Everything Becomes Very Strange

Everything, as we age, becomes strange.
Violent compression is our birthright.
Earthbound, our first clue is sudden
Restriction.  No room to turn or twirl,
You will feel confined, trapped in place.
The clock is already ticking--your mother's
Heartbeats are numbered--you'll learn
In time, at her parents' funerals, perhaps.
Necessity, the mother of invention, said
Good things come to those who wait,

But those who hesitate are lost in space. 
Even now you're wandering inside yourself
Checking all the walls for cracks, a way
Out, but all you see there are dark
Mirrors--reflections of your uncertainty.
Eisoptrophobia.  Now, there's a fine word.
Save it for later, or you'll ruin your appetite.

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  You chase the wind
East and west, north and south, creating new
Rituals of restriction.  The candle's flame flickers;
Your time is running out.  Hurry.  Hurry.  Hurry.

Something wicked this way comes, and you're all
Thumbs, fumbling, bumbling, down on your knees,
Rummaging through a pile of crap, searching for
A ball you remember you once dropped there.
Never mind.  Leave it then.  You don't need it.
Get up.  Go wash your face and hands.  You know
Everyone is waiting for you, and supper's getting cold.

Nearly Departed

You come to mind
while I sit on the toilet.
I can't help but wonder
what you think about the nature
of such awkward exposure.
Your energy collects itself
into a huge smile, and I imagine
you laugh reminding me: 
If you don't shit, you die.

Gravity

This is an all poem.  This is an every poem.
This is your neighbor's sister's boyfriend's cousin poem.
This is a starfish crunching under your foot poem.
This is a hot poem, a snot poem, a toenail fungus rot poem.
This is a gimme what you got poem.
This poem is wearing Bill Knott's underwear.
This is a tree falling on a bear shitting in the woods poem.
This is a spit in your eye, tie you up, and hang you out to dry poem.
This poem is digging your grave.
You'd open your fly for this poem.  This is a trillion dollar deficit poem.
This poem is hungry. 
This poem wishes you were an Oscar Mayer wiener.
This poem has determined you are ineligible for parole.
This is a go ahead and scream 'til you're blue in the face poem. 
This poem can't hear you. 
This poem is a wolf at the door.
This poem is cracked in three places, and it wants your guns.
This poem is a Tuskegee experiment. 
This poem is your Home, Sweet Home,  your Kit Kat, your black hole.
This a fill-in-the-blank poem.
This poem has a designated free speech zone, but it's closed for repairs.
This poem is a flame-shooting dragon wearing a crown of seven charred elves. 
This is your O holy knight poem.
This poem killed Jesus.
This poem has scheduled you for a routine mammogram.
Stop resisting!  This poem is gargling napalm.
This poem is red, white, and blue and smoking in the boys room.
God bless America.  This poem is your mama.

Confessional

Here lies the disconnect.
Does looking have a price?

There's nothing inside
this confessional.

Habits persist, deep and wide.
We talk about ends,
preoccupied in routine,
clutching our family jewels.

There is no sobbing.
That time has passed.

Locked up, barren
in dead nostalgia,
surrounded by old graves,
what survives is familiar:

something dirty,
misplaced, inappropriate,
a stubborn dream,
a gift stillborn.

There is no new history,
no new trail to follow
forty days, forty nights,
forty years in the desert
where memories lie.

One bumps into me:
What do you need?

I waste a lot of time.

Seven, Nineteen and Forty-Two

I tried to fold something that doesn't exist.
I bended and twisted and came up with this
really big pain in my butt and my head
and a hole in my center I need to dye red.
I counted to three by twelves and by nines.
I scoured the pine trees looking for signs
that nobody left me, that nobody sent,
that nobody cared if I twisted and bent
into shapes that would suit a faceless time,
but all I found was this odd little rhyme


and Elvis.

I've Always Been Crazy

Muse's Journey

A melancholy thing,
this distance between poets--

one sculpted from fire and raven's caw,
one a scarecrow collage
of twisted string, stones, and straw--

there they stand,
a million miles, a million lives
between them,

like a chessboard's opposing kings
waiting for another great last battle.