Brass Tax

Hey you,
yeah you with the wall.
I just wanna say how lucky I feel
that, through a combination of serendipity and dorky charm,
I merited a pass throught he brass barrier.
Unwittingly, I entered the company
of a being of immense depth
and range,
capable of profound
tenderness and stony resolve.
Existing as a series of wonderful contrasts between
the adorable and the pugnacious
the playful and the strictly business
flippant and caring
coarse and subtle
extroverted and introspecting --
guarded --
vulnerable.
Hey you -- yeah you with the wall
yeah you with the grin that says more than most people
you with the eyes

you -- yeah you with the mind,
I think I can see you  

Your Grave

I saw your grave today.
Your headstone is a wistfully beautiful tree stump
carved from marble ages ago.
It was once white, dappled with subtle grays in its metamorphic bark,
but the years have spray-coated it in a layer of black,
casting shadows over each ridge, groove, and notch in the surface,
making it seem even more alive.
On the smooth, angled plane that is its top,
two things are carved in relief,
mid-stump – an oak leaf, with two acorns,
and along the curved edge of the cut surface, the words
“My husband”.
I saw your grave today, and assumed that the stump was
a metaphor for your death – cut down in your prime.
At first I was sad, mourned the loss of a man,
but then my mind shifted to the top of this stone stump.
If it is indeed the base of tree, then I can only imagine how glorious a tree it was.
Given the size of the stone, it wasn't an enormous tree,
but a strong, middle-aged stone tree
with many sturdy branches.
This solid marble oak must've stretched twenty-five feet high.
From each well-carved limb
would hang twigs of granite, leaves of mica, and obsidian acorns
all moving and shimmering in the sun and wind
in completely different and equally beautiful ways.
Each fall it would shed treasures worthy of any rock collection.
I picked up a piece of muddy calcite a couple feet away
and set it next to your grave out of respect.
Respect for what a sight that tree must've been.      

Poets Picnic

Poets Picnic

                                                          Two poets walk

 out to the woods as the sun sets                                           

                                                                                    and clouds roll in with warm gusts of spring wind

                                                            two poets talk

about how the air is swollen with the

                                                                                    scent of an incoming storm and how the

atmosphere is one of pure, stark,
natural potential and how

                                                                                    they could both go for some real lightning.

                                                Indulge them – they're poets.

Walking and talking,
one poet hands the other some
Swedish Fish and asks how he feels about 

peanuts and Twix respectively.

                                                                                    They continue talk-walking

 eating candy and philosophizing.

                                                                                    As they chew on

Red-40,

                                                                                    Gelatin, and

 High Fructose Corn Syrup

                                                                                     their meandering stroll asks the world a question,

                                              “What does a poet consume?”

                                                                                    What does a poet consume?

The poets, aware or not, begin answering.

                                                                                    A poet consumes the sound
                                                                                    of wind moving thousands of leaves,

the smell of spring in muddy woodland paths

                                                                                    and turbulent March air,

the cooling warm of southern wind

                                                                                    smoke from smoldering tinder

light filtering through pines

                                                                                    the bass-boom of thunder

the greyscale of a post-sunset forest

                                                                                    places

sights

                                                                                    stories

memories

                                                                                    words

music

                                                                                    emotions

thoughts

                                                                  Twix.

Escape

It was hot

it was confusing

it was safety-danger and flawless-fucked

it was love in some form.

But

We used each other to forget, simultaneously experiencing and creating escapist fantasy.

Together we re-wrote and read New Tolkien among clasped fingers,

between urgent lips, and on soft earlobes.

I traced Escher's spirals on your shoulder-blades and you saw them in my uncut hair.

Our perspectives were warped and novel,

taking twisted cues from del Toro in the films we projected behind dilated pupils.

Emulating Ailey we danced – in walking, talking, sex, & sleeping.

As with a good book series, we'd lose ourselves in each evolving iteration, consuming the fantastic ravenously with no thought to that final phrase.