Kind of Blue

What kind of blue are you
a cerulean, a turquoise, a cobalt
of a Grecian sea or Venetian sky
I don't understand the feeling "I'm blue"
because blue is beautiful

Listen

Listen

Listen to the walls around us

Raindrops and voices

From between the cracks

Look

Look to the skies that drown us

The devil and God

Two sides of us

Think

Think about the songs that reveal us

Films and Sundays

Spent w/ you

All I need from you is a little more fortitude

All I need from you is a little less change

Maybe that's something you could arrange

The Sound of Walls

Half Hour, Maybe More

Do you know where she goes

when she kisses you on the cheek

Does she walk out the door

saying she'll be back

Do you know who she knows

passin' love notes under the table

Maybe under a door

You'll wait for a knock

Half hour maybe more goes by

You'll save her, then you'll cry

You'll save her, then you'll cry

Do you know where she goes

when she has nothin' to lose

thru an empty door

maybe she'll come back

She's not w/ you

She's not w/ me

She's not w/ him

She's not w/ her

She's not w/ them

She's not w/ us

She's not w/ you

The Sound of Walls

Cemetery

What one needs at a cemetery:

1. creepiness
2. quiet paranoia
3. headstones w/ psalms etched on crosses
4. epithets which may not have been entirely true
5. gravediggers' shovels
6. religious monuments
7. solid terra firma
8. hallelujahs and amens sung from neighboring church bells
9. a potpourri of pine needles, leaves and debris underfoot
10. a Bresson black 'n' white moon
11. rusty crosses and dates w/ no names

I went into a cemetery, darkly dark and alive, w/ spirits of people I've known and blowing reeds. I was really wanting to find my mother among magnolias & dogwoods. I passed a boy holding flowers. I noted my apology as something old and new. I think it was my brother, a younger version of the man he was, serious and stalwart at times but a charming mischievous cad at others. I was walking faster than him, but it was nice to see he was taking her flowers. In the end I found my mother.

I found my mother
On the day she gave me life
I lost her later.

For Kathryn
9.9.44 - 8.13.93

Hopeless Cause

I'm making excuses
I'm breaking all the rules
But you've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

I have no explanations
I know no reasons why
But you've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

You may think I never listen
But I listen I don't learn
Maybe tomorrow I'll try harder
Maybe a new leaf will turn

1000 times I've said I'm sorry
And I'll say it a million more
You've got to forgive me
Cuz I'm hopeless
Just your hopeless cause
Just your hopeless cause

The Sound of Walls

Dionysus

Under a warm progress of the sun, I went to Paris in search of the Lizard King, of Dionysus, of Mr. Mojo Risin', of James D. Morrison, of the man w/ the sultry stash of sex appeal. I wish I could say that me and my mojo were busking in a Parisian tunnel, but no. Well, truthfully it was dank and dim and smelled of drunks who peed against the slippery walls, when they should've been petitioning in a catacomb for a porcelain God or should've been with their drunken heads in the curves of robust brothel queens.

I almost got pick-pocketed in the Metro, some dude was pushing into me trying to get thru a turnstile and was trying to get in my coat pocket. I turned and pushed him and called him an asshole in French; I probably called him a sweet cabbage instead. And I almost got kicked out of Pere Lachaise cemetery, I was leaning on Jim Morrison's sepia-toned grave. Pardon moi. He wasn't there anyway, because I saw him in a moonlit window, running his hands thru his charismatic mane of hair, prodigiously naked, reading Baudelaire or Rimbaud. He was in a dark jubilee, lamenting baritone, riding storms, hauntingly a statue of Michelangelo's, a garden feature in a Parisian bath-tub. I left an epigram at the door for him, under a mat, next to a peace frog that said, "I'm afraid, at this time, on this vespertine eve, I have to cancel my subscription."

Everything

Gathering the pieces of night
with our pairs of shoes off
I would change into my eyes
and see everything

We would become twin souls
while passing drops of wine
I would settle for a zephyr
and know everything

The sky would trip over easels
and moil in the colors of fall
I would abandon the stage
and sense everything

Taking the breaths of life
as cellos trace the strings
I would listen to your hands
and feel everything

Happy Birthday, Andy!

