Driving an Automobile Through Rainfall

toward a Wisconsin destination,
an artist vacation,
three grown men with Sparklehorse as a soundtrack
merge like a wax ghost union.
Armed with a three day weekend,
three heads swimming the creative ocean,
three hearts drawn into three directions,
makes perfect sense.
The weather, the music, and the common bond,
trinity at the intersection,
a crossroad on divinities roadmap.
Art is sure to be made there.

Apologies from the Music Critic

Dear sweet prefabricated Gnome,

This is my humble attempt to beg your forgiveness, to back-pedal, to eat my words.
The very last time that I had communications with you I believe that I may have been misunderstood. My skill at speaking Gnome is faint and my talent for a written, literate exchange is chewy at best. So if I may disinfect, so to speak, any of the polluted meanings in my last letter please accept this as my second chance.

When I said your singing voice is in the class of "belching up acid, bitter black coffee, verging on vomit tonality" what I meant was you sing like an angel of the Indy scene.

Also, addressing the second bone of contention, your home recorded CD 'Wainscoting the Senate Regimen”, when I said that it was "the mucus evidence of the mass populace acceptance squirting from B.Corgan's expanding ego nozzle", I meant that in the best possible way.

And lastly, I was unaware of how prominent the dollar amount that is being spent by the likes of your "ethnic background" in today's "alternative" music industry. Please, if you could call off the minions from sending hate mail to the zine, I may possibly get my job back. Really can you blame me? Who knew Gnomes really exist?

Sincerely,
Thomas B.
(A former reviewer with
High & Mighty Music Review)

My essence moves in a constant flow
Like a pleasant secret
My heart has the similar meanings
As the wisdoms in occult books
Who I am can be expressed in a kiss
Who I am can be held like a universe
With each passing day
Discovery grows deeper
My soul is a wildflower garden
My awareness stands at attention
Oh how difficult it is to capture
A life so fine with only a half of heart
And a page full of broken sentences
It is like the dust of butterflies wings
Speechless like moonlight on snow

Love Can Bridge the Divide

My mind is divided
into shards of thought
divided with fault lines
and fractions,
warring factions
and strange gravities.
The architecture
of my mind
is flimsy and easily
upset by two big, opposing
thoughts, strong-arming
the structure.
A tug of war -
desire on one side
divinity the other.
When I want to go
my mind is too far gone
dreaming and scheming
a fluffy head full of play.
Like a crow entranced
by every shiny thing.
All that glimmers distracts
my pin point gaze.
If my head were a radio
this poem would be static.
If my head were a steering wheel
my car would be all over the road.
If I were speaking to you
you would have no idea
what I’m talking about,
feeding your head questions
that my mind would be
in no mood to answer.
My mind is a flashlight
with a broken lens
throwing shadows
of scary monsters
on the white washed wall
for my evening’s pleasure.
My mind is the Y split
in a river, I invite you
to stand upon the island it makes
and toss your cares downstream
its best that one of us has some peace.
I’ll turn my mess
into a mystery
and tantalize you
with hints and guesses.
Lead you into
my kingdom of thunderstorms,
down my muddy streets
to the cathedral
that sits at the heart of chaos.

A Mind’s Fragile Trick

I’ve been holding you
in my memory like a Ming vase,
when in fact you were
the golden calf who trashed
the china shop.
Somehow I recall you
as a clear August day,
when in fact
you were the remaining dust
of an Autumn leaf.
When I think back
you are the buried treasure,
when in fact
you were the dirt
and the hole left behind.
If I reflect to the then
you were the true blue,
when in fact
it feels better today
if I lie to myself.
Life will be so much smoother
when I learn to get the facts straight.

Frost Koan

If a poet falls in the woods
will the Birches make a sound?

These July nights
when writers meet
in cafes, on Tuesdays,
when the sky
rightfully refuses to shed
it’s well deserved garments
of slow fade light,
from loud lemon to summery tangerine,
delicately like silk slipping
off the lover’s tender thigh.
The gathered muses dissolve
like liquid ghosts
into black ink directions,
down white paper highways.

