Saga of a Reach (A Collection of Poems)

 Search on through the buzzing

Lights of night

For one other fool

That makes the sulfur sound

Smell like rosy music

Playing flowers

And we want to ask

Our magic how?

 

The ape inside

Play my keyboard mind

The tone stings

Unspoken instinct withdrawals

Under the smile of a friendly rug

 

But can we find one

Or all

To embrace this fugly mug?

 

Call the pieces to fit

Because we’re architects

And don’t trust magic

Over industry.

 

Hollow out the moon

To fix our lonesome eyes

Just find that one great fight-

Find tongues like tuning forks,

Hum at the same tone

At the same time,

As your vacuum cleaner

 

Find our souls cleansed in

Such the way of povidene iodine

 

My soul is strained from your

Puzzle wear,

Because you can’t believe

You aren’t right for me-

But we are only

And are more

Than animals,

 

We drive away,

Each,

The last of a kind,

 

Not a puzzle,

But a pantheon.

 

Perhaps oneness is there

In all before we get there

But we have to hum away

From the vacuum cleaner,

Never purify the dirt,

For nothing grows,

Never find the

Singing of earthworm songs

A song that was without you

A song that was within you

 

Lay your feet bare

And smell the

Sound of garbage.

 

Lay your soul bleeding,

Leak the goals of body fluid,

Find the self approaching lucid,

 

One and I

Am

One

And

I am

One

And

 

String the O straight to every mouth

Find the grass from Mother’s mouth

Breathe the breath of thousand snout

And

Find me on your porch,

Waiting for you to come

Out.

 

;

 

Sitting on your couch

You coax me like the tiger spout

 

Like the hottest garden leaves

I defy your doubt

 

My roots are dark and damp and cool

And squishy like worms of plant matter

 

Like carpet they rip with a deep sound

Because it is not up to you to pull me out.

 

They cling and cling

And start to bleed with that sound

 

The birds start to ring loud

And we forget our names.

 

; (Remember that time I said that unintelligent things)

 

Deftly inarticulate-

A master of my illegitimate craft,

I ride on verbose waves

Straight out of the smelly

1970s pages of reprints

Of classics

Volumes of knowledge

Run through me like water through

Decaf tea

In that wasteful single serve coffee apparatus-

And it collects at the bottom like a tincture

Of fatigued blasphemy

 

;

 

I smell of tired bits of tattered grey cloth

From a time of the dinosaurs,

You know,

Our great grandparents,

On farms and on dirt floors

9 children and

Marijuana banjo playing

 

Remember our blood?

Remember the ice man,

Coming round with chips for the little ones

That flake off as he hammers out the big ones-

Remember the horse, his guts spilt out on the fence

He could not jump over?

Remember the snowy walks to school

And the summer in the garden

And the daily bread?

 

We have the red,

The iron

In our blood,

In that way you’re my brother,

Before ever my lover, my acquaintance, my friend,

A historical sense, beating in us,

But far removed in a bleached and starched culture.

 

But we were always the grass, the trees, the dirt and the rocks.

We return from a starched vacation,

With gum on the streets

And silences we meet,

 

We walk into the ever-loving humming home,

 

We are all the forest,

We are all the leaves,

We are all the you, the me, the in between.

 

But I look at you and you are light-years away,

And I will never palpitate your galaxy just right.

 

;

 

The landscape of your face

Calls to me like

The most fatal drug,

And I want to die,

To live,

In your arms,

 

For I am sure,

It is the only place there is life.

 

Like a violin,

It shrieks

For me,

And I blush,

At how I could

EVER

Dare touch-

 

What you are-

Promising a lie,

Sweeter than pancakes

Soggy with maple syrup,

That fall apart on the plate,

Like I crumble before

The thought

Of you touching me,

 

But not with the friction between

Our atoms…

 

That other way,

The way that only

Best friends

And soulmates

And special songs

And a rare stranger

Can…

 

My desire so deep,

Could never be filled,

It drives me mad with the

Opportunity in life-

And I am so deeply grateful-

I watch you from a safe distance-

 

And it finds me fractured and pained,

Knowing the falsity

And the impossibility

Of something

My guts tell me,

Would be so beautiful-

 

Connection.

A rare divinity,

The promise in life,

The lie of our loneliness.

 

In servitude to separateness,

I know,

We both know.

 

;

 

Talk about

-shooting for the stars

And winning the lottery-

He said.

 

We didn’t talk about it,

I stuffed it away in

A compliment jar-

 

At the corner of my garbage-laden wasteland

Of an internal life.

 

I shot for the stars,

And here I am on the ground,

And maybe the mushrooms

Or one more day

Will give me the stars,

But I always lose faith in

Conversation.

 

I haven’t stared at a tree

In months

Because I cannot peel myself

From my sticky

Internal floor,

the womb of eternal adolescence.

 

The taste of your kiss

Feels like an old home,

 

And I am reliving love

But in which

All the little spots connect,

But as usual,

We are so broken,

More broken than I know.

 

You praise me,

But I am a brownfield.

I praise you and

One of your feet is out the door

And neither imagine Sisyphus happy.

 

Praise in the empire of old coffee cups

And unfinished projects.

I’d never deny the magic in and between our

Pairs of artist’s eyes,

We shift the mountains of the world for us

But right now I just feel crushed.

I know you know

 

I am the eternal dollbaby

And I cannot take the turmoil

From being posed,

You fancy me a savior,

But I am not coming home.

I show up a thousand nights in a row

But never come home.

 

;

 

He rolled out the red carpet

For me to walk away

And I started to walk away-

He called back to me-

 

He didn’t sharpen his

Knives with his mistakes,

His prophecy laid out

Our sticks,

 

He could see it coming,

Because it always came,

And who am I,

Being weak willed,

To question it?

 

I could never call into question

The arrangement of your cells,

Which tell you I am leaving,

And beg me to stay.

 

We don’t need each other,

But we need something.

 

Breakfast is still empty.

 

;

 

I’m already halfway

Out the door

And in my mind

I’m across the table

From him instead

 

I’ve got cells

Like a spill in the river

And I never stay put

 

Our eyes speak an eden

Our mouths shared potpourri

And I spoke words,

Warm like cloves,

And your words sweet like caramel

Spilled over my

Wind-crushed eyes

We could not see past the connection-

 

But I heard the sea of my cells from

Behind you calling me

 

Come back, come away,

In this fellow,

There is not your life.

 

I am my life.

 

And I hate how you talk

Bad of selfishness

And love is too often

A game of delusion

After a while,

And that’s not my life-

 

And I will sail away one day

With my roots carelessly branching

Out-

 

On that day,

A past set of eyes

May show up

And I will grow all around him-

Like we did grow around each other.

 

And it is a little hard to see it coming

And swallow that knot,

I don’t know what I can do,

But listen to my cells,

Who cry when near,

And cry when far.

 

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