Give me a reason
to jump head over heels
for you for you for you
under lullaby moons
and blacktop suns

Tell me of a season
to write songs on a windmill
for you for you for you
where locusts land on barbed wire
and lovers speak in tongues

Move me from where I
leap off a moving elevator
for you for you for you
where lucky charms spill on sidewalks
and gypsy guitarists spin in magazines

Paint me on a kite too high
beneath parasols on blue hills
for you for you for you
as fisherman's boots wash on shore
underneath lavender skies of rain

Sail me on a trendy moat
with the pretty smiles on surfboards
for you for you for you
where short stories are on the breeze
and harmonicas are hidden in shoes

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Oct 13, 1961 - June 11, 2002

Three distinct memories:

1. how in 1988 you used to break-and-enter into my teenager-angst-riddled room when I wasn't there to borrow cassettes; I loved the cute notes you'd leave, but speaking of things borrowed, I do wonder where my copy of "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil" went.

2. how in 1997 I rang you when I was in town and said, "Anyone for Tennis?" -- Game on! We went w/ an audience of our sister and Andy. I beat you! Just in case you forgot.

3. how in 2002 you were dying and you kept calling me back into your house. You would say "Lil' Bit" and I kept coming back more flooded than before. You knew who I was when you didn't know anyone else. I never thought that was the case.

Btw, thanks for giving me Elvis & the Beatles! I love you Bubbo!

Memorial Day

I light an eternal flame for our heroes, on this warrior knight. And for the spilt blood of patriotic defenders, martyred on foreign soil, someone has mourned for you & someone has penned a threnody worthy of your life. Bravo for the blind fight.

Firecracker gun

One for all and all for one

A band of brothers.

God's Roll Call

Good versus Evil
Confess seven deadly sins
Father forgive me.

Please Note: the following is only partially based on semi-truths, meaning that only the latent message is a whole truth; however, the above haiku might be more of a reflective self-portrait. I, availed in a sunrise of beatitude, have regard on high for The Holy Trinity and what it entails. The following, written in 1st person, is only a recondite commentary because I think, in general, priorities are on the rim these days. Moral of the story -- we get lost in ourselves and lose sight; we are malnourished in an abyss of our own making and often subscribe to putrescent views. I will use myself in this story in order to avoid nailing ascetic names to crosses. I suppose I'm a bit Voltairian -- freedom of religion and all that. My intention is in no way a blasphemous or sacrilegious one. I am not consigned to a nebulous existence and I realize a stand-in will not atone for my sin. Because I signed a sacred treaty and am fully aware that the sky was overrun w/ grace when a bird said, "Sin No More."

My sin is bigger than me like spires reaching into the empyrean. It wears me like haute couture. Flashing bulbs of hellfire parading runways. Swatches of Faustian bargains and temptation sewn in my mea culpa regret. A crowd, beginning a mass confiteor, sounding like ovation judgment, waits for my confession. Which is -- I'm not Baptist, or Catholic, or Seventh Day Aventist, or Jewish, but I've stopped attending the services of church, not that I believe less or sin more, okay, maybe the latter, because I have the traits of a sinner, but I would like to think nothing major. Even though my prayers are in arrears, I like to think of it as Sin in C Minor. I mean, there are degrees of sin, right? Like a hierarchy of sinfulness? Like a scale -- on the verge of naughty, truly bad, and then pure evil? And, yes, I have to confess that I've stopped praying in lieu of writing letters & thank you cards to God; it's more my forte. Like this...

Dear God...
I know you can hear me, w/ my words of infirmity, and all the rest that they are, when I'm selfishly wanting or needing or detouring, not praising or worshipping or spreading the greatness of you. I apologize from my knees, from a devil's anvil, thru a Prayer of the Heart; I don't mean to emasculate the divinity or the omniscience in any kind of irreverent flash, like when I use your name in vain (i.e. the twenty times I might say OMG in a day), or when I commit the same sin I asked forgiveness for the night before. But I know that you know me and my modus operandi, which is not adversarial nor malicious, and thank God for that. For that, I would hope things were automatically noted but unconditionally overlooked. And you know, even though I cannot attain a reciprocal state w/ you, I think you're the King of awesome beyond all measure of awesomeness. As always, I beg your mercy, my omnific Judge. Even though I give you the littlest of attention, I embrace my innate culpability. And although I suffer from an ungoverned view at times, I know there exits a harbinger of ultimate forgiveness.

