Collide-o-Scope

We are surrounded

gag rag throat muffled

rope burn wrists swollen

blind eyes fist blackened 

feet heel-stomped and shoeless

nowhere to go or be

broken shallow husks manic

reveling in lethargy eternal

spiraling Andromeda in waiting

supernova Svengali farewell

Surprise!
Mercy!
Finally!

All our energies swirling like fireworks 

in cephalopodic radiance 

a dark matter camouflage hiding

any trace or effort otherwise

to any evidence of our ever even caring

that to play hostage

made us weep

while faceless gods played marbles with our worlds.

Siren Interlocutor

When the kettle calls

I have more than one choice

to make

I can let it wail

a while

and ensure that all the bacteria

is destroyed

in the water

so I can sip a tea in peace

or I can let it keep singing

in higher pitches til

the dogs begin to notice

that something’s wrong

and yap their warning barks to

join the alarm in chorus

Or I can sit longer still

and wait

while the whistle crackles

and whines

and the water disappears

and the kettle

burns black and cracks its paint

so it’s no good anymore

and melts down to

a noxious metal blob

atop the stove

and sets off all the smoke alarms

after the whistling stops

so that its kettle call is

sent on from one panicking

cry to another

until the batteries die

and I hear still another siren

from a big red truck

because the whole house is burning down

and then I may begin to allow

my own screams

as flames lick the soles of my

tired feet

But I will almost always err

toward my first instinct

to jump up from my chair

and stare at the steam

a second or two longer

to listen to the water hiss

Immortal Jellyfish

Nobody’s ever the same as

they were a second ago

let alone a month

a year

a decade ago.

All the detritus of

our experience;

all the minutiae of

our ego;

all the bewilderment of

our ability to be

something

when one time we were

nothing,

makes us become

something else

all over again,

and we disallow

ourselves
the chance to be

a true version of

ourselves

no matter when
we might decide to
try to be.

Because the plight of

self-preservation;

of

self-motivation;

of

self-reverence

hinges upon the need to

evolve.

And to evolve

you need to abandon

in small but significant ways

every little bit of you.

Somewhere

a scattered memory

of who you once

were

whispers

wondering

where you went.

Resideux

What difference does it make

Really

Whether a blunting changes

The rubber or the rub?

To wonder:

When two edges soften

Which piece receives

the other?

What happens to the parts

Of a sharpness

Once they are dulled?

To where do the transferred pieces

flee?

Which molecules

Are moved

Or in equal measure divvied

From the scuffling

Heel

To the craggy

Sidewalk;

From the summertime tire

To the shoulders of the road;

From the flaking epidermis

To the unseen chairs in the

Dangerous rooms of the world―

Why atoms comprehend

The infallibility

Of their role

And break down

And deform like bubbles

To lesser entities

And eventually pop

Or disappear

To our ever-rubbing eyes?

When rubbing together

(in reverence of the oncoming

Inevitable

changes

of a villainous cosmos;

In reverence of the erosion and evolution

Of everything you’ve ever seen or known)

Is a magical dance

That buffs you away

Erases you

Little by little

To the smallest possible point

Over and over

Until you can be remade

Again

Little by little

In some form or another

Over and over

Double-helixing the

Sender and receiver

Squishing and sharing and gifting the goo

That makes a thing a thing

As I pretend to be

One thing

Instead of the concerted effort

Of trillions of other

One things

Because the wellspring of the dangers

And the wonders equal

Of the whole world

Are contained within the one

Universal truth that:

Something

Is

Always

Giving

Shadowers Excerpt

"Heston came to in an odorless room, the stillness of the dark enveloping every available inch of the spaces his periphery allowed him to observe. His mind was empty, still echoing some nocturnal reverberation from the expanses of the deep sleep he’d managed to rustle himself out from. His cognizance emerged slowly, deliberately, not from his own will, but through the magic revelations of a brain he couldn’t possibly care enough about to try to understand. As the flipclock snapped the two half-oval zeros to a straight lined one, and this new echo of tangible, analog noise disrupted the dawning of the dream state, the sticky cobwebs of Heston’s waking consciousness began to be stripped away, the way a fog evaporates from a cold lake when the sun finally rises to scare it off. His face glistened like a still pond."

Formation/Tyranny

Formation and Tyranny

A cloaked brood hums

Crackle toes at fireside

Burn layers of

Oppression, empathy, hunger, poverty

Invent intention

Scrap, remold, resist

Join hands and blink

away the dying embers

of the past

Like the night owl might

protest the smoke

in its eye

and looky loo

with 360 eyes

Stories for a future tribe

are birthed

wet and new and crying

With secret contexts

Like spongy babies in the silent halls

of midnight hospitals

Crying for the want of knowing

what the fuss is all about

New stories etched and

bequeathed

Orated and

followed

To interpret through whichever cultural prism

they want to

And despite the best intentions of

the smoky congregation

The ever-futile demon:

Effort,

Spoils its own party

by virtue of

Unforeseen vanity

Unknown voids

For within the folds

of the follies

of Interpretation

of Truth

Everything evolves

Eventually

to war.

Post-title

Sit you in darkness, cloaked, hemmed in by the coos of specters rumbling tinny in a tune on a digital wave, be-hooded, bespectacled and behind on chores, slippered and sniffling from summer pollens, sipping honey-lemon tea and sucking in a newfound gut pink with sunburn from the Sandy River sun, Stoneking swamping boogies on jungle adventures, urging you to swing there and to not worry about what tomorrow will bring.

You are not one to take sitting idly mildly, so 'tween pacings of concrete barn floor cold in subduction you stalk the corners with makeshift dusters, cleaning up the cobwebs both literally and figuratively, walking your castle and assessing its majesty in spite of the spiders' takeover every spring, swishing errant cat hair from the rug with the bottoms of your feet to discard of properly because the slightest unsightliness is cause for an explosion of intense private rage. 

You are not one to admit openly of your distastes, your irritations in mixed company, your insistences on clear communication, unsullied thoroughfares of synapse-firing, backing-and-forthing, yet you sit in darkness like this, with shades drawn, with washing machine whirring in the foreground of a blues-y afternoon in the twilight of your young man life, whispering confirmations that in spite of your lethargy, you have things that still need doing, puzzles to coax and conquer from the alcoves of some as-yet-unknown landscape, and that you alone must compel these, divination be damned, for your only, only sure-thing is the spit and venom boiling inside you to make you do anything at all, whatsoever, for the rest of your goddamn shitty wonderful fucked-up life.