On A Summer Evening

Let us set laughter free
unshackled, unfettered
from forced hibernation
in caverns hollowed out
from deepened human psyche’s.
Carved by the rushing
of worldly cares like
water over stones,
chiseled by moving moments
on the downhill race
to collect at the foothills of faith.
Trapped in the box canyon
where phenomenon holds
captive, eternity’s best intentions.
Laughter is the antidote
for this poison-weed garden,
of this blossom and blooming
called human suffering.
Every little laugh that slips
from tightened hearts
attracts firefly sized lights
that flitter like hope
on a summer evening.

Lynda Sleeps

Her drowsy breathing
when she sleeps
calls to worship
outside our bedroom
window screen,
fireflies on a summer evening.
Amply enthusiastic
to bring luminous praises
in honor of this slumbering
Goddess,
yellow glowing prayers.
Each one is answered
when she exhales.
I drift off dreamily
beside her,
keeper of the temple
blessed as I am
in her nightly presence.

Bad Gamble

All bets are off
when the slot machine
of astronomy
scatters the richness
of the Milky Way
like stupid starry-eyed coins
across four lane traffic
on a Wall Street afternoon

All bets are off
if every kiss that has
ever been kissed
is counted and collected
canned in Mason jars,
sucked of all their passions
settled with an endless shelf life
of plastic and neon commodity

All bets are off
when God is shrunken
down to matinee prices
and the fire engine red Devil
insists on serving extra butter
added to the nuclear family sized
bucket-o-popcorn.

A Poet’s Silence

A poet’s quiet act meshed
with a priest’s sacramental wonder,
form a spotlight which in turn
illuminates the darkest corners of the fallen world.
Only to reveal in the simplest of manners
the clockwork precision
of a living heart saturated
with a love of life,
and a weaving mind
drunk on one part god’s silent language
and one part holy imagination.

The Proper Tools

I would never invite the dentist
to perform dentistry
with a concrete jackhammer.
Nor expect a surgeon the perfect incision
with a bricklayers trowel.
How could I ever expect a boy
to gaze a strip of the universe’s
starry wonder through a Styrofoam cup?
If I didn’t have a heart full of poetry,
a spirit full of wisdom,
a head full of delightful thoughts,
and a being full of boyhood.
I wouldn’t have the proper tools
needed for loving you.

Green Trees and the Darkening Sky

-(in a voice of a spring storm-)

Cinematic, overly dramatic
rain cloud formations tumble.
Earth shaken vibrations.
Scope resembles a pretend Illinoisan range -
peak beyond peak hidden by
a lofty wisp of Japanese mountain fog.

Light changes from overcast grey -
to rotted yellowy lemon -
to tempest soup pea green.
A sky to ground mixture
of weather alchemy and wind blown wishes.
I imagine that my soul flies
to blend into stormy horizon
like atmospheric stew
with bird wings.

A crazy artist’s thinking,
a painting alive with spring leaf trees,
and the all black band of rain clouds
become electric, energizes
like a lightning prayer delivered.
Thunder replies quickly
as if God
has an answering machine
and phone with an itchy redial.



Sunday May 14, 2006

A Plan for Easter

Daybreak,
outdoors,
alive on this living Earth.
Here is my cathedral where I can ingest
the sacrament of sunrise,
and my breath will become sweetened.
Sweet like a new poem recited with the tongue
of a virgin, and my heart will blare like a trumpet.
Blast a three note symphony of joy as a strong testament
to my brief years in this natural world.
I’ll follow my memories like a crumb trail
through out the threat of darkened woodlands
until I reach a safe home.

A Lifetime Unread

Vowels lie decaying upon the ground
consonants half erect like the walls
of ruins, whole paragraphs in shards,
sit in disrepair, unread. The universe
winding down is a library
of yet-to-be written books.
Life flitters by like a fly
leaving a rotted apple.