
your hand. The scream,
I won’t let go. Today
I stopped.
I buy gas and cheap
bags of pretzels, she wants candy.
I refuse,
and contemplate
what could have been
for you
in those last moments.
Did you let go
knowing?
Pump stopped.
Ten minutes I have stood,
you are here for eternity.
Always yielding, never turning.

A lucid transaction.

I am sitting at a table with friends, it is dark and loud. I am bored. I am absently searching for something affecting to distract me, when I spot myself sitting across the room. I am at a table with some friends…and I am staring right back at myself. I am unable to look away. The gaze between us has me transfixed. Then he, the other me, shuns me with a smirk and joins the conversation at his table. He is speaking, and his hands are gesturing along with his alluring tale. His friends are captivated by the unconstrained other me. I envy his ease. Now I am alone at my table and I am singing to the other me. My song is pleading for him to hear, to once again find me, but he does not. And just as I am about to stop singing, you grab my hand and pull me up from my chair, and I wake up.



p.s. it is because the light reflected from painted glass is ambiguous. mirror me in your words, and that is where I find clarity. as do you, in each others.

I will give you a hint...leech

If you consider my intention was to assemble you here, and then rip you apart, merely to revel in your dichotomy...well then, you have not heard me at all. I will not strike the match, but you hold the bucket. Is it full of water, or shit?

p.s. allow your wisdom, wit, worry, and wonder to punch, provoke, purchase, and profess.

For the protagonist and the cup of coffee we share...

A favorite...oh how I do love fire.

I Pity the Wind
Gerald Stern



I am taking off my glasses
so I can stare at the little candles
and the glass of water
in pure darkness.

I am letting a broom stand
for my speech on justice
and an old thin handkerchief
for the veil of melodrama I have worn for thirty years.

I am dragging in Euripides
for his strange prayer
and my own true Hosea
for his poem on love and loyalty.

After a minute I fall down dead
from too much thought
and turn to the freezing wall
for an hour of quiet sadness.

I start my practice later,
twenty minutes for breathing,
twenty minutes for song,
twenty minutes for liberation and ritual.

My poem is about the airshaft
and Zoroaster
and the soul caught in its last struggle
with the two-headed cow, father of everything.

My elation has something to do with light,
my misery with darkness,
my secrecy and fear and distance
with neither.

I end up with a pillow
and a painted floor, as I always do,
my head on the flowers, a little pocket for air,
my right arm drifting and dangling.

I end up just humming,
true to myself at last,
preparing myself for the bridge
and the hand that will lead me over, the hand I adore.

I pity this hero,
so in love with fire,
so warlike,
so bent on teaching.



p.s. I couldn't resist you and your agile fingers as they swept over my heart filling it with glory. To follow the mass, my own words prey.

It was the moment when he had the light that it worked.

So you let that go with little debate.
Perhaps it was inserted too late.
Could you please go back in time
just a minute and revisit the rhyme?


The store remains locked.
But the shelves are carefully stocked
with reasons there for all to see.
You are oh so very close to me.




p.s. trust that I try to reflect back to you what you have given to me.