Your mostly abiding & allegiant acolyte whose recompense is yours.

Kathryn's Confetti

For mom and what I miss:

1. her sense of humor and silliness

2. her generosity and pride

3. her visits to the beautician every Friday

4. her green eyes (like me)

5. her need for speed (like me)

6. her stubborn side - how you couldn't convince her of how the ocean tides worked

7. her long stride & how she had to drive the big car

8. how Conway Twitty said "hello Darlin'" to her

9. how she would send me stamps so I'd write

10. how she borrowed my '65 Mustang (no A/C) and lost an eyebrow

11. how she loved going barefooted no matter the weather

12. her beautiful fingernails tapping on piano keys

13. her exquisite sense of style

14. how she'd nick my cross necklace (which she still has)

15. how when I got engaged she wept the entire day

16. her survival instincts - Winston fags, ice cream w/ syrup, and Hershey's w/ almonds

....................................... a string of diamonds for you!!

I love you, my bestie!!

Cinco de Mayo

A Mexican feast
Queso and guacamole
Cinco de Mayo.

France would be closer
Had they won the Puebla War

Cinco de Mayo.

Early morning as the flamenco sun broke thru a Mexican periphery of night a young American journalist lifted her head from a sticky table, made of tequila and mosaic. She felt bestirred & pinpointed as she sat under a fan w/ three blades (of slow motion). She was in the gaze of dark eyes, which made her fear her own awkward curiosity. She looked around, saw a sign painted in unabridged letters that spelled out El Sol y La Luna, which she imagined, was often full of overwhelmed ashtrays and queues of loitering bottles. She guessed it echoed live music and good radio voices too. The roof soughed w/ soft rain and she felt a pang of indifferent sensibilities. She was not at all accreted to her surroundings. Normally she, who bloviated quite freely, was outgoing, outspoken, and otherworldly. Normally she praelected an air of lucid importance. Normally she, usually in expensive perfume & diamond anklets, had a soupcon of feminine suavity about her. But here she felt exiled, alone and discredited, on the nondescript precipice of being a random loser or an erratic clown. She had disported herself on the edge of a map and now longed for the rapport of home.

The cafe was small, dimly lit and claustrophobic; it held the past of familiar locals as they bustled toward a living. She felt out of place -- irrelevant, inarticulate, and irresponsible. She tried to act normal, but she, feeling drabby & frowzy, knew she wasn't. She felt insensate and bizarre. For she had a lingering confusion, a disagreeable recollection, that stemmed from last night's feckless inebriation. She was accosted by the night and it would be some time before she could grasp tangible memories. Trying to recall the shades of last night, she wondered if she had been indulgently expressive in a good way or imperceptibly disalarming in a bad way. She, feigning an air of confidence, tried to will the feeling of order in the universe instead of listening to the troubled shadows filling her sinking calm. She wished she had been emerging from an oneiric never-never land, but she wasn't. It was strangely real and precise, her immediacy of time and place. The liminal stanzas of time held her captive and she could only envy the day before yesterday because it shone of a tailor-made and duly appointed journalist who was sent to cover a story of quixotic celebration.

Two waitresses, or tutelary goddesses, began a sympathetic discourse about their timid little docile patron because they had witnessed the inclination of night where the young American imbibed freely of nocturnal drink. They joked about sobering her up w/ burnt milk & fish ice cream. And they jested how she kept ordering empanadas de armadillo instead of empanadas de amarillo and ice cream a la ice cream. They could tell she was an incongruous outsider, because she carried a calaca tote bag w/ the hang tags still intact. And they sensed that she must've felt diminished and vulnerable in this place. They weren't mistaken; she had an inexplicable urge to amend her impromptu acts of instant gratification -- she wanted to erase the uninhibited night that fed her regrets. But she was bespoked in a futile understanding of poignant impossibility. And she hoped it had been anticlimactic but knew otherwise. She really had worshipped the rush of spontaneous impulse, hadn't she?

