On Writing

Small words lick us

Salty sweet on opened skin

The fat underneath

Trimmed to just shavings

Pens and needles cut and stitch

Until we are perfect

Beautiful, in fact

With our insides out

Our insides outed and aching

Bone from the closet floor,

Its marrow coveting skin

Its perception

Pulp of our hearts

Pushing

Pushing veins

Until there is light

Thin sheets of light

For us to stand on

For us to rest our hearts on

Thin sheets of light

Into which we climb

Into which we

Wrap ourselves

Like blankets

Like childhood

And its breasts

Full of milk

And warm honey

The warm thighs

Of coming to age

In back seats

In back rooms

That are soon too dark

And damp

Bricks in a basement

Cinder stained through

Thin sheets of skin

Stained fingers black

Like leaded hearts

And welded mouths

Waiting for thin light

For paper thin feelings

For microphones

And their cheap voices

Filling tiny closets

Dark corners

Whiskey glass bottoms

And sailed ships

Filling lines

With circles

And the spaces

Wrapped inside of them

Thin lines

Of thinning love

On thinning paper

On shaky ground

Deserted mouths

And their thinning veils
Have worn me thin
On writing

Linked to dverse open link night

Wheat I/Wheat II

My hand broke this morning

I cannot choke chickens

Hillbilly hand fish

Or kill fucking lions

Lions, in the coliseum

The bar

Fed to the lions like the gladiators

But skinny

Skinny gladiators without armor

Without

Will

Without

Death

Skinny fucking gladiators in skinny fucking jeans

Cutting lions with pens and paper

Cutting lions with…. Nooks?

Fuck

       I have lost weight

From Cancer

From feeding my keeper

Feeding my zoo keeper

The crowds at this coliseum

This bar

This keeper is a fucking lion

A killer

In a Hawaiian shirt

A fucking killer

Like Paul

Fucking Paul

A fucking Lion in a bare man’s feet

The bare feet of men

Bare bones

Bear chested

“Where are the gladiators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Fuckin killin it man

I’m killin it man

I am a goddamn gladiator

A goddamn killer

A goddamn fool
A bare man
Dirt from bare men

From their feet

From between the toes of time

Sand

Grit

And shit
I have cancer

A,

Cancer

From my keeper

My killer

My feet

My Bear

From my chest

My dirt

My skinny

Fuck

From Paul maybe

Or that goddamn Hawaiian shirt

Or the crowds who are killing it, 

Man

Killin Man

Killin 

Me

And my Lions
I am a lion
I am teeth and flesh and noise
I am bone
I am in hiding
I am nothing
Until I am
Sound
I am sight
I am sick
and in your throat
I am Jesus
I am wood
I am steel
I am hanging
Rope
Bodies
And ghosts
I am Batman
And guns
I am guns
And a show
I am dead
I am the third day
I am a stone
I am stoned
I was stoned
I am a woman
Before a man
Before the apple
I am the apple
I am touch
and tit
Between the sheets
Off the books
I am a fucking gladiator
Going home
Going places
Going, Going, Gone
I am History
a Phantom
I am a phantasm
An orgasm
I am dreaming
I am Jack
I am Jackin Off
Gettin it done
I am a mess
I am drunk
I am broken
I am a gladiator
A lion
A pool of blood
I am run out
I am strung out
I am fight
I am tight
I am unstrung
unsung
I am in
I am her
I am in her
I am in and out
I am outta here
I am a minute
I am a man
I am a minute, man
I am lost
I am ink
I am this poem
I am this poem
I am fighting
This poem

For open link night at dverse poets pub

Going Home

You have been going home for awhile now
Somewhere between here and there
the dining table, the window and the view
The grass is familiar and as always, greener
Concrete beneath fence posts
      "to keep the weeds out" you said
Concrete to keep the weeds out
That explains a lot to me
How men become men
How boys become their fathers
And how fathers become their sons
That explains the constant tending of us
The trimming of us
The keeping
The care
The love of us
And the work it takes to keep the weeds out
     the crab grass, the creeping jenny and the chickweed
The broad leaf brush strokes that painted a picture
Outside that dining room window
Where better times were kept by hand
       No power
       No gas or oil
       Just blades and the bodies that pushed them
Trimmed, by hand
Cut, by hand
Kept
by hand
Hand in hand you walk with it
Heart in hand we walk with it
We cry with it
This moment in these frail hands
How small bodies hold down such large lives
Enormous souls seemingly grounded
And magnificent
There is not enough fence post
Not enough concrete
So we wait for church songs
and the freedom from them
From poetry and its bricks
We wait for 93 years to come
For 70 years and 70,000 I love you's
We wait for just one more
For children
and their children
and theirs
     A garden
Tended by time and what you made of it
Not always in the rows you intended
but still,
Growing
A garden still
You, still
Home, Virgil
You can go home


submitted to dverse poets open link night (find their link on the sidebar to the right)

