A COLD FALL DAY AT THE LAKE WITHOUT MY GLOVES

The grey spectrum sky is traced with jet-lines,

giving backdrop to a lone mallard

persistently fighting the fall breeze

that dances patterns along the lake’s surface.

In the distance, car traffic is reduced to ants,

clogging the street’s arteries to their own demise

of fuming faces, flipping fingers, and honking horns.

A fading forest rises from the opposite shoreline,

shedding leaves eagerly in an assumed quest

to resemble the three stoic towers

which elevate equilaterally to catch and release

radio tunes and broadcast news buffoons.

Sparse sunrays are a welcome sight,

which are violently stripped of their warmth

by the blasphemous breeze that has defeated

the lone mallard, the jet-lines, and me.

ART OPENING WITH PIGEONS

artwork by: NTG

My hats’ brim, tipped to its’ tightest angle,

is no match for the crowds’ tide,

waxing encroachment into my social hideaway. 

This sea of gab-noised stranger friends

threatens to engulf me,

so I must tread diligently.

I feel one with the caged pigeons

pictured on the wall in front of me,

longing to fly free, feathers to the wind.

I navigate anxiously through this Sargasso Sea of souls,

with waves of foreign personalities

grating across my barnacled stern,

coercing me from my escape. 

The sweet smell of city-street

guides me beyond the threshold

of my personal shackles

that tether me to this awkward situation.

As I step to freedom,

my emptied space quickly fills in,

instantly erasing me from its communal memory. 

My evasion fades towards excursion  

as I sink over the horizon,

like the sun escapes into the West.

Swiftly, I stoop to recover a loose pigeon feather,

placing it in my cap in honor of fellow comrades flying free,

far from the clutches of the swallowing sea.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

As the clouds drifted slowly in paths opposing,
the marshy reeds revealed you to me.  
Your slow cautious crawl, belly to the ground,
one with the earth, you were not to be seen.  
Thunder suddenly delivers a beastly shape.  
The flying shag, snout, and claw, soaked you in fear, 
transforming your cloaked stealth to a frenzied flight. 
As the bellowing beast spits and growls below, 
you regroup in your haven. 
 When snout, shag, and claw, becomes bored and distracted, 
you'll be free to slink again. 
Although, remain steadfast my friend, 
for when the thunder rolls, 
somewhere the lightning has struck

SUNSET OF CHILD

Sunshine shimmering, gold and glistening

Eagered listening, the twilight is nigh.

Warm whitened rays fade into haze,

The break of the waves, memories well in the eyes.

Breeze blows air, ruffled blond hair,

No longer without a care, the inner-child cries.

Stone scattered ground, salty sea-smells abound

Emotionally drowned, the silly boy dies.

Feeling far older, knuckles grow colder,

No longer bolder, let the hardened man arise.

MACHINES AND DREAMS

google image composite

As dusk dawns upon my conscience in true tsunami form,

wrought iron pikes persist like metallic maniacs,

searing hot as they penetrate my brain.
A glowing golden illumination grows.

White hot heat breathes life into red hot thoughts,

heavy eyelids melt into a blanket of darkness

Gently driving away the deaths of the day.
Slipping in between  realities, automation seizes me.
Blood turns to steam, whistling condensation at every orifice.
Hydraulic hoses align nearby my spine,

regulating proper fluids to the rhythm of the aortic chamber.
Drifting instinctively into a robotic state,
my half consciousness contemplates the
relationships between a mechanical dream
and the ascension of the Midwestern fiend.

Metallic moments seize like a disease,

warping like waves, convulsive groans last for days.

As corrosive components overtake my galvanization,

plasma progressively oozes throughout existence,
conveying toxic impurities towards  inner oblivion,
towards electric death by reflection… they shall go.
Blood grown bones, convert to iron honeycombs
wrapped in wire, humming with defiant overtones.
As steel encircles, I free fall into robotic rigidity,
dreaming and slithering into magnetic mysteries.
Computers create code controls to carry on my continuity,
while my spirit escapes the internments of this prison,
temporarily touching the lights of truthful reality,
low double D-cells recharge in a sulfuric hell.

The space between hunter and hunted

Today, I came into your home,
enduring brush, bush, and twig terrain,
to stumble upon your earthen front door.  
I arrived uninvited, but how could I have been invited?  
You did not fathom my existence until this day. 

