the words are mine,
you cannot have them
names
numbers
addresses
you cannot own my air
so take me to court
own my face
my arms
my feet
throw the book at me
invade my sacred space
with your
relentless
struggle
although my mind
is locked in a prison
that is like solitary confinement
in a population of trouble
the language is mine
inside a skull
and data will fly free
even if the hardware
is
smashed
what is it, exactly?
tell us.
write it down in a list.
WHO?
Who asked you to do that?
Are you saying *I* did?
What do you
mean
by THAT?
What
do you do?
well
everyone
does that
what else can you do
what are you doing
who told you to?
who wants you?
who even cares?
blah
blah
blah
(nobody says that!)
(tell us……
….who
said it.
)
and
what?
uh.
WHY are you…
exactly?
all of a sudden
I saw my hands were old.
they’d aged three decades in as many months
i know how much a ferryman should cost.
(enough to know how much, he still expected…
lots)
a universe of starry skin cells
all interconnected
time stretched out like a stranger …
all of a sudden
my soul felt cold.
I’d forgotten that I had a soul.
They told me such was not
my right to stretch and hold
my hands lacked lines once, for a while
the body underneath them
honey over polished stone
time stopped!
…all a sudden
and it was as if your arms
were made of gold.
******************
ps. THIS is a good old entry and another fitting poem for now. 
so this is it
last straw
rock bottom
sweet oily nadir
the last best stand of slander
and nothing more to fear
my ears burned all the
scraping way
down
slippery dark
dissatisfied walls
responded happily
to odd routines
of poky
little birdcalls
not aware was I
the last rites were to be
a burial alive!
but get this, ducky,
phoenixes have wings!
-and I have come too far
to fall
and Un-Survive
the two women laughed
at muddy shoes
repeatedly
clomp-clomping
on a tiny sodden shoot
that had poked through the
Most Important Sidewalk
in the city.
It was a sidewalk
that their husbands walked
a place where everybody
paid their dues
and everybody talked
and made transactions…
this cafe
in the city
“they cannot keep those weeds from growing in!”
remarked the banker’s wife,
as though she found it funny…
and yes, she was quite right
for green would fall to grey
but in time – soon enough! -
another shoot would crack the slab
meant to thwart the grasses’
tiny might
- its little right
of nothing more to grow
toward the light
to freely reach toward the sun
and stretch out
just where it liked.
“i hate the swimming pool,” you say
disdainfully to me
as I’m sitting on the front porch swing,
thinking casually all my random thoughts
…so I, surprised, pull from my time
to validate your entry
to my peace of mind.
i notice, then, that you are wearing
Swimming Trunks!
i open up my yap
to comment to this fact …
but pause …
(We know how You get
concerning
Things Like That! -)
so I
projected what you’d say
by remembering our past
like when you’d call a toad a road
or … label a spade a jack
or say Nobody Died
when all the flags fly at half mast.
Instead
(triumphant at my foresight),
I say,
“perhaps…don’t go in swimming!”
I settle back…so satisfied…
You’re indignant.
You ignore my carefully thought out suggestion.
(…usually you DO respond to Everything I say………..)
The front porch is a prison.
I walk to clear my mind.
…alone though all the garden
remembering greener times
Then I hear some revelry
and see through eyes (deceiving me?)
a pair of carefree …Business Trunks
-cavorting through a Concrete Sea.
(with Mermaids in Attendance).
(i wondered why I bothered, once again to split the difference)
You look at me like chocolate cake
You say “come in! the water’s fine!”
I say, “no thanks. My ship awaits.
The wormhole closes half-past-nine…”
**************************************
I put this photo in because I am squinkily looking askance at something (yes, I had to spell check that. don’t judge). Also, I have lost my Red Glasses, so hopefully if I post something with them on that is putting out into the Universe and the Lost Item-Finder Goblins that I would like them Relocated Post-Haste-o.
in a blue sea of stars
voices who do not know why
sounding like those they left behind -
not quite knowing why they chime
so side by side…
they meet and harmonize.
i’ve never known
grindstone. churned.
i just worked
sun. lies. burned.
i just trusted
slowly. learned.
so tie loose ends up
with this
ribbon unravelling…
at the end
for my beginning
All is known
in time for nothing
a friend of mine is having a fru-klunksy day. she writes and adores punctuation (she probably also likes Proper Capitalization, but that is neither-here-nor-there-zi-toad…#orizit …).
Anyway. This is a quick afternoon poem I jotted down on the Misbehaving Cylon McSmackbook for her.
**********
semicolon
because your day is bad…
you may forget to understand
(that)
words
go
everywhere your feet dance
..they leak from the furniture
-the calming of dilemmas
-magic potatoes
-page turns go quicker
….you gather loose ends.
i don’t think like this -
and i never will.
some people’s punctuation has wings.
some people’s stands still.
but yours carries thinking along,
seducing the parlance;
completing the marathon of a stand-still
if given merely half a chance.
(photo self portrait from a series of couchy emo photos.)
*********************
I edit constantly…
but not enough, you see.
I’ve edited the green
out of my eyes;
perhaps shamed back
my entire ancestry…
I’ve painted pink-haired,
well-meaning apology
across the backs of all these things
I’ve seen
and also had to watch
painted brushstrokes
roughly-cruel
cover with burned-orange-hearts
sky-skate assuredness
the way of realnesses
the beatings of the beach…
all the way off of the page,
even to the end of things…
this brush would fly that way, it seems-
well ’tis the way of this
Revisionist History.
