Racing Home

Heart pounding
Wrenching
Crying
Tears of blood
That pump through the veins
In thrombotic succession
Firing each aortic cylinder
In musical rhapsody
Whose lyrics are the story
Of vulnerability denied
Then rising
As if lifted from a coma
Pure honesty dictates the wanting
A real connection; real love
Giving everything to the finish line
Driving it home
Tank full of desire
Revving the pedal
Feeling the surge
High performance engine
Shift into my lane.

Jazz Hands

Carve the words
Into the chest of that tree
Immutably growing
Thrusting forward
Into the blue stratosphere
Recyclable bark shed
Tossed askew
Wind wayward swept
To the buds of good taste
Sniffing out decay
Rooting out winter’s casting call
The roles you and I
Would both be well-suited to play
Garb us in richly lined costumes
As the soil washes aside to reveal the roots
Suckling on a mineral idea
Reflected in your eyes
Glint scheming with purposeful honesty
Despite itself
In your self-deluded reflection
Poised above a few bottles
Listening to what may fall from my lips
Mopped from the slippery floor beneath you
Where you may have felt the slide
Or you may have mistaken it
Just as easily.

Blossoms

Stranded cyclamen
Alone in an empty break room
Withering without the sun’s attention
Desperately longs for the rain
As it wills its dead branches into the air
Like Atlas with only memories to uphold

Then one day a young woman finds it there
And identifies with its brave attempt to live
Bereft of the things that would make it flourish
She stares at it long and hard
Selecting which stems to prune
Understanding where the blooms should spring

Water succulently penetrates its way down
Into the comforting solace of the soil
Now damp and nurturing
A safe haven of growth and new life
Leeches its way into the foundation
Of the dreary plant now quenched

The young woman draws the cyclamen to her
Caressing its leaves with hushed murmurs of affection
As she gently places it in the sun
Whose benevolent shining rays
Succor the plant into a bountiful display
As lush fullness enraptures the simple plastic pot

She is happy for her cyclamen
Grateful for the sun that shines on them both
She in her chair; the plant on the sill
With nothing but a simple reliance on each other
The cyclamen depending on her for life
As she relies on tending it.

Guess.

Stop. Start.
Stop. Start.
Fits, fucks, frenzies
Feelings with no purpose
Meanings
Dueling
The vague obviousness
Of the way it all stops
Starts.

Caught in a hiccup
Perpetually
Sipping on a bowl
Brimming with not enough

Stop. Start.

Drag that one deep
Lung-ridden measure of black tar paradise
Make me unworthy
For a finger to point
Reverently
And ask why do you
Stop. Start?

Desperately clinging
Tongue mold
Tied down fast
Keeping the prayer silent
Lighter in hand
Choking the words
Bellowing from the gullet
Warm wind wishes
To stop.

But how do we start?

Chomp Your Bit

Give me grit
Tooth impounded
Grainy, chewy, un-ending
Hard stares
To here
Center
Elicit the serpentine belt of time
Make me wear away
The taste
Un-listen the resonance
Pounding
Relentlessly
Refill my cup
Serve me as I serve you
Without logic
Or hidden treasures
Sequestered
Tucked away in recessed
Fortresses mortared by heart’s blood
Tears
Vague desire
Waning
By the moonlight
Driving the vicious tides
Harder and harder
Into the deep, ceaseless cacophony
Whispering
Shouting
Embodying the gray space in between
The teeth plagued
By the grit
Insisted.

Snakeskin

Sunburst shower
Heating rock, water, soil
Tepid air, gentle zephyr
Calling the serpent forth
Slithering from conclave
Encased in last year's skin
Sloughing off the past
Dead cells discarded
Side to side
Emerging forward

Existential Alphabet Soup

Fragile bones disintegrate
After taking years to form
Shape and grow
With a mother's love
Thousands of hugs
Years floating by
On a river without reverse flow
Days pass easy
Going down the gullet
As a limp noodle would
Spelling the words
That should traverse the lips
In the opposite direction
Where we all struggle to paddle
Failing with shrugs
Kisses
Moments
Buried alive
In the memories
Of those who survive
To suck down today's hot soup
And let it digest as it will.