paths.

former trails traveled,
eidetically projected in the back of my head,
sweeping into the sand and bright.

newer paths lay on
sonorous notes drifting through a rough trail,
miles ahead, miles ahead.

souring vestiges
of elderly feelings, traveled past, left winking
in summer waves of heat.

they scrape about,
flinging tense worries in puddles of drought,
asking me to look at them.

lighter thoughts float
up into thin atmos.

Scared treed memories
of dogged, unmissed pasts devolve and curl away.

I stand on a wasteland,
happy for its solitude, searching through salty tension,
padding across memories and memories and time.

I seek a key, a compass,
a guide through these vast deepenings.

Tired eyes of a dusty child, its me at 6,
holding a horsehead on a stick, tattered vest
and a wild west hat.

this has been discarded, tossed at random,
out into the wastes.

I look at myself as I remember and
feel the surge of bare softness
in a patch of grass beside a gray wooden fence.

The trails all lead to me, as I feel a clap
in and of my mind, and realize that I can parse it.
These clear or cloudy memories are me.

stick on branch.

Now,
time is a stick
on a branch
on a thick and
entrenched log
in a swiftly flowing river
It can't budge
the water flows up
and around
the spindly stick,
its slimy now
it needs to be broken
renewal, reentry
to the greater river,
the enormity, endlessly
wide and deep,
yet static is the stick
of our present moment,
hurriedly, encouragingly
our moment bends
and snaps,
free are we
to flow downstream
and to live.

of fate.

Oh fate,
you mighty decider,
how you toss and drive us about
like lithe shapes of tissue,
how you twist and tug on us
weaving us in and out
of endless blankets of
drama and destruction,
as we suffer on
your cruel loom.
But I know your secret fate,
and so I can live my life.
Whatsoever you throw to me,
I might catch it
and make it mine,
and if my lot
fares worse than others,
I live happy still fate,
for still others fare
much worse than I.

Moonrise.

Cascading varieties of malnourished
yellow flood the forest canopy
neath a pallid, shelled dusk moonrise.

A fading orange mountain looms,
the moonlight skirting its base,
and stars shoot, angles zipping in vectors.

Smart tremolos shifting with wind
break the coolness of treetops,
lightness shaking, shifting under leaf.

And now bright trunks are illumed
starkly against blacker corners,
dens of glowing eyes, colder bone.

High thin clouds with stately
slowness shade the moon,
gray-silver on grimy yellow.

The oped sky's eye lidded
and with sickly tone, but
the sight's ray color-gifted,

blessed in fair vision.

Bouncing Light.

I put on my hat I wear each day.
Into my beaten soles I slide feet.

Into my ears I slide bouncing light.
It drives my soles and my hat's guts.

Title, Artist, Album
The song in my head's selfsame
Today, Alive, Alive

Catharsis.

"I've a very analytic mind,"
I said, pouring smooth coffee
into two clean mugs.
"I am oriented towards details,
not the insignificant ones,
but parts that mesh
and form the whole,
and the parts that aren't there,
but contribute to the whole
nonetheless."

"What do you mean?"
she seemed to say, cooly
buzzing, miles away,
sipping my coffee,
sweetning my day.

"Well its just those things
no one can see,
but they're small or innocuous;
they appear to me.
They are there.
That's how I know."

She reclined across the chair
and sighed; a softening breathlessness,
her eyes inside.

Odysseus sees Her.

Stepped in golden sandals,
she appears from behind a tree.
A balanced arboreal frame,
vibrating, emitting arrant harmony.
Sly lengthy elegance,
wealthy in mystery,
her shy bangs drip smartly,
drawn about, circumscribing
a just scape,
knowing and fair,
radiant and rare.
Taut limbs intoning, veracious of their grace,
bright eyes inviting and clever as they dance,
curves of bronze bound in satin,
her opulence conferred through classic study.
A subtle brush, a potent glance,
the journeyed hero sees truly,
his certitude congealed,
in flesh and robe and sight,
is Pallas Athene revealed.