"Last night she was loco," the taller one said.
"Everyone's loco at night, especially under inauspicious stars."
"But she was different."
"Why do you say so," asked the shorter one.
"Because it's in the crevasses of her soul; it's in her eyes, the beguiled nostalgia."

They wondered if they should clear off the sticky table where tequila and mosaic commingled or whether they should let her sit in a refuge of uneasiness. A trio of Mariachi wearing matching charro suits leaned in the corner; they summoned the ascending notes of the sun. And in the span of a post-haste second, like birds leaving the sizeable Tule tree, the two waitresses, one taller than the other, stood before the girl. She knew she'd have to use her rudimentary Spanish on the fly; she flushed w/ embarrassment.

"I don't remember," said the young American.
"You don't have to remember," the taller one said.
"Why not?"
"Because no one remembers."
"But I should remember."
"Only the night needs to remember."
"What does it remember?"
"It remembers Cinco de Mayo," said the shorter one.

With courtesy of blood in their veins, they made her feel sorted out to an even keel. She left them an allotment of coins, which sounded like jazz on a sweaty night, as they clinked on the table. And even though she had been reckless, she was changing, in the span of a posturing sunrise, and she felt reborn and surprisingly habituated to the woman she was a day or so ago. She was no longer unaffected and the suspiciousness was slipping away, like an unsigned essay to the sea. However, she asked, apprehensively, for directions from a man w/ a toothless grin. She hoped she wasn't being duped, but still opened the front door of the sun & moon and hoped, in closing it, her cauldron of secrets would be concealed forever. It wasn't the story she had set out to get, the absence of Cinco de Mayo, for her, but she would make do w/ the long strokes of a fountain pen and parchment. And in the meantime, she succumbed to an inevitable whim to check out the leftover sights while a symphony of locusts & castanets filled the background.

As a sightseeing disciple, she passed the guild of unambitious donkeys that drank from a fountain, passed a set of misogynistic hombres whistling as she walked by, and passed the sign that said one way home. But before she crossed the boundary of tomorrow, she rebounded to a site where there existed a miasma of tradition and ritual. This place of winding corners enveloped her; she became actuated by selfish motives. It was a surreal place untouched by Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. While snacking from a cup of mango, cactus fruit & pomegranate seeds, she skirted along the craft markets where tchotchkes were a plenty and began taking an oeuvre of photos. The inbetween of buildings showcased a sepia gallery of canopies & archways. Each was a lair of time gone by. As she walked, a beautiful Mexican beauty, w/ a floral head piece, ran past while wearing a cheerfully ruffled skirt trimmed w/ ribbons and folk dancing boots. Obviously she had been dancing into next week. She paused to breathe in the aromas of Mexico as the earth moved like braille beneath her sandals and she overhead a young child and his grandfather talking.

"Why do the Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo?"
"It belongs to them more than it does us nowadays," said the old man.
"But they already have everything," said the young child.
"Americans tend to hang on to icons & symbols."
"Can we go there?"
"When would you like to go?"
"In May," said the little boy.

She knew that the little boy, that little pistol of a boy, wanted to take Cinco de Mayo back from the Americans.

With that, the intrigued journalist boasted an informal smile, stowed away her camera and notebook and knew she was well versed and humbled. With great efficacy, her trip, her story, her unexpected journey hadn't backfired at all. Although she hadn't the means to give the little boy his precious holiday back, she went to the local orphanage to donate proceeds and art (which had no silence) from Mrs. McCullen's special auction. The gesture was like imprinted leaves on a desert floor and it gave her a sense of warmth and immutable pride. As she prepared to fly back home she touched a stone wall and felt the residue of a past that wasn't hers.

