Out

Everyone I thought I could never die died
I am next I suppose
In this long line of stars leaking gas fading out
But the sheiks fill their tanks from their pumps of unlimited supply
And a coming sunrise is rumored
As the prospering vile rule the night

School

What did I learn today

About the world and forward progress?

The means that guide the new age

Chopping enemies heads off

Blowing selves up

Nuclear warheads

Work camps

For those

Who don’t learn their lessons well

At school

Dallas Afternoon 

Orpheus cried
And the satyrs all fell
That day when the sky
Went black 

A myth with no moral
A town with no compass
And now there is no
Turning back

The slate is now blank
A new morning has dawned
Without a Rousseau
Or a Locke

Time claps its hands
And the heroes disband
But forever it stands
One o’clock

KKK

Who goes there?

In the night with a sheet

Hiding blood in the brain

On the cross

On the hood

In the street?

Titanic



Thing of beauty yes you are
But what is beauty anyway
Here to be tossed on the sea and disavowed by man
Because beauty surely cannot go away with him
On the long descent down
To the sterling abyss
In the deep of the ocean
Lies a home on the floor
Where you cry

Retrospect

Glittering and almost there
Is retrospect
I can feel the wave and smell your hair
In retrospect
So close and yet it never bends
This time of mine that never ends
So much I could have done with you
But my world has been cleft in two
In retrospect

Fast Food

Some cow somewhere

Maybe Nebraska, maybe Oklahoma

Suffered savagely so I could be satisfied

A slice of him inside me

So neatly arranged on some rack he was

Valuable innards lined up like jewels,

Miscellaneous organs like eyes discarded

And I unconsciously join the culture of deadness

Dead as the cow, dead as the blade,

Dead as a link on a chain

Dead as the single-file consumers of deadness

Growing more plastic, convenient, and deader

Every day with every real meal deal that goes down

Fabulous

You look fabulous

A fabulous bundle of thrills

In your cashmere sweater spun in Mongolian mills

Where Monsanto pesticides spring up sickening wheat

And sweating young peasants fight for water and meat

In your shoes made of hide scored from well hidden farms

And diamonds born of fear of nuclear arms

Simply fabulous 

Finish Line

My loved one
Cried a river on my body
My loved one
Laid some flowers at my feet
My loved one 
Waited hours for my breathing
My loved one
Is the one that I will meet
My loved one 
Is the leader of all races
My loved one
Changed my blood straight into wine
My loved one 
Waited hours for my breathing
My loved one
Waited at the finish line

Towers

My mind like a sky

Full of stars few of clouds

Opened out to the heavens

And flying things

All I invented

Became a boomerang

And the boom in the world

Still rumbles where I

Was beheaded 

Archer

All the world was slanting

Slanting hard for gold

Confident, diagonal,

But I have arched

Of all the things I could have done

I arched

They were targeting the sun

Made it at least up to the moon

But I found just another hole in the ground

Because I arched

My throat was parched

The night was dark

I could bear to stretch no more

Forgive me while you gravitate

Toward what is glittering and scintillating  

Another mirage to me

Who finds only craters here

Where I have arched

The Moving Mountain

I’ve been standing on the moving mountain

Trying to look out to the sea

Watching these clouds all swell up and remain

Watching them gather round me

I’ve been standing on the moving mountain

Gazing out at the miracle shore

So far in the distance, but this mountain keeps moving

Along with all that I’ve ever fought for

            One day I’ll go down in the valley

            I’ll find people who pray just like me

            But I’m here all alone at the top of the mountain

            There is no other place I can be

I’ve been standing on the moving mountain

Watching kingdoms and governments fall

Waiting for someone to sweep me from sadness

While keeping an eye on it all

            One day I’ll go down in the valley

            I’ll find people who pray just like me

            But I’m here all alone at the top of the mountain

            There is no other place I can be

Shoot

The shooting at the school is now a package

Wreaths, memorials, and captions

24-hour entertainment, reality TV

Oscar in waiting

Just in time for Christmas

With talking anchormen

The gun or TV industry

Which is sicker

I cannot decide

Do You Follow

I follow my eyes

And my eyes lead me nowhere

A vast expanse of gray and disease

I have seen hundreds or thousands of these

Like clouds always moving without soul, without cause

Alighting wherever they please

I long for the softness of something still and not aimless

Something holding what I have released

It comes in the shadows, it flees between breaths,

Between whispers of rivers and leaves

School This Morning

I went to school this morning

Ushered in by angels

Placed my hand over my heart

Saluted while a river was running

Question word reverberating 

No hands upon the clock

There were no bibles only storybooks

No weeping only smiles

Love like a blanket covered these hills

Green and rolling out my life

Will thrills on every page

And monsters rainbow colored

A river swiftly running

And no hands upon the clock

Amid the sands of time

Something hooked and horrid took hold

Someone running

Someone running out

Darkness came, a jackal

A jackal lucid in the night

A smile from a cage of tombs

A river swiftly running

Someone running out of blood

Someone turning off a light

I went to school this morning

Beautiful things turned into tar

A star fell into the vortex

A river running out

I went to school this morning

And all history gushed out

Smile

Dogs do not smile

At pictures of other dogs

Nor plants at images of plants

We in the sea

See something sublime and infantile

In the passing of fish

That show teeth like ours

As we swim continuously toward

Irrelevance 

City of Ghosts

The church bell rings hollow and loud

Across the city streets

A gust of wind comes up to hug

Anyone it meets

            Once there was a love for me,

            A love for me, almost

            All swallowed up in time for me,

            Here in the city of ghosts

I knew the avenues by name

The signs swing in gaslight

Holmes and Watson cast their shadows

Deep into the night

            Once there was a love for me,

            A love for me, almost

            All swallowed up in time for me,

            Here in the city of ghosts

Trees and spires pierce the sky

Underneath the crescent moon

Specters climbing to the stars

Will find each other soon

            Once there was a love for me,

            A love for me, almost

            All swallowed up in time for me,

            Here in the city of ghosts

Absence of Color

In the winter

When the raw emotions

Stand out in the cold

Will you still love me knowing

That you are now alone

You came to me

When breath was sweet

And every image danced

Colors were illusions then

For you always in black

Stand your ground

And eat the snow

Till purity seeps in

No you will never freeze until

You have all that you lack

Dreams and bones

Were all we had

Even as our time seemed full

There is no wool can keep you warm

Till feeling reaches home

Sorrow

No elegance ever there was

Like sorrow

Balances the world upon each shoulder

Justified and dignified

With sorrow

Holds me as an arrow

Flying upstream through the marrow

But hold on to tomorrow

You will be there

With sorrow

Sweet of sound and pure of taste

Perfume of life and afterlife

That is the truth,

The certainty

Of sorrow

Gull

Honing this tool

In the waves, in the tide

Is a cause flying straight

Through the wind

To the soul where the world

Flies away at a word

Makes me whole, takes me down,

From the birds