Los Chisos y Chihuahua

Bone dry
clattering pots and pans
the closest star is our own arrogant master
she extracts moisture
tearing deep our sap
our pulsing water
if its dark its hot
if its metal it burns
when she sets we sing
when she rises we die
everything she touches turns to dust
her penchant for destruction is relentless
we scurry in her light, afraid to sizzle
to fry in her tireless war against the damp

endless devious reactions fuel her divine ragings
a great beast trembles
limbs shaking under the fiery waves
a dusty step
and a shuttered gasp
the beast expires
desired by the wicked goddess
to devolve into a pile of frigid white bones
picked clean
a relic of her celestial terror
and the poor beast's short struggle

blighted and wasted, we crawl across terrible scapes
three times the circling vultures call
dead things dangling from their maws
they her bedraggled minions
she the astral empress
how terrible her gaze
how endless her power

the old ones.

these grainy tactile films take contact
pull it into your sight and sing it out
it plays without triteness or fickle guile
the people are commiserative, flawed and bright
and as they flicker by, they are winning,
without nostalgia or irony.

'plot for days' she comments
smirking at this line or that
the dialogue is tense, or sometimes far fetched
but its exactly what fits, and it does
the particular oldness of it, the forgotten wit
and even the new talkies owe them heaps of craft and gold.

Moon Bathing

Our bright orb lolls in the quiescent sections of the sky
between patrolling clouds it hovers
casting a soothing reflection down on the ripe glassy surface of the lake.
Its after midnight but our tanned summer bodies bob in pale luminescence.
The bustle and chop of the summer lake is calm now, and we drink it in in all of its subtly.
We play games and splash the warm water, but we are here for the moon
its mysterious radiance, its transformational force.

The still waters stretch out in front of us as the moon breathes its light.
The velvet of northwoods waters in August laps our skin, mild and silky,
and we gaze at the enormous face, the full moon's patterns of shade.
Maybe the lunar gaze is just the noon Sun's reflection,
a celestial mirror, angled into our atmosphere once a month
but here in this water, I feel its pull, the lightness of my limbs.
surely its touch is singular when moon bathing on Moon Lake.

Cursive turns.

Cursive comes close,
it almost describes it.
Rather it is the mode,
the rotation of its characters.
That is, how it rotates,
cursive closely imitates.

But the comparison is flawed,
a subtle yet essential distinction.
Cursive letters loop and close,
their paths calibrated, ileal.
My curves are different,
they're untraceable, capricious, luminous.

So my soul's turns are unique.
But for now the pen tip's flourish
must suffice.

Cloud Cult.

beckoned to fall swiftly
leaning over rails and bridges
clouds drift in sequence
they desire my form
and I theirs
I stand on the edge
requesting a swap
they all agree
they prefer to remain anonymous and plural
which is just fine with me
I prefer anonymity as well
who wants to be a cloud if anyone knows you?
It's best to float by without notice
casting shadows and rain
watching tiny people
hastily, frenetically try to cope
with the burdens of earth-life
surely I'm a citizen of Earth myself
only my world is miles above pain
above confusion and enmity and coarseness
I am no longer a coarse being
my molecules are more a loose association
clinging water, lighter than air
brushing by mountains, amazonian treetops
I swell as I sweep across still lakes and rivers
my form is now bloated, my shade is now gray
as winds whip me upwards
I feel fit to burst
a thunderclap, and I fall apart
millions of fragments flung downward
gravity's urgings have won out
endless sensation as I plink on a pond
I splash against branches and dribble down leaves
I wash across playgrounds, swingsets and schools
and as I strike the soft sweet earth
I feel at home, my cycle is complete

Circus Love Triangle

The fiddle player dreams
of a cartwheeling bandit
his rolls and turns are strong and graceful
her light hands hold with tenderness close
the steel strings, the new bow, a gift of affection
the gossamer sparks, a web of light splayed
as the small rapid fingers
are dancing in rays
as the evening sun lingers
she pines as she plays.

Her meek bright heart shutters
as chin clasps violin
a glint in her eye, as she watches him soar
the strongman's advances intense and denied
a circus love triangle, her fiddle their pace
but her one true love can with such ease turn a wheel
a flip-twisting full tuck
as she plays, his soul tilts
his tight landing stuck
as her dulcet tone lilts.

