Endurance


 On the beach
 amidst tidal serendipity,
 through impetuous hours and days,
 time is measured by endurance,
 and friendships sustain
 within their being.

Look

 Look into my eyes
 Big Boy,
 and read my thoughts;
 just don’t pee on your shoes.

Rough Sleeper


 Rough sleeper,
 pummeled by the poor timing
 of bad luck bounces;
 knocked undead,
 surrendered to the futile fates:
 options gone,
 hope gone,
 faith gone,
 dignity gone,
 illusions shattered
 into shards of turmoil
 in the absence of affection
 and play,
against the hardened grime
of invisibility.

She Falters

 With glassy-eyed resistance to speed,
 nostalgic, not ancient,
 she clutches her childhood ideals,
 while a flurry of long distance messages
 broadcast over time.

 Her past drops,
 kissing her innocence
 like the first falling snow
 in winter.
 
 Raw bone and cinderblock cradle
 where she becomes apart;
 she falters between home
 and the impersonal,
 grasping false security,
 as she falls
 
 away,
 away,
 long distance message
 far away;
 falling
 into the life of indecipherable messages
 hexed by cupidity and charm;
 against the hope that her life
 is not in vain;
 
 while she awaits 
 inevitable change.

Wonder Bar

 
 Duck into the secular church
 of imminent oblivion;
 drink deep, 
 drown the Blue Devil,
 play the pleasure trick,
 and watch your ingenuity blur.
 
 If you can.
 
 Cash in,
 bleed out,
 retreat into the
 grandiose unclarity of your
 uniqueness,
 
 while you chase the love
 unconditional
 that you’ll never know.

X-Ray

 
 Skull slang radiation
 through a four flush 
 brain mist,
 cool blue mosaic
 of bone schematics.
 
 Soul cockpit 
 of a twittering machine,
 made visible,
 sports the question:
 
 what the fuck am I
 doing here?

Stools

  Closed:
 quiet respite
 without demands,
 propped seatside down 
 on a marble floor,
 the night’s memory mopped clean,
 and free from the weight
 of butted burdens;
 
 resting
 with the good intentions
 of another day.

Silent Narrative


 A silent narrative
 underlies her humanness;
 her every action 
 an overflow of flimsy meaning,
 every response 
 choked with blather and woes.
 
 No escape of disenchantment
 from the vaporous mist 
 of her consumption.
 
 Lacking spirit
 and amazement,
 she closes her eyes
 and shaves her head
 to ward of perplexity.

 With weary eyebrows
 and caterpillar lashes
 she paints herself
 for war against
 not enough; 
 to feel alive,
 to truly matter,
 yet is cumbered
 in the cheerless gravity
 of discontent
 that never fades away.

Porcelain Dolls


 Bear leans over 
 and tells the porcelain dolls
 a dirty joke.
 
 Mythic perfection of
 their rigid cheeks,
 painted blush, 
 radiates the fragile aura of love;
 their giggles disguise 
 their ruffled discomfort.
 
 Self-possessed, Baldy sez:
 "put a lid on it Teddy,
 we are to be cherished
 and require protection,
 not titillation."

They Really Want You

 
 They really want you.
 They really do.
 You gotta believe in something, 
 in this, 
 in that,
 and the other thing,
 in anything really.
 
 Mind as well go with this.
 
 It’s easy.
 It’s here.
 It takes no effort.
 It demands nothing of you,
 
 and you’re not alone.