(The Garden Before Sin)

Tuck Point

I hear rats moving about in my basement
In the backyard, beggars claw at the mortar bricked foundation
I sense below audible snuffing, just outside my night blackened bedroom window.

There is an approaching
Something stalks less and less quietly
Something gaining confidence
Sloughing off a need to hide

It’s beetles in my belly
Subtle spiders under the skin
They mix and cajole behind my skull
Toasting the ending begin.



I hear the clicking and clacking of human fingers
Translating goopy organic notions into digitally
transmitted text.
So many clickings an clackings, like a world remade
in bees’ dance.

From one cell to the next, virus spread.
From laughing absurdities to street fighting men.
Protests have emerged, lacking definition or zen.
The stomach of the world is beginning to twist
it seems
rejecting the brackish black water of our common dreams.

I find myself a little man, with a larger plan.
Some definite desire without strategy.
But smaller have made more on less,
so I shall begin treating with the twitches,
with the strange shapes in the corners that only
suddenly emerge as common items, and not the witnessing
demons projected from within.

I’ll have to make shelves for all the elves I know.
All the wrinkled toes dipping bravely into this pond.
I’ll fashion the unmagic will of a wand,
and wave… and wave….and wave.

Final Fragment

Burned Brashly For A Moment

And so the door remains open as I remain closed. Speak with me now another mumbled riddle of self. Wash the hands of low stomachs and wasting minutes. I despair not, do not fear. This is merely the span between a light switch’s travel from OFF to ON. As everything else, the single thought is the triumph of eons. Or the revered library of millennia is burned brashly for a moment’s brutal message. Let us begin with the breaking balls. Turning towers fall swiftly past the faces of buried hearts. Silly metaphors flung together emoting nothing of consequence. A bigger mistake can be made, criminalized, left behind, forgotten. We are each our own enemy. We each can only grope for that which is beyond us, which is greater than ourselves, more pure than ourselves, more human than ourselves, more godlike than ourselves, more relevant than ourselves, more beautiful than ourselves, more wanted than ourselves, more regal, more valid, more lively, more stoic, more wise, more in all facets than ourselves, a greater decision, a higher vantage, a more knowing perspective. We reach, and just in attempting the contact, attain a greater context than our self pity. We stride, and I struggle. I know as you know, we are not alone in our loneliness. But it makes little difference to the small, toothy voices that grind in our hearts, as they are held quiet and muffled by our stronger reserves. We take comfort in our composure, in our nobility, dignity.

We make the attempt, and so enjoy the triumph of eons.

We live with luxuries we have forgotten to appreciate. Even the simple basics of Health, Sanity, Love, Courage.

We must remember where we have been, what we were not, what daring steps we had to take across the desert of our past trials. We must give credit for making it to this point, for creating this face we carry, for the face we put on things.

Do not fear.

Do not worry the shame of crying into the invisible shoulder.

Jesus, this sounds like some self help book, cradled in the window of a Barnes and Noble.

Blah. Burn it all. I care not for eternity. But I must be responsible to those that love me, and so cannot indulge haphazardly in wanton self destruction. I did that for too long. I feared it was beginning to affect my health.

Nobody is Richards, but Keith himself.

That’s it. Not cute sum up, no bow tied on top.
This is not the present. This is, as of this moment, the past.

The Hedge

It comes time to face fear again.
To look into the void of your life,
and question this hole.
Do I have the courage to fill it.

Are you clipper or creator.

What arc of the cycle glides between my feet.
Either destroyer, or breather.
Either mourning veil, or sun burnt smile.

The answer is all of these, of course.
We never left.
Even if we never spoke.

I still hold the faith for hours, for this.
For the life left on pages to be paged through.
I mourn mortality, not frailty.

The intention is act beyond measure.
But I hope more.

DIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The White Stripes Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine

Flavorful Fork

Sugar tine, laughing rind, not so sour anymore.
Finger wine, summertime, hell has no more hounds to sell.
Insolent islands fight the sky, thinking we need no bees.
The flowers dispute, but are in disrepute, and in any case, can’t afford the fees.
Wrinkle with my wrist’s watch, counting silence near the clocks.
There are secrets beneath the trees.
Too much falls on the brain, when the weather’s full of knives.
Cutting finds empty seals, broken for long forgotten decrees.
License is permission to commit atomic fission, and blow away the sighs.

Listen to the crazy talk, and raise up a string of kites to the invisible flows above.

Rip My Binder

Need a rugged binder. For the garden/shed poetry book.
Rugged, ripped, studded, badass trapper keeper.

Blood In My Shoes

Blood in my shoes.
Not wholly my blood.
It is the detrital detriment of others.

The slaying of a Nemesis is satisfying
from the start,
but as the undercutting of a damp hillside,
it is ultimately undermining.

I live in metaphor,
and attempt as I may to keep reality at bay.

It reminds, it bothers, it persuades with the power of chaos.
The cold past the window.

This is not unexpected.
The skill is to anticipate,
to know the unknown,
to name nothingness.

So is the daily shaman work.

For are we all not shamans by now,
by this late date on calendars secret and internal,
striking the bells in our bellies.

Do we not divine, not forecast.
Are we born convicted as a Forecaste,
with invisible marks upon our brows.

Do we not twist in ourselves hourly,
testing our own viscera in muffled augury.

I can hear the city screams.
My eyes seem to dim and enliven
with the pen’s varying pressure as it tilts the page.

This is who we are.

It is language which has changed humans from the start,
from the fireside before our age of glory,
to the schizophrenia hiding behind our steel walls.

The words are time travel.

I think I will hide my words in image,
in the darkroom, inside sounds that bend
round corners from the front porch,
from the drainage of the street.

