"Think of England"

I had a nightmare that there was a forest

with no shade, just all built of light —

holy as it was, blinking didn’t help

so everyone would cry, every night.

There was a disease that made people take back

every kiss that they’d given to you;

the worst part was that, during it all,

you could feel them coming out again.

You lost a tooth for every white-lie told –

but you’d lose two if your words made someone cry.

Nobody grew laugh-lines anymore, unused 

tongues sunburned fast in open sky;

and the water hurt your lips – so you’d gulp it fast,

blink back tears, and try to think of England.

Everyone’s hands were so cold, so you warmed them 

on the fireflies that’d just burst into flame..

Duty flaked off like dry old dead skin

because everything just led to something worse –

the better choices felt like inaction and the 

safely-fruitless bounty of sullen silence.

–So you ended up a prosthetic of yourself,

trying to calmly emulate self-mastery;

blindly wide-eyed, nerves scraped raw, 

praying to keep the well-lit predators at bay.

"Funeral moth"

You became a funeral moth,
natural and unwholesome,
drawn by will against wisdom to wool
seeing its last day in the sun.

(You rebecame a tyrant child,
riveted to an endless now –
everything handled like a toy,
ever-more sugar in the cereal;

while he filled his sails being bored,
sucked through life by things that suck,
blowing backwards against intent –
distracted, unimpassioned, dust.)

—Just then the darkness unfolds
like it might in the nighttime,
but hmm.. the space feels so small,
and no stars are shining…

And there’s an endless feast
of exactly what you ordered,
and there’s nothing else,
at all, forevermore…

"Rain like a cloud"

She doesn’t rain like a cloud…

She isn’t fair like the sun.

More under-handed than even-,

she’s already unbegun.

She won’t make like a tree.

She doesn’t break like a heart.

She’s never not been indulged –

she makes paint run in hung art.

She won’t get out of the way.

She has her own set of plans.

Mountains jump up in the sky, 

she’s got a canyon on the run.

She doesn’t sweet like a peach.

She doesn’t brake for a curve.

Not easy on the world,

she fights its every turn.

She deserves less than what she has.

She doesn’t ever invest.

She doesn’t keep souvenirs, just a 

flare gun on her desk –

she says it’s a bad way to go,

a smirk there, wry, on her lips.

Her satisfaction is all,

don’t be tempted by her kiss.

She doesn’t bother with things.

She doesn’t twinkle at all.

She doesn’t care where you’ve been, and

just forget eye-to-eye or heart-to-heart.

"Freak flag upside-down"

Pepto’s not a foodie fave – sometimes wish 

I could just eat sun and sound.

But I bungee jump from my petard-hoists,

and I fly my freak flag upside-down.

I’m having broken windows installed on Monday –

will beat this torn rice paper, for sure.

But at least the dogs’ve got their own couch –

prerogatives of the freak flag unfurled.

After dark, the rivers all run with ramen –

  go fly your freak flag upside-down!

Cats and mice cutting a rug all tonight –

  go fly your freak flag upside-down!

–the tree is same from the leaf.

–the knife is different as the gun. 

All the pants are on fire, but nobody’s crying, 

so I fly my freak flag upside-down.

Eating eyelash salad has yet to help 

anywhere outside of Japan –

and oh the things in their vending machines,

but it keeps their freak flags flying.

Tepid times like these, wish I were more like Bowie: 

hey, go ahead, just be brave and strange.

It’s okay that we’re all adrift and at-sea,

just leave your freak flag out in the wind.

You got more colors than a clown – shine on

and fly your freak flag upside-down!

"Bananas & golf"

The ancient lightning strikes presaged & created life, 

but since seem only to’ve just snuffed it out –

though now we know, as football taught us: 

it’s always crucial to establish your run..

(& it’s crazy!) 

Tasmanian devils’ cloned contagious face-jumping cancer 

could have the species near death;

strangeness & mortality twine with reality — they go 

together like bananas & golf.

Though, why would everything just be intuitive?

—sometimes more inflation’s needed & good;

and when they brought wild wolves back to Yellowstone

the shape of land and rivers changed back how they were(!).

Got a Korean War U.S.Army manual,

quite clearly tells us not to eat yellow snow.

And who was it first thought up the plan to

put powdered bones in my JELL-O..?

Still it’s a beautiful world, where it even

snowed 

in Cairo

when Nelson Mandela died.

—And plus, on the outskirts up in Ireland, you can get a

license to drive drunk at night…

       Mandela's snowy Cairo

"Ten first these days"

An old woman hands it off to a little girl,

the countings-down to the ends of all things.

Once was a precious, careful business but 

anymore the numbers ain’t all that big.

The bulbs can hardly wait to burn out –

the sun seems so alive as it goes down.

A rotten old fence, more lovely each spring;

folks enthralled as a ship runs aground.

An untalented pervert fumbles back to mainstream –

critics are everywhere, and so indiscreet.

We all need things we don’t know how to find;

ceilings come down afterward & watch us asleep.

Nighttime wet leaves blow through a broken church.

Birds only fly to me when I’m not outside.

And since the cure’s pretty drastic, treason

really should at least be sublime.

Banners of plastic bags caught in razor wire.

300 bucks to sign books I didn’t write.

A match made afield of heaven (Connecticut)

as a troubled screw barely kills its first tire. 

It’s not great that I dream of better things at night,

since shouting-distance is for things you can’t help.

The tasteful-plaid man needs more rye, neat – counting 

to ten first these days is not enough.