One step through you wide open front doors
and your residence splayed itself out in front of me.
It was laid out much like an urban studio flat,
with each room melting into the next. 
Your home is infinitely bigger, yet not big enough.

 I feel electric tension spike when we first engage one another. 

Suddenly, the stench of anger, fear, and sorrow
carries itself upon the breeze between you and I.  
Impending doom divides us instantly,
from perfect strangers, to the intimate closeness
of the hunter and the hunted.

With crosshairs sweeping towards you,
I pray you can sense my respect and thankfulness
for your life that I am about to take.  
As physics and mechanics collide,
thunder rips the air between us,
hurtling death in the form of a single lead slug.  
The nanoseconds pass like split seconds
and the split seconds play out
like an overcast October sky.

As the gun smoke clouds my vision,
I sort of hope you escaped unscathed,
without the taint of malice or trauma.  
Although when the smoke clears,
there you lie, quickly dying as I had intended.

            
I come in close enough to share the same air
that fills your last breath to pay my respects.  
You have passed into forever sleep.
“Thank you”, I whisper,
laying my palm upon your peaceful face,
Quietly closing the space between the hunter and the hunted.

At this time of morning

Forgetting about the increasing pain,

I get outta bed.

Bent like a nail

I fumble clumsily towards the door.

Knives in my eyes at the first light.

Wincing in a half-lidded stare,

I take a good look at myself.

When you feel like thirty-tree cents,

You usually look like it too...

At this time of morning

Envy replaces the cavity

That once held my soul

For it stayed in the bedroom

Still slumbering alongside my girl

cause I wont be using it today.

Unsteadily, I clothe myself,

Wavering to and fro ungracefully

settling upon the nearest wall

As my leg slides into grungy gear.

The teevee recites

Carbon copies of usual news

Bleakness and corruption,

Death and destruction.

My morning peaks

With a searing hot toaster pastry,

A moment of magic that echoes

Throughout my commute.

Karaoke keeps me sane

at 70 miles per hour,

My cracking voice sings

the wrong words in the wrong key.

As I force my eyes back open

From each and every blink,

Profanities attach themselves

To every vehicle traveling

At or below the speed limit.

When I reach my fill in the blank job,

I bee-line to the caffeine station

Noticing nothing new

I await the whistle

To put in my eight.

ON THE INTERSTATE

google image composite

On the interstate

I cannot help but feel

A horrible insignificance

One ant in this army of humanity

Just another bump

Protruding from the iron earth

Towards the hydrogen sun

Yet, inside me

There exists another universe

As complete as the one I perceive now,

Making me ponder if this infinite microcosm

Is merely contained

In a single teardrop from god's eye.

YOU AND YOUR SMART KID

photo: Katie Copeland

I am steeped in speed,

Passing you is my urgent desire.

The floorboards groan with pain

As obsession possesses me.

Synapses sparkle and ingnite,

Shooting electrical messages like bottle rockets,

Wildly from brainstem to the bottom of my boot.

In an unorganized panic of evacuation

My foot presses down ever so powerfully.

Squeezing that last drop of acceleration

Out of my mid-sized sedan which

Screams for mercy until I release fifth gear,

Converting its cries to a confident hum of liberation.

As technology and anger fuel my motion

I read your bumper stickers

With tooth gnashed, and knuckles blast

I have become the superflash.

High speed particles create starlines

As I overtake you and your machine

And I cannot help but wonder

How many times your honor student

Got beat up today.

63,000

photo: Katie Copeland

A passing glance brought me to my odometer

Finding it upon the threshold of sixty-three thousand

There’s something fresh about seeing such a well rounded number.

How can a zero add so much, when really, zero is nothing?

As sixty-two nine-ninety-nine becomes stale with distance,

I found myself watching the panel like a television screen

The four years of dreams, agonies, and ambitions

Tick with each mile gone passed.

Without even heeding the road ahead,

I continued to stare,

For I know this road well.

Roughly forty thousand of these miles

Have committed this path to memory.

Seems a shame to put so many miles on such a small road,

When so many others are left un-traveled.

With no analog tenth-miles to give pace,

The digital display leaves me anxious....

When will it turn, when will I turn?

As the numbers transform instantly before me,

I enjoy the aesthetics and even-ness,

Of the number 63,000

Feels like a new beginning, a new start....

I return my eyes to the road,

Already knowing my position upon it.

I hope the next sixty-three are enough

To get me out of this ten mile town.