On the plane home she colored the story in the pages of her journal. And she started to remember the night of Cinco de Mayo. She began to eavesdrop on how she lost herself, how she was enchanted by the gaze and dancing pulse of a dark-haired, acrylic-eyed stranger. She had the soul of a bashful wind and he was full of brio and charm. He called the indiscreet moon and it waged its consent. He became her paramour of sensual intimation. And she inhaled his whisper like an unrequited flame inhales the darkness. She fantasized how he could've been a street-chalk-artist who may've wanted to take her home to outline her feet on his bare floors. She fantasized how he regaled her w/ hues of lilac wine and tantric tricks. He had the chivalrous presence to make even the butterflies nervous. Albeit a benign fantasy, she felt the urge to mimic his kiss on the back of her hand. Or maybe she just wanted to peruse the end of a cigarette and tilt a drink to her lips. She had certainly been, without a doubt, besotted by Cinco de Mayo!

Funkabilly

The Sound of Walls

Moonshiner

Happy Birthday to my dad who came way before:

-- rock 'n' roll
-- rice a roni
-- play doh
-- saran wrap
-- comic books
-- tea bags
-- M&M's
-- liquid paper
-- cotton blends
-- the hula hoop
-- pizza delivery
-- the Jeep
-- velcro
-- sawdust
-- Mr. Potato Head
-- reality TV (or just TV period)
-- fish sticks
-- scrabble
-- CB radios (dad's handle - moonshiner)
-- the magic 8 ball
-- telemarketers
-- drive-in movies
-- self-help books
-- chocolate chip cookies
-- and flashing turn signals

But came after:

-- banana splits
-- kites
-- sliced bread
-- the wheel
-- the Olympics
-- the telephone
-- the printing press
-- ice cream cones
-- planes w/ single wings
-- dictionaries
-- zippo lighters
-- shoelaces
-- AM radio
-- bologna
-- the circus

And who will always be a throwback to the Wild West:

Facial masterpiece
A wax-on wax-off affair
Handlebar moustache.

Root Beer

Sojourn on the wind
Chrome accoutrements a blur
Harley Davidson.

LSD (Light Show Delirium)

Off to work I went
Dude, I must've been trippin'
Kaleidoscope sunrise.

Btw, DO NOT take frenetic photos whilst driving & texting -- It's dangerous & none too bright!

Pencil Me In

Holland windmill chimes
Tulips bloom in lazy canals
Bicycle for two.

So -- one day I'll ask you and your girls -- I'll ask at the eleventh hour from inside a gabled canal house, I'll ask extempore from my swinging pleas, I'll ask from sitting trees, I'll ask under alluvial suns and before consenting gods, I'll ask for a ready yes! Let's go dutch, to Holland under Baroque skies, to ride bicycles w/ silver carillons and criss-crossed baskets, in and around the quay. Straw baskets holding Wagenaar's motifs and Delftware tiles. We'll go to outdoor cheese markets and windmill gardens. And we'll eat behind cul-de-sac windows and we'll play w/ our diamonds as we talk subliterate-ly about the nuances of Adriaen Coorte's stillness at the Rijksmuseum. We'll pick tulips from our hot chocolate cups and drop them from the balconies of brown cafes. Or we could find a mash pot or waffles at the Cafe Americain. Or chocolate sprinkles on toast, if you delight. But we'd have to insist on wooden bowls and Vermeer's light.

And one day you may actually consider it. Come on, you can't deprive me of replacing my cracked tile, the one I dropped inside a canary yellow clog. Winter break, one can skate on the frozen avenues or Summer break, one can smell arrays of flowers while wearing blindfolds. I could simply follow you and the girls, while documenting on posterity's arm. I'll stall the movement of a golden morning while you circle yes or no.

Impossibly Fluffy

For my Southern Crush

Love is made of fluff

Aery marshmallow bouquet

A sweet pantomime.

x0x0

Rabbit Crossing

Once upon an epoch, definitely A.D., there was a white bunny on the holey road to Damascus, where the ultimate profit of sin was absolution. He was carrying a sinner's backpack, which carried an offering of empty light. Along the road he came upon brightly colored yet slightly antiqued plastic eggs. Each egg he found was filled w/ sins, approximately seven to be precise. He gathered all the eggs and it made the rucksack heavy and he pulled & pushed it slowly along -- a trail of his sinner's journey and it made him tired and weak and dehydrated and void. At a fork on the road he saw, like a resurrected mirage, a black hole or a hill.