Lazy

she said fuck was a lazy word
she was right
fuck
is lazy
I am lazy
I fuck lazy if I even do at all
it seems, I have better things to do with my legs
my hips
I have better things to do with my fingers
like smashing them with hammers
and taking photographs of barbed wire fences
as if they were panties on thighs
thighs on sheets
skin inked waiting
My thighs are cameras
My eyes
Television screens
My back is a DVR
replaying  yesterday's fuck with every bend
every twist of my spine
my legs, they run
Even when I am on my knees
with a mouth full of fuck
a mouth full of  fire that needs to be spit out
but I swallow
 because my belly remembers the taste
of being hungry
my belly remembers the taste
of being
my belly remembers
my throat, it  has Alzheimer's
my throat, it has Alzheimer's
My throat, does not remember
swallowing
So it gives it away
To the day
To each moment
I give it away
To strangers
To
other thighs
and the lenses between them
a snapshot of a fuck
a fuck of a photo
legs
palms
and cigarette boxes between my teeth
but you,
you have better things to do
you do not like photos
those
pictures
you have better things to do
better fingers
better
legs
better
hearts
you have better things
you have better things beneath your tongues
your tongues are not lazy
they fuck with purpose
they fill us full
they fuck us untill we are afraid
to whisper
to
hold you
to wrap you up and do something better
to take pictures and pin them between our rib cages
where you might find them
where you might love them
where you might
need them
you see
pumping hearts fail
but pumping hips fuck
and fucking people move people move feet  move hands move people move legs
into muscles into hearts into ink into words that sometimes
aren't pretty
or
smart
or
motivated by anything but a world
that is sometimes
not happy
or pretty
but red, white and blue
when it is black
it is sex
it is dirty sheets and discussions
held deep under ground
under sand
underneath the hearts
of those that do not understand
your language
that do not understand flowers
or sunsets or  the cowboys that ride off into them
people that do not understand
how they have become buried beneath the bodies
of what was once
humane
how god looks down upon them
for being
human
for being dirty fingernails and grease
for being poor, broke
and out of work
for being a high school education
how he  reigns down upon them
for being born in the right place
in the wrong time
on the wrong side of the tracks
the wrong side of the ocean
how we look down upon them
for being "spics, niggers, towel heads, or white trash mother fuckers"
for being out of work, addicted, homeless and sick
for being gas station cashiers
cocktail waitresses
and migrant workers
     for being in love in our communities
how they are looked down upon
for just being
for simply saying
what it is they are saying
what it is they are doing
for being lazy
for fucking
for being fucked
for fucking doing it wrong
for being fucking furious
from being on the inside while the outside looks in and says
"fuckers"
as they drive by, barely slowing down to get a good look
a good idea of what it is they know
what it is they don't
as they drive by on their way to the horizon
where the sunsets fade into morning
with nothing in between
not even a simple
fuck

submitted to dbverse poets open link night

The Gallery

he spoke of love and valentines for the people
an online dating video that left me feeling
cheated

she talked of spells.  she talked of a lot of things
all I saw was a beautiful book
perfect, in fact

the guy next to me sighed so we knew he was bored
or stupid
I am not really sure which

the guy next to me was stupid

two girls sat in front of me
they never sighed
or looked at my work

the guy behind them felt stupid

he spoke of
he spoke of
he spoke very softly

he knew how to fly, how to get somewhere
he knew the crowd
he encouraged us to drink

we already had
but he was right to ask

I told myself I could write
but when I did
I sounded like someone else

Hands Unheard

deaf hands falling in mid air
 our  hands
flailing
grasping at skin and tit
open mouths stuffed
with heavy breathe
and bed pillows
sewn shut with the thread of said words
we speak in typography
across rivers and the white lines
of one way bridges
we talk with our thighs and hips
they are full of mouths full
dark places
full
oceans
full
I am full of hips and thighs screaming
from beneath the blanket of whiskey
and mouthwash
hot breathe from cell towers and satellites
lights off
we speak in character because we are
characters
we are
tongues licking lips
we talk with our tongues
on soft skin
on hard skin
skinned
we talk with knives and razors
skinned we speak
bled,  we speak
thinned
we speak

linked to dVerse open link night

God

I sip coffee at a table

Listening to the same songs
The same songs
The same notes
I listen to the same songs
Instead of making people beautiful

Which they are

Underneath the stench of cigarettes and piss

I should have smoked weed

Or done something

Or been something

I should have been
Beautiful
This
Should have been beautiful
We should have been
God

