An owl sitting on our house woke me this morning with her never ending question I tried to mutter something from underneath the pillow that kept me horizontal longer than usual but I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to know i don’t have a clue which room, with what or whether it was a colonel or peacock shaking and rattling looking for a mate I still remember our first date coffee cigarettes and tempted fate leaving me home alone to figure eight trace the lines in my mind of whether i’ll find someone who can help rewind and erase this place i’ve been trapped and kept 

it’s unnecessary i now see with my exes in Tennessee to rid of that past i long to be next to the tree which once lived inside of me before that axe of doubt hacked its way through my flesh house with reckless policies and shredding words of yesterday i speak and not a reward could be found if you ask me what the insides look like, it’s not you 

rest assured it’s the stare i give to let you know i’m hollowed out from every tire track on far away roads where lonely kids skid out to show they exist that’s their hand in the cave and i lost my limbs, no fingers to point it must be me. 

“And he will raise you up” was the start of a song from a place i don’t visit anymore

it became more of a store and some misgivings are hard to ignore when they strip away what could have been more all wrapped up in passed hats and lore. motionless beings now left on the floor clambering for the next door that they can walk through and find

another empty room

for what?

but that’s not what this is about

as i sit with my doubt

can’t even feel my fear fast enough to muster a shout as i know how to jump back from the field to the path a whisked away summer day when that wasn’t the problem

i keep pointing out what isn’t and need to start well, with what i need 

and that’s a positive statement a motion to show that this isn’t it now. it’s not my final curtsy and bow i’m not giving in today even as i look at you stammered lip, faced drench i stay emotionless using tools that someone left me and now i lay having to realize the long game 

the distant result 

that won’t come if i die today 

and then what

those eagle wings were lies and i’m left in the stench on this bench realizing he doesn’t have arms.

wandering into the forest floor closing the sunrise a last horrifying door that left in store a song and lore i wish you were still hear to carry the umbrella when clouds shift right a wishful beginning to finding new sight and good night came easy to your lips when the door locked where was it you went with your mummified flock to forget the room where we breathed in rhythm i never touched him that’s all you say as i quiver and shake without understanding you were making the same mistake connected by fate years apart on a spinning wheel is where we start

scenes I replay over and over shattering my ability to be me 

the me you want to see 

in times when tripping over my own feet is a relief

i’m the thief

wishing i could end this disbelief 

i’d rather take quick hit grief instead of this rubble with me underneath 

i gasp and struggle against broken rocks the climbing up 

the deafening ticks and tocks and tocks and ticks and ticks with clicks and clocks and kicks and all this pushing and pulling 

the wiggle without giggle 

astonished that i can still speak to you on the other side 

panic 

i seek to be trapped and know no comfort these words delivering every expected blow come to my side now 

leave them

the cranky bend of thoughts against awareness

i’m in control 

Stand there say something shift your feet and give me my thing this is not about you i need a figure eight new i need a streaming red sky sell me my next goodbye and tell me i’m not that guy while we ride a new tide to the sunspecks i see let us start to give a fuck if there is ever a better time those words hung in the air you walking to the place where i’m not scared a corner in my mind will you let me be blind building foundations for future destructions somebody help they forgot the instructions it’s now a torture chamber broken barrels that held our goodbye. it’s trite phrases and frayed shoelaces that keep my head down when going through these phases greeting card sentiments i could rehearse them in tenements alone a cost with you thinking i care banging my head on every adjective stare and knowing i’m giving in to this last ditched effort to hear your frost fueled tongue the throat squeeze barely breathing bash to my right eye that tells me you’re there it’s those times i’m alive and you now sway uneasily behind me. i see you in the shattered glass mirror leaning against the wall. you’re still here.

Spider webs gathered in the corner while muffins baked in the oven his raised first seemed to bother mom she almost turned him off, if it wasn’t for the rest of them shuffled in line and doing their jobs. so she thought, she had never been caught and dragged censored and tagged. neither had i. i saw that fist raised like fire fury and popped my little one up to join the roar of people who know the power is in their hands it shouldn’t threaten you it falls into your plan of sorting and distorting common causes when raised up we are all pushing play and getting off our pauses to rage against the lying of the right and stand up to the laying on the left capitulation no more i walk in the door thunder rain to the shore and back east again ping pong the nation it’s played on every station don’t call on me that’s not what i want to make you look inside your own head while typing keys in bed and feel anxiety about pushing send.

fly fixtures flutter with finesse as flutes play bach and i sink in the mist, a haze set dawn with no clothes and a song wishing there was a place i could stare long and lose myself in the taste of your breath, its nothingness. and when you say the thinking is done could my son listen and play along to forgotten tools of yesterday’s waltz a place I know is generations of fault.

i smelled it and brought myself back to treasure chest wishes, responsibilities and dishes a torture chamber he made to reclaim shame and the path he wore to find you there knowing you’re anxiety would only bare a slip in your armor, a chink, a chance, to slice you open, leave you once more, that’s romance. a sacrifice, your death, while violins play. it wasn’t scary. you smiled the whole time. cease to exist to understand this rhyme. i decided to stop observing that blade of grass, climbed a tree, fell asleep fast to wake underneath without reason or care this is for me. shaded by the shadows of you all hanging above the ones who make the masks i’ve come to rely on facades in time don’t peal them off pile them i won, when the mount is complete, i’ll be gone.

It’s easy, she said as her smile stretched to uncomfortable lengths that had me questioning how she found strength, the way she ran her hand through her cluttered hair and chit chit chattered her teeth, a blanket eyed stare. this all disturbed my senses as she swiveled and got up. I couldn’t muster the energy anymore, our time to stretch into one another’s canvass of creation was covered and crossed out, the star eyed concoction we create to get through this cycle the spinning through fractal elements and never ending algebraic sequences, now only doubt. i wasn’t taught this in school, yet the spool was sent spinning when you stepped off that stool and walked down our aisle. we have permission to not have to explain this smile and if you come back this way would you let me in to tempt from within, energy tapping is never a sin.

Tanned hide you better crawl inside and catch every tear cried by drawn scarecrows hustling to work it’s the fields they rescue from buzzards berserk with dried out tongues and torch touching finger tips i thought i lost you inside our blood lust drips that led to the crazed cave where lizards lay i stir with thoughts of jumping out to say i’ll ravage your senses and sensor our dreams hopping cloud high to visit today and you saw me side eye while being whisked away signs that we can’t meet, a plastic statue with a sinister smile is what you become with cautious denial a plum stuck thumb we know existence and deny the trial we’re all guilty traveling by knowing the number to dial. 

Geese honking hailing the sun pulling out their northern forces another summer undone and while we rest in this home tethered by glue i wish for nothing more than another moment to share the sports page, comics and chew on the crossword i miss willis and bonnie sometimes mary lou it was those sweat filled nights no air conditioning generation watching the high v standing in ovation my stedia shoes stunk i had to toss them outside little did i know that’s where your bags would reside as then confusion sunk in on a weatherless fall day it was wishful thinking we’d be ok. at least for the moment. and as a youth i always wondered if i were gay, that’s what sensitive people had in their way instead of embracing the beauty of where i lay when alone in that manger filled with hay.
#2

leave that limp green hanging smile for someone else it doesn’t matter how you embrace shattered thoughts that soar from my mouth as geese fly south honking and shitting on my manicured lawn thinking and blinking they belong they’re transient beings and need to find a home 

they better leave me alone

they’re geese you say

i don’t think that matters