Trees of Grim Designs

Trees resound hollowly, secrets passed by leaf
echoing splinters through soft earth
twine-like roots entangled, entombed in the deep
woody overgrowth contrives
dimly plotting against man and bear
whispers chatter, needles and twigs with wind-like designs
bare clattering branches, bones of transmission
the brook and the birch,
the boulder and pine,
conspirators all,
allies in crime.
Preemptively seeking maligned machinations
tangling trippingly devious root, a loop for a boot
a steep crumbling trail, rutted from rain
a tumble a gasp a thump and a crack
and warm sticky fluid, life-giving solution
staining the boulder, droplets plinking the brook
but murderous trees have consciences too
the noble pine broke the fall, and it's sap sacrificed
the trees aim at ending, but save a man's life.

Seasoned Rivals

The bitter rivals sling desperate barbs of malignancy, tea grey teeth gnashed and bared in acute hostility. The rubber endcaps, vilely yellowed and brittle from age and use dreadfully slide across the brown linoleum as the two adversaries advance toward one another. From the unsettling clink of a rusted walker to the muffled rustling of depends on crisp grey slacks held up with brass clasped suspenders, the stage is set for a brutal geriatric clash in the Main Leisure Area of Hyland Nursing Home. Sporting freshly fitted and glued dentures, hugely thick and widely framed glasses, a darkly stained oak cane and fresh depends, with two tours as a marine in Korea under his considerable belt is Walter Drubner, slouched and metronomically thumping his cane. On the other side of the ring now formed by most of the cognizant residents of Hyland is Charles Brainard, the (relatively) young challenger, vigorously shaking and swinging his walker. They continue to toss insults about, one asserting the other is a "weembly commie-loving fairyboy" countered merely with a tart "drool-monkey". The name-calling is fairly ridiculous and rife with outdated words but cussing is frowned upon at Hyland and the intentions are real and are spit vindictively. No one laughs, murmurs circle and fade. A wisecracker towards the back offers bets. They stop with a few inches separating their tumid red noses, Charles's walker is now carelessly cast off to the side, and they take turns clenching fists and leaning in towards one another. Crusty nostrils flare and thin pallid lips twitch and sneer. Far off, the clatter of a dropped bedpan can be heard. Someone coughs. "Why don't you go back to your namby pamby sewing circle, Chuck", Walter growls, raising his meaty forearm, complete with green crinkely tattoos. Just then, the kindly young nurse steps in, and both wrinkled necks turn. "It's bingo time everyone--oh, and Mr. Drubner your family is here." "You lucked out this time" Walter mutters as he turns on his cane and walks towards the door. Charles picks up his walker and sticks his tongue out to Walter's turned back. "We'll see who lucked out tomorrow Drubner."
The End.

Welcome To Ypsi

Two friends from Eastern Michigan University and I hop a bus to Ypsilanti, the ghetto sister city to Ann Arbor and a quiet gangly fellow sits down on the stop after ours. His hair is crispy and blond, as though its been abused by a hairdryer and is about neck length. It shoots out from his head, floating raggedly above his creased and weather beaten neck. The skin on his hands and face is tight, leathery, and deeply tanned. Probably about 36, he looks over 50 and has ghastly bony fingers. A vein stands out visibly on his temple and throbs, sliding over the bone as he turns his withered head side to side. His whole body seems to have been left out in the sun too long. His face looks like that of a gaunt, wide-eyed Clint Eastwood. I glance at his wild and bulging winter-blue eyes and notice a burst blood vessel in the right one. As he sits languidly across from me on the number four bus, arms stretched across the backs of seats, eying the driver and my collegiate looking friends and me, he is clutching a pair of metal handcuffs. They don't look like the fake handcuffs that come with policeman Halloween costumes and they're certainly not fuzzy. They look like cop handcuffs, real ones, the chain silver and the cuffs painted dull black. He is holding them in a manner that suggests the attitude "Yeah these are handcuffs, so what?" He has a cheap ring on every finger and wears a dirty leather jacket. The jacket is black and stained all over and he has an ugly plaid polyester vest over it. He sits shiftlessly towards the front of the bus and no one sits next to him. His expression is blank in the way a serial killer's is and he mainly stares towards the front of the bus, occasionally switching the handcuffs from hand to hand, making no effort to hide them. He glances at us again, we whisper to one another, and he more than likely knows we're talking about him. My friend feigns sending a text message to snap a picture of this creepy loner holding handcuffs and I begin to wonder what his story is. The first thing I imagine is an image of him pushed against a car, being handcuffed by a police officer when suddenly he takes the officer down, brutally beating him and making a run for it. Subsequent images are variations on this including a gun fight, knife fight, unbelievable karate moves, various shanking scenarios, and a car chase. I grip the metal water bottle in my hand and wonder what the best way to wield it against a dangerous street person with handcuffs might be. When he slowly sinks his hand into his jacket my knuckles go white and I tense up all over. His hand emerges holding a liter bottle of coke, apparently very well hidden in the folds of his dirty jacket. He just holds the bottle in one hand, the handcuffs in the other and continues to glance around menacingly. He gets off several stops before us and as he walks away I see hanging from his black jeans a chain with dozens of colored hair ties looped through it. The second he is gone my friends and I confer about the strangness of this person. One friend points out that he has seen him before, riding a bike and wearing women's underwear, he is a hustler or crossdresser my friend speculates, and probably a drug addict I add. This seems as likely as any explanation and we theorize about this grungy misanthropic deviant and why he was holding handcuffs until we reach our stop. Now his story's changed in my mind and rather than a highly dangerous felon he is a hustler junkie with a handcuff fetish. "Welcome to Ypsilanti!" my friend says ironically. I just smile and wonder at our public transit system.