Never Roses

Shadows

Cut from the glass of ceilings

And church windows

Directly from the sun

Cut from you

And me

And the corners 

Of well lit boxes

Stacked

Between lips

And fingers

And the back seats of midnight

After too much to drink

Cut from only sons

And their mother's daughters

The light hearts of love notes

And lilies

But never roses

Bullets

Wood burns like yesterday in the hands of children

Turning minutes into lifetimes

As they carve themselves into them

Leaving marks of freedom

And daring god to wash them away

Daring the streets to stay quiet

And the flickering window panes to stay open

Chanting and stomping

Like Pan and his Indians

They don't know 
That none of it is true

Until you get to close 
To the ticking clock

Inside the belly of a beast

They don't know
The cowboys have cancer

The range does too

It is in the barbed wire fences

On which young men are hung 

And the old dirt roads that get them there

So mamma,

Don't let your babies grow up

Because we are hangmen

Angry men

Empty spaces beneath rib cages

Ticks of the clock in our own bellies

They don't know
The meek don't always inherit the earth

And that the strong

Are sometimes

Silent

They don't know
People are animals

Wolves

In sheep's clothing

Like needles and dark corners

Our streets are full of ghosts

Their pockets are empty

While god is at war over oil

I don't want to tell them

About bullets






Submitted to dverse poets open link night

Men and Chains

The road comes early

Like its been traveling all night

Beat

     On blacktop

     And the gritof photographs

 The pittedglare of the sun

Breaks tree topped hills

With every push of light

Every push of mile beneath his feet

He drives deeper into the falling sky

And rising dirt

Where it is just the sound of his sweat and steel

That makes the difference

He drives harder

At the wild inside

That cuts holes in his gut

The way time cuts men into a million tiny pieces

The way broken bottles build rear view mirrors

Long roads

And men with chains

This is submitted to dverse poets pub open link night

Stunted

my hands don't work the way they used to
stiff
tight
and swollen
my mind feels the same
my mind feels
my hands work harder than they used to
for the same
my mind
the same
and for what it is worth
I am not
due to the work
due to my hands
due to time
and its toll
its bridge
of the gap
its wrinkle
that appears to be more
than just a wrinkle
a canyon it seems
and I am no Evil Knievel

And We Drive

it is waves I am under
but something heavier than oceans
and the time it takes to cross them
the time it takes to let them go
the time it takes to make mountains
from what is on the other side
mountains
that come from nowhere on eastern highways
blacktop towns
and their charm
their white houses
their main streets
and she waves to me
as if to say hello
but something tells me it is goodbye
     her eyes
and so we drive
to anywhere but here
we drive
until we find water
and wonder how far it is
to the other side
till we land
till grains of sand become something else
something
worthwhile
something other than mountains







 

Sailing Ships

Rising up

From fallen buildings
And stripped skylines
From dark spaces
Brick lined rooms
In basements of white houses
Where there is everything
In the mass of destruction
And like many men
We emerge with
Our hands raised
And callused
Raised
And on fire
Crossing waters and oceans and seas
Delivering our native soil,
Which is just dirt
And burning buildings
And broken windows
And empty eyes
Across waters and oceans and seas,
We leave pieces of ourselves
Just to find home
Yet still
People on fire
People in pieces
Sailing ships across waters
Across oceans
Across seas
Seeing only black and white beneath bows
Red,
Beneath their boots
And the weight of searching
Of finding home
Someday,
When the winds have stopped
And the night has been washed clean with light
When we have lowered our skulls
And our crossbones
Our campaign will end
It is then that we will stand still
In calm water
Hands on fire
We will fuse our pieces into places
Where they are not so small
Where they are not so broken
Where they are
Children
Mothers
And Fathers
Not angry men
Plowing ships into shores
No
When the wind stops
We will find our place
Among the pieces
Beneath the shadows of our sails
We will find color
Through clear water
Through common ground
Slipping fingers into fingers
We will find home

With hands open

And hearts on fire

This poem was written for an ekphrasis event held at Hot Shops in Omaha,Ne.  The piece I chose to write about (picture) was created by Ron Manabat and is entitled "Coral". I urge you to check out both Hot Shops and Ron Manabat.