It is nice to sit outside above freezing tempatures.
It is nice to have an hour’s worth of moments.
I design and so decree,
I die and so breathe.

There is little measure of now without
a known beginning and a known end.
Origin and Terminus.

And so God makes us.
And so we make God.

The respective perspective must be universal.
Good night spoon, hello spork.

What are we to become.
When does what we were, return.

Print, preserve, realize now and now.

Darkness and light,
we are but candles defining the distance.

I wish well, but for When I do not.

Eye see until closed me.

A Time To Speak To Matters Unintelligible

A time to speak to matters unintelligible

The calendar of my hours spins
like a maddened dartboard.
I throw my missiles of choice
and can no more detect where they land
than where I find their resupply.

Is this life becoming waste

I do not bid to place blame nor fault.
I do not think myself unusually cursed or maligned
by forces unseen.
I just wonder,
is this life of mine to be the average of mediocrity

What record of worth will I leave behind.
What presence of achievement do I carry with me
but these dry, dirt stained hands,
but the fruits of a garden long decayed,
but words left to settle like dust in the road,
but midnight laughter forgotten with the morning meal.

Is my triumph the delay of mortal tragedy

Can inspiration survive,
persist, lie, lay flat, and reemerge
with the next season of rain.

Is my love amphibious.
Do I croak needlessly
in bogs without depth
in deserts without sun.

Did Nathan know the bottom of the world
was waiting for him.

Is there a method to this madness,
or is this method beyond mad,
insane before onset psychosis,
lost before any thought of origin.

I know pain and love and weariness
and lust and hunger and boredom
and whiles and smiles and forever feeling
of her skin.

I know nothing of what belongs to this destiny.

I am in danger of losing grip on the divination of my divinity.

I speak this warning, and alert my soul.

Fuck You

Chameleon Without Colors

Chameleon without colors
I’m twisting upon a rope,
I know not the tree, nor the reason,
I hang high and choke lower than in my throat.

My guts like a wet coil of reeds,
twisting and piling upon my belly.

I know not who I am nor where I be.
I feel a foot, without a knee.

Darn this sock,
Dream this daring death.
I am absent of purpose,
at a loss with chaos.

Whence delivery?

I know not, and the Knot.

I wish Alexander and his sword.

My Mind Feels Far

Pay Day, Same Day.

Pay day, same day.
Waiting for the ball to drop.
Sounds cascade like a too well ordered waterfall.
the City sounds.
Cars and monkeys driving wheels.
We turn.
All wheel with daily rotating of the sky.
Rushing into the East, over another 24 hours of Earth.

It’s nice.

One shouldn’t complain.
We are not scratching in the dirt for our sustenance.
At least not too much,
Only at the gardener’s choice of pain and derision.

The cats actually sit quietly;
even though the little snakes are known to be lurking
beneath leaf and bramble.
A moment alone, away and with the gracious bleed of ink.
Burning off the mind’s chiding through finger tips,
through the familiar twitching upon this papier.

It’s about now.

It’s about then, when the ball drops.
Yet another move in this kinetic opera,
this furious fairy called Time.

As the light pours its last upon fading eyes,
the meat is neat and unaware.

Who could ask more of eternity.


I know the secret, and forget it often.

Meatness makes it that way.
And yet it is difficult to remember
all these faces around that abound are
real worlds in themselves, alone and questing
their singular quests, as we each do.
Too many minds unconnected, needing silly books of smiles
to touch and compare compassions.

Do you like it.

And I’m glad for wife and glad for growth.
Glad for death and give a happy nod to Winter.
Stasis is death.
To know death Rushes is to know life perserves.

Organic, carbon-based life has struggled
for so long;
solving the puzzles of the universe.
We are the livers, the processors of the inantimate,
the insentient,
into a questing, zealing, revealing, concealing,
into a Question, held and wondered upon,
held to the light of a deep woods fire,
held and shared for desperation,
across miles and generations.

We live to live,
to give a name too simple for all this Chaos,
and so name ourselves.

So dig it, you get it,
by just not accepting what is.

This is the final and first secret.

Shadow In Situ

what upright shadow in the forest speaks to me now in fogging whispers
what small smothering animal shivers beneath the tree’s icy bole
what terrible words does it tell itself of memory, of grudge, of recovery, and revenge

what time is it in the forest
when all creatures wait for the other to give way to sound
to reveal their hearts, first by beat, then by steaming sheen of blood on snow

who watches for us, in this coloring colorless noonday dim of Winter’s lingering perch
who will strike and show our skin to the world and declare
“All See! Know the Bareness of your Fallen master!”

There’s nothing to do but wait, hold still, breathe not at all, dream not too deep
and craft the warm words of next season,
a final never found reason
to continue bleeding inside, in circles, in situ

In The Waiting Room

We Are Shadows Cast

We are shadows cast
By our souls’ interruption
Of a light unseen,
Of a radiance born inside
The small, tight corners of dimension.

As the wavering dimness
Of my commuter bus’ exhausted vapor
Upon the road in morning sun.

Does the world only reflect
For our eyes to catch.

Can experience be separated
From Being.

Is this why basketball hoops and navels
Are round.

Life is a continuity of Identity.

A careful juggling of what
Has gone before
As evidenced in what is
Seen now and balanced
Against what is expected
To Be.

This is the essence of Human consciousness;
and is the inherent tension of our race.

Identity is found in the lines of your hand,
In your gaze to the horizon.

These are not at all new thoughts,
Only philosophical preambles,
A shuffling of cards in the parlor.

It is only the concentrated shield of our
Ever re-etched pattern of ego,
Highly held against chaos
That keeps us from the Madness of
Unassumed reality.

Also, ice cream.