Two quick exercises

I want in your eyes to meet speechlessly, embracing me
Fireweed honey dripping from tongue like passion kiss;
But instead if you choose to be grabbing me, angrily
unlike this, pressing me with brute profanity, painfully, I resist
kissing only mucus, a love most remiss
This I can not embrace speechlessly, can love triumph over sin?


What I love about sunshine is its perspiring kiss
What I hate about storms are there lack of forgiveness
What I love about old deco buildings are their promises of guilded mystery hiding
behind cobwebs
What I hate about demolished buildings is their hurricane of old dust swirling
amidst twisted rebar
What I love about hiking trails are their meadow mysteries and ferny scent
What I hate about leaving the trails are missing out on sunsets reflected in
azure lakes
What I love about leaving trails are the songs we sing lulling each other into
smiles

fast write poetry exercises in class

flight path over pass private drive ramp
where golden butter drips off into syrupy basins
into wiggling waffles
hot springs rejoicing
parking lot tide gauges
arterial for summer sun surf
an outpost for a floating bridge
garden path emotional aqueducts
of metal hershey bars with almonds
sword plant skyway overlapping survey lines
revolving cul-de-sacs in an amphitheater for Saturn
screwdrivers sneezing in cumbersome hands

I'm traveling down a road of swampy muddy footprints
trying to free the lost socks from overhead mobiles
of where my feet come to meet its daily slip on covers
I cross the isthmus of a loose red thread
to find my left hand, now asleep, fisted and restful, not dead
Excited and jestful I arrive at peninsula of my rubber neck propping a
bouncing ball, topped by a messy swath of brown hair
And finally I climbed to the cape of the nape of my neck
a little soulsease, resting to take in a view
of paunch, knees far from view, toes pointing up
Just waiting, on cue

(We had to use certain words incorporated quickly in what we wrote)

An Ode to early morning coffee

I await with hope your
scent of smoky complexity
a bellows for my lungs
unbeknownst jet engine power
you reached out
from poorest African jungle
heated by campfire
to give me extra orchestra-
ted breath
which I would never have
otherwise.

You are a dawn tongue twister
a bitter New York Times
crossword
Plethora of sensual punches,
dancing Ali style
curing cancer (say some) and
sluggish confusion.
A marionette for arms, legs
and cranium
just like the magic pills
for Underdog
Resusitated vitals to bio-
rhythmic hullspeed.
Grace and angst
meet my lips a second, third, fourth, fifth.
Not addicted, ha! affording
my simple ritual.

For a while I traveled
undirected
misdirected
sparks of truth remained

A riverman treading a sea of twisted lies
I die
I die
Losing sanity unto another life, greater sanity

This world is a way with shifting appeal
to make a new deal
a seal
a seal
of many more twisted lies

Before light is revealed in negative space
One has to fall
face to face
with darkness

And out of its relief
Love is the promise
that will stay
it will stay amidst deepest grief

And life will live another day
to beget good or evil
We have choices
and there will be another day.

Pax.

Finally Patrick Shepherd reappears out of thin air~~

Rob gave me the heads up and let me know Patrick was coming around the neighborhood. This is the person I helped stay off the street for about 11 years and spent thousands helping him. He still owes me about $2400. I ran into Patrick at Uptown Espresso and just like I figured he had no money to pay me (even though he gets money from the government) back, even a little. He said maybe he could make a payment in June. Patrick has never been known for keeping any promises and is a pathological liar, telling the truth when convenient. Oh well. Between he and Jim it would sure be nice if one of them would start paying me some of the money they owe me on good faith!

Hell may freeze over first.