This Poem is has been linked to dVerse-poets pub "Open Link Night"

North Valley

It was stepping through walls

Through time

And standing on concrete

Much harder than anticipated

It was stepping into heartbreak

Into the lives of boys

And the place they became men

The moment they didn't

North Valley Chapel

Up just another dirt road

Un-assuming 

But a road all its own

And to the side

Amongst some tall weed and tree

It sits
A sanctuary without wall

Without window

No stained glass and scripture

No pulpit

No preacher, prophet or penance

A structure without structure

But not without strength

Built by boys

By Josh
Sam

Ben

And Aaron

Built by hands that never knew them
And hearts to remember them
And we sat, my son and I, as I told him the story

Of how things sometimes happen

That we cannot control

He understood

Boys had died here

That the wood on which we rested

Was cut from that burden

Just as trees had been cut from the valley

And chimney stones pulled from the sky

Burying men that were yet to be

And what became of them was this place
Where one might find god

Or solace

Or peace

Or just a place to put a memory
This Chapel in the North Valley





North Valley Chapel at Little Sioux Scout Ranch.  In 2008, 4 boys were killed and 48 others wounded after a tornado struck the camp--- http://www.ketv.com/news/16579276/detail.html


Submitted for One Shot Wednesday



Candy

She looks just as she did yesterday
Which was eight years ago
Hiccups and all
Sweet cheeks, sweet breathe
Sleeping as if she were candy
Pure
Simple
Nothing more or less
Than perfect

Waiting For Rockets

He sleeps  on old cushions
And I sip warmed coffee
Waiting for something
Waiting for rockets

He dreams of wild children
Pink toenails and playgrounds
Where there is nothing
But swings kissing suns

Dirty faced kids
Are no longer angry
Throwing stones and sticks
At the gods for answers

No, Swings do kiss suns
And arms of young astronauts
Do let go
If only for the moment

Grazing moons and stars
As they return home
Before we even knew
That they had been gone

It is all too much
For a young boy to know
So he dreams on old cushions
While I wait for rockets


for One Shot Wednesday at onestoppoetry.com

At Times

At times I drink too much
So someday, my children might know who I am
So I might find my way into it
Of being Child
Of being dreams on mountains
Reaching as far as small arms can
Small arms wrapping the world a thousand times over
Just to see what it feels like to own something so perfect
To hold everything, all at once before it gets too big
And arms grow tiny
And hands can only hold on to what is there
Gripped tightly between fingers and palms
Squeezing minutes from hours
While days drip into cliffs and raging rivers
Cutting clean the sides of mountains while I sleep

Dragonflies

Lookin out over this town
Tryin to find the beauty
That place between the factories, the haze of late August
Off 9th Avenue and its road to riches.
Where 20 bucks gets you nothin but lost time
And a pull of the lever leaves you emptier than before
All busted knees and boots on blacktop
Street corner standin beggin for something I just aint got
But on this hill, far away from that
I’m smokin cigarettes and sippin beer from a coffee mug
Watchin the dragon flies maneuver as if that’s all there is,
Beatin the breeze to get what’s yours
And maybe that’s it
Maybe that’s the beauty
But it’s broken up by folks and their cars
Afraid of shutin off the engines and steppin outside
To feel the heat
To help me find beauty
Among hot tar
And endless rail yards
Stuck behind windshields and locked doors
Just crackin the windows to toss out the trash
And their guilt
The interruption only lasts a minute
But seems like an eternity
Because the mechanics of their day and its noise
Do not belong here
On this hill
Where I smoke cigarettes and sip beer from a coffee mug
Searchin for beauty among fields of grey and green
And nothing in between but a renovated building
Which is the perfect shade of a red
The shade of hope
Of something other than what we got
Which doesn’t seem like a lot from up here
Where I’m still under the strange looks of strangers
As if they’ve never seen anyone maneuverin before
Beatin the breeze to find what’s theirs
And maybe it’s because they don’t know
That this may just be all I got.
This town and its broken beauty

Old Trees and Squirrels

Planes break the silence of an almost blue sky
And my time spent wandering
In and out of what is to become
Of the minutes that pass
Each needing something from me
Leaving me bound to cigarettes
And an almost empty red glass
Painting masterpieces
Only to find them as fleeting as the black squirrels
That ring around the trunks and branches
Of old trees
I can see them from the kitchen
Going about with the things that black squirrels do
Which is nothing really
But still
They are squirrels none the less

Any Given Sunday

From the tops of electric mountains
Our status has risen
WE are risen 

With a click

And tap

Upon the glass of houses

Built upon strokes across keys

Boats across oceans

Hearing the rap

Of god's whip upon their backs

Each crack swallows us whole

And we click and tap

To words we don't understand

And dig our nails deep into the sound

Of our own falling

Digging in deep

Heels pressed against faces

Filling mouths with broken teeth

And the taste of freedom
Boots dug deep into rib cages

Pushing dirt into lungs

To stop them from breathing
From filling up
God is in heels of boots
The spines of books
And the men that fear them
Salvation is in the slaughter of children
When the become men with crooked smiles
Wearing the weight of crowns
To bury what they have done
Tapping toes
On the dingy floors of  hearts
Keep on dancing
Ticking bombs in throats
And ticker tape parades for gods behind glass
It is, after all, what we've asked for
To be risen
Lifted by the holy words of men
Who only hear god in their own voices


For One Shot Wednesday at onestoppoetry.com