Although he was exhausted beyond comprehensible repair he chose the hill of tranquil clarity. He dragged his transgressing sins to the height of the hill and fell atop them, w/ his arms outstretched like a veritable cross; his sins sounded like damnable thunder. From the outer pocket of his rucksack he pulled out a red & white crocheted cross from his scripture. He covered his assenting eyes w/ his guilty ears and prayed a sinner's prayer. He felt the manumitting hand of God's will pierce thru his confessor's hands, which felt like an immersion of his repentant's soul in a river of clear water till it stained. He unzipped his bag, w/ a devout acquiescence and the contents rose thru a breath of forgiving air and the empty light shot to the exalted heavens and he was uplifted to a rejoicing that only an Easter bunny could feel.

*My Cross to Bear*

Can't carry my cross
To the end of the driveway
It's too damn heavy.

I was brought to life w/ a sinner's breath
and I will die begging a sinner's forgiveness
for Jesus came to my sinner's threshold
and I, unworthy, anointed his savior's feet
and I pushed my sinner's thorns toward salvation
on his take-away-my-suffering's brow, and yet still
he loves me; I wasn't meant to suffer a sinner's banquet
and on the day of truth I shall drink his mercy he told me so

Sly Little Devil

Here's the thing -- I'm engaged in blog tag w/ a friend of mine. Today she posted a poetric haiku of mine and name-dropped me on her blog. At first I thought she was Satan incarnate, but I had to extol the truth, which is, I had this stupid crescent moon grin affixed to my in-awe-of-her mug; I even became uncharacteristically speechless. However, some would say Bravo for eliciting that kind of reaction from me. I had to thank her, my artistically fiendish sovereign, because honor permeated beyond measure, but I would've preferred if she deferred from referring to me as my real name and, instead, tag me as So 'n' So & my blog as Such 'n' Such in the future.

The following is a stroke of artistic genius from my friend Goldilocks's blog. Please see her link ("buy her art," says Miss Subliminal) to the right of this page. Please note: the art masterpiece shown here is the exclusive copyright of Kathy McCullen (aka Goldilocks). If you damn steal it, you'll be damned. Sorry, I don't mean to threaten bodily harm or voodoo hexes. I'm just saying.

Moondance 16 X 24 Mixed media on canvas. SOLD
____________________________________________________

Now a score of her blog groupies may come over for a sit-in so I need to tidy (with a pretentious broom) my blog cubbyhole. Or, out of slight fear, I might even be compelled to defenestrate it as it humbly reclines in a bay window.

Husband's Day

Love
carved of ocean stone
on a baker's block
in a florist's home
awaiting delivery
in a musician's case
to lovers of wild leisure
who refuse to dance alone

Three Tenors of Spring

I must've loved you that first minute
w/ those yellow tulips in my lap
when we talked in circles & polka dots
just so we could prolong the date

Daylight Savings

I listen repetitiously to the twelve strokes of midnight, far and near, they sing. And while counting back the twelve strokes, I lose myself in tomorrow's concave footsteps. Thus, before me, a de novo serenade of countless moons and stars and suns, all conspiring w/ the twelve strokes, here and there, to shepherd me like far-sighted angels, w/ whom, will allay me for everlasting salvation.

So I won't anymore borrow your time

on sunshine days and sunless nights

for at the stroke of midnight's severance

I, a docent wanderer, will listen to jazz

in an underground of my own nirvana

Graffiti Fiend

Even though the scenery seemed aristocratic, I was on a characteristically dilapidated kind of train, a really crummy (Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your Fears) kind of train, not entirely a spic-n-span kind of train, not the Orient Express kind of train, from Italy to Rome, sorry, rather, from Rome to Venice, or visa versa. And I remember two things distinctly that referenced that hovering day of highbrow summer: a. abandoned graffiti and b. poised rainbow flags hanging from all the inundated balconies. I was entirely clever in noticing. I thought, "Wow, they really embrace their gay community here." And then I found out about the rally. And thought, "Wow, they really embrace their gay community here." I was so overjoyed that their minds weren't vitiated by narrow-minded prejudice or thinly-veiled intolerance. I had faith that hope hadn't torn from its seams.

