Saturday, March 23, 2013

Two Men Sharing a Truck Ride and a Photograph



Blue steel and yellowed paper
Wrinkled skin and settled thoughts
Their moment captured by me
Like the one before them so
They talk of the time in front of them
Back before the road they drove on
Static print and leather seats
Coffee breath and untrimmed whiskers
The one tells the other about her
And both men laugh and smile at youth
Inside perhaps they cry for longing of theirs
But today they just simply ride and share

Birthdays Are For Fools



Blow out your candles, Blow out your cake
Open all your gifts, Unwrap all your things
No time to waste, Few moments left to tick
Every year the same, What a waste of haste
Hurry to your grave, Other candles need space
Don’t forget to write, Don’t omit your name
Counting age is grand, Who speaks such lies
Forgetting to mark time, Your only saving grace
Live without a clock, Live for all your youth
If someone brings a cake, Sing to them instead
Fools celebrate age, Fools and all their “friends”

Unspoken Promises on a Back End Street


Waving from the street, her eyes met his


Her succulent youth swung devils overhead
His mind’s rage captured them in his snare

The eyes of a woman child promised love
While the pupils of a man disguised his age

She had yet to find a reason or road to travel
The man’s road though, It was already long

What she could give him would not wash time
And what he held for her could not buy her heart

Still her eyes promised him light from the dark
His own promised but warm sheets and sin

She looked at him fondly as a fawn to a crop
He gazed back, a man child in flames full ablaze

They knew, standing there at the end of spring
They were looking for the first and last time

He wanted to show her that more lied inside him
Not only the churning of his raw guttural song

So say she believed him, for she did extend a wave
Maybe he believed himself, If time granted rescind

An old woman will tell her grandkids about that day
While the aging man takes his last breathe miles away

Largely forgotten by the clock, his stare and her eyes

Friday, March 22, 2013

Notebooks and Lies

Such purple skies tell so much about mood
Yet thunder neither dwarfs nor dulls a memory
And rainy days don't always clean the walk
For the traveler's footsteps are often heavy
His baggage doesn't fit in the terminal of ports
But such cloudy days are well soiled for thinking
About gardens not planted before the coming storm
Suppose proverbial tales tell a story long and true
And perhaps your own rain drippings do too

What secrets do soggy boxes hold in wet paper
The yellow edges of some other dream or two
Sifting through contents like a befuddled child
Wondering about things a dreamer only understands
People are quick to speak about reality and logic
But their waning imagination seems to sell them short
No amount of logic, reason, or money has cured them
And their heartbeats don't always count for being alive
Just like spring plants set in autumn will not thrive

Coming again to this place so full of blistering rain
I did not expect you, and then only silence ensued
Your voice, must have been lost in yonder clouds or so
For no strength was left inside it to break any chords
Tired I supposed as many of us do along our path or trail
Looking for reality and finding that it left along with yesterday
Its why I come here I suppose if I were asked to say
There's nothing like the wind's wrath  to bring comfort to pain
Nor can anyone see if you would weep in the falling rain

Many oceans have surely rose with the ongoing rains of girth
Though rafts fortified on dreams rise above the stormy front
The man seated there with his bottle of hope is scared to sink
Though he needn't worry if losing only counts in the the end
Being somewhere in the middle and not seeing the road is rough
Or comforting, depending on the fellow's level of madnesss
He writes his silly songs wondering about places like Baltimore
Homeless men there covered with papers don't mind the rain tide
For it hasn't stopped falling since the days of Bonnie and Clyde