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.

Old Man

The Show Must Go On

Crone (a birthday poem)

She wakes to creaking
consonants, old and old,
but unwritten like the Tao.
Clustered clouds,
their clingling vowels
undropped, hang
like nooses over her head,
loyal to the end. The day
begins in meditation:
cream swirling into coffee--
short the clank clank clank,
spoon against the cup.
Curious orange tabby cats
conspire between her feet.
She knows a little,
remembers less, ignores
what doesn't matter
like crumbs of toast.

...to see

her broken majesty...

Those days we made suffering
from frosted flakes of corn, mercy
from milk, and cracked our tongues
on long goodbyes.
You can't spell revolution.
The first lie is public service--
body, mind, and spirit isn't enough.
Coffee and cupcake warriors
still wrap dead fish in stars
and stripes. Do you remember
the warmth of rhyme? Hymns lost
in the garden? Drop your mothers
into the earth. Blood on bare wood.
Roots like worms.
It seems like
such a long
way down.
But why
do they
hate
us?
It's their world now, not ours.
There's no reason to panic.

Appropriation

Prior prior poetics:
half devils,
a thousand swoons,
morning mushroom
concentration camp
conversations,
web plunder for lunch.
Oh, how we explore,
murder their fiction
and romantic notions!
I is my life. It's not abstract
where no one ever talks
ownership. But where is it?
Funny happens quickly.
This is what I'm doing.
Grab the need to be,
the center mindset,
the first place.
Be a point
for everyone to ignore.
The state of the world
is a schoolmarm emotion.
Refocus.

There is a World

Contentious
and untamed,
this is my world
above the surface.

Sometimes at night
I blink and glimpse
the possibility
of nothing below.

Interconnected
and unpredictable,
fantasy and truth
collide in blankness.

I can't dwell there.

Motivated by self interest
and the law of emotion,
I bounce back and become
a million hands.

You can only lose
your innocence once.

Ready?

It looks like there's another crazy year ahead.