Turns out that gay pride was thwarted by peace; the rainbow flags and banners that said "Pace" were really the doodied-up decorations for a perfectly parfit demonstration of peace. Hip hip hooray for peaceniks in tie-dye, but I was ultimately disappointed that we couldn't all be gay as pink ink. Anyway, after my gelato pick-me-up, which left me blithe in spirit, I was left marveling at the graffiti art, while sprightly skipping thru the streets, feeling jocular in rainbow toe-socks. You know, even under a nervous rain, not everyone can be a graffiti artist. I mean, it takes inventive lettering and something to say, more than a baseless tarradiddle. Maybe I'll drive up to Canada and graffiti something colorfully keen in the snow, nothing marred by verbosity, but rather, a one-word stream-of-consciousness catch-my-drift quip, from a sky-scraping ski lift.

If given the opportunity to aim a Krylon can, w/out arresting consequences, what would your bubble-letter byword be and what site would you choose?

Billet-doux

Dear Past Love --

This day, you came to my house after school. I don't remember what we did (probably made-out to a heavy-petting motor ballad) or if we said anything different or out of the ordinary. I know that I had to have smiled at you when you kissed me goodbye and I know that I handed you the sun to keep until the next day. But you went w/ my sun and it shattered into a million glistening shards of golden resin on the silver rails of the Lauderdale County train tracks. "Journey's end in lovers meeting" is the title of that percipient day, where the day lost its sunshiny demeanor to a clamoring void. That day we sort of became undone, our serendipity, like a lovelorn leaf ripped of a tree. And it left me feeling unseated on my knees after a twelve-paced duel. Since you've been gone, I haven't held my breath, but I've felt the ligature of outstretched shadows, where headstones lived dark, like haunting monasteries on the walls.

I can't begin to tell you why you were here or what your legacy is. I could selfishly say you were here, not to touch the earth but to touch me, that you must've been born for me, that you were made for me. But that would be me falsifying some bigger truth I'm sure, bearing false witness to your memory. I could tell you that I've changed for the better, that it propelled me into some cathartic change, that I grew from your absence. You'd have to ask for a show of miscellaneous hands there. But I can affirm and tell you that I was suffused in melancholic alibis and I wrote things of earnest despair for a while, because my self-induced perdition was persistent, in the amplified mourning or at the tumultuous end of night, vivified in about seventeen death poems a day I would guess, consumed by ineffable mannerisms of sadness. And I can tell you that my reliquary was filled w/ rueful darkness. Like this:

From darkness to darkness
my voice echoes
in the emptiness
trying to find its way

From world to world
my voice cries
for life
w/ death
lurking to prey

From light to light
my voice chants
with fear
hoping darkness
leaves me

From east to west
my voice travels
in many directions
hoping to be found

From life to death
my voice reigns confusion
wondering
which is better

From me to you
my voice falls silent
again
(1989)

Over time, in a deserted mirror, I found me, under a moonlit charade. And I suppose some age-old adage applied because I learned to not ignore love and life, because even the vulnerable clouds became studded w/ jewels. I learned to embrace it daringly and to stand in its crossfire because it was always in my face and I found myself good at it. Wholly and effortlessly. Not tramp-like, not easy, not immature-like, not free to everyone but without erect walls and without hesitation. I stopped dwelling in the habit of losing people and I stopped passing out untruthful gambits that denied love's existence. I stopped visiting the orchard of dancing silhouettes.

But I still like to be alone because the quiet swales I swim in enhance my madcap escape to a copse of dreamy isolation, where the leaden silence is instilled and where my youthful regrets w/ you probably equal that of every other flower petal pulled. I wish I had said something different that day, something more or real or knowing or believable. But if it's all the same, as poignant as I can be now, I suppose you knew I loved you innocently. First & forever. And, by the wave of God's whisper, I suppose you know I miss you.
m.