Where The Snows Fall, When The Tree's Hauled

Where The Snows Fall, When The Tree's Hauled

Candy canes dangle
reflected in brightly mirrored
red and green orbs
lights that blink
lights that bubble
a lucky pickle
a hidden witch
a harp and a trumpet
a dozen or so stuffed Santas
piled in a chair
the Santas sing carols
another few dangle
some skiing
some sledding
white bears that drink coke
green needles arrayed
cross red velvet skirt
they've fallen, more cling
a small glittered tree
my picture in the center
its from second grade
an angel or star scrapes the ceiling
its the tops and looks good
it smells like sugar cookies
their shape, wreathes and trees
but moreso its pine
its woody and fresh
its Christmas
and I'm home.

It's Not My Nightmare

I breathe hard in my head,
my eyes and nose
stuttered syllables
dribbling on my lips
myself is conscious
of me and my words
I feel a thousand eyes
trained on myself and me
and we're now
apparently up.
Scooting to the podium
fear-tinged sweat pervades
they can smell it it seems
my legs shake, knees knock
fingers tremble, toes tap
muscles twitch
and I am awkward.
A large and disgruntled
bug begins to crawl
up my throat
its twelve limbs are long
its thorax fuzzy
and I choke on it
"The primary function
of the ulgk---"
vomit
in my mouth, not out
I swallow hard and
futilely try to mime normal
but its not near normal.
the bug is now unhappy
extremely pissed in fact
its made me gag.
I feel the eyes
not pity or empathy
they judge and
judge and laugh
and judge and
mock and hate
cruel and heavy
they press down
forced oration breeds
this discomfort in spades
hearts and clubs
where are my notes
where is my deliverance
how do I go on
eyes wander
and it seems for now
they've given up their mean games
its lost its fun and now
everyone feels the hailstorm
of my humiliation
its dampened their bloodlust
no more patience
and I walk off
dead inside
mortified
but relieved
and this sick dream
is over.

The Walden of My Youth.

In the early days of my rambunctious and unrefined adolescence I often took to wandering through the ancient pine forest behind my family's hideaway cabin. The cabin itself was rustic and beautiful, picturesque even, a page from a northwoods memoir, and as inspiring a natural retreat as one is likely to find in the UP of Michigan. It possessed such a humbling beauty that my city-bounded aunts would often visit with us to relax and take in the calm and wilderness. As we drove back on winding, heavily shaded gravel roads, I often felt as if I were driving into a different world, more quiet and majestic then ours, and its dusty antiquated charm whispered of long nights reading near the black pot-bellied stove and serene Autumn walks on miles of trails and abandoned country roads. As we drove past the gate and onto our property the first thing in sight was The Barn, which housed a variety of old watercraft and its second floor served as a simple guest house. It was red, inherently dirty, and filled with mice. The cabin was a bit dirty and had mice as well, but somehow its coziness and enchanted air more than made up for the dust and regularly placed mousetraps. More than anything, the magical feeling came from the cabin's characteristic oldness. The faintly marred hardwood floors with so much character you could write a short volume about the generations of scratches, the peculiar stone sign that read 'Gandalf', left behind by the eccentric and Tolkien-obsessed original owner. The old-fashioned cloth napkins, bedsheets, throw blankets, comforters, towels and any other fabric you might find that radiated with this oldness but a sort of venerated and well-loved oldness. These things possesed a quality that deeply immersed you into the feeling of living in a history museum or a carefully weaved historical novel set in a peaceful cottage. Behind the cabin, running alongside the unperturbed lake and deep into the wilds was The Sylvania. The magic and primitive forest of my youth. The enormously tall and widely spaced trees gave a cavernous feeling to the forest. Huge aged trees bear down from all sides, blotting out the Sun and leaving in her place foreboding shades of gray and green. Its huge hushed openness and low light echoed the atmosphere of an abandoned cathedral. The ground was thickly piled with brittle orange needles that offered a stealthily muffled crunch. Actual living trees were relatively rare and always massive. The darkened forest floor was riddled with ancient fallen trees, slowly rotting at acute angles and covered in moss and fungus. One of the more ominous aspects: this forest seemed devoid of fauna. We rarely saw the ubiquitous whitetails that populate every forest and roadside in the UP and even seldom saw a squirrel. This reinforced the solitude and mystery of the forest. I think the man who built our cabin understood it, and I don't wonder that a reader of Tolkien would choose to settle here. The Sylvania feels like an enchanted forest in Middle Earth. And so I spent many hours ranging around in The Mystical Sylvania, and it became familiar to me. I played games and explored endlessly, wandering often and looking for animals. I had names for certain areas and odd tree phenomena. The bouncing log, the climbing tree, the deep bog, little hill, they were landmarks to show off to cousins and visiting friends but also important signposts in the labyrinthine Sylvania. We camped in the forest, but always within sight of the cabin, to go deeper at night was to risk the wolves we heard late at night.

The Levee may have been breeched.

Incurious politicians and poorly translated ad messages, flip flip flip, university pages on literary reviews and writers forums, flip flip flip, my needle rooting through riffraff, pining for true muse, flip flip flip, he lives inside of his own heart, that's an awful big place for a boy to live in -Billy Bob Thorton in Sling Blade, flip flip flip, Dr. Strangelove's nazi-mania and General Ripper's paranoia, flip flip flip, my own recognition that its not damn deep enough, flip flip flip, my own recognition that despite the typical comparison of the human mind to a computer, mine is functioning more like a rolodex, flip flip flip, random anecdotes from Herodotus, flip flip flip, and still I can't pierce my own mind's crust of sundry pop culture data, flip flip flip, Andrew Bird, professional whistler, deeper dammit, flip flip flip, I begin to feel it flow.... I've struck the vein I was probing, and I feel its warm gush. The fluid of inspiration isn't deep red like spilled blood or even purple like my coursing veins, it's electric and golden, specks of robin's egg blue, occasional streaks of tangerine and bubblegum pink, and at times like this, when it is fresh and splashes out of me, it seems to radiate, like plutonium or something, so that I can perceive the outline of it flowing from my chest and pooling on my desk even with my eyes shut tightly.
Tunesmith:
zoomed by tertiary roadblocks
rumbling scraping cast-iron constructions
Heat blasts from the grill
sturdy orange plastics shred
as cyclical steel zips and shears
control is failing and paint chips vilely
the wheel off the road bouncing wildly
and spins away
the pilot wails, fear in his guts
the carriage of new
wrecked and smoldering
still,
but the devil's breath is close.

Crackling spite,
rageful tunings of
well-defined wrath.
Swaying in and out of
catalogued outrages,
crack, crack,
and steam whistles
from red swollen ears.
Despotic ruinous ire,
how swelling ego binds
its master's fate
to its odious will.
Carried to undying hatred
on the backs of bitter beasts
sick coats green with envy
hooves of thieves' gold
eyes that tighten your throat
with greedy malevolence
Why mount these damned
creatures and ride to Oblivion?
They rob that which is good
and defines essence
offering cold vengance
and emptiness
in return.
Don't buy in
live your life
let not this blackness
touch your soul.