october barely whispered
her sweet seductress lines
and the young man
began to wonder
where the words had gone.
“it has been a long time”
he thought to himself
since the rhythm raged
forth from his soul.
“have i grown too old for this?”
“has the muse finally forsaken me?”
as he scratched his head and
sipped his green tea, absentmindedly
unaware of the growing storm
and the winds that were turning
the leaves and shaking the trees.
if this were an english class
somewhere, and students
were reading the night
as a story, the teacher would
say something about
foreshadowing.
but the young man
still yearned for
something just
out of reach.
for now.
Good trail run tomorrow…
Sweat out the demons, the angst, the ambiguities I create and loathe,
To overwhelm the soul with breezes, naked limbs of trees, the crunchy mud soaked leaves,
Each step a song, a way home, the trail:
a place to be, a place…Yes, that is all, a place
The Davis,
The medication…
Follow the yellow brick road?–
The kindest of stouts, the euphoric vigilance of a baseball purist,
a purgerer,
cathartic missionary,
a sedentary poet,
no classists evoked in our test-driven society,
and we gaze in amazement at Yeats, Pope, Keats…
Well, they were drenched in Latin, mythology, the ancients,
And NWA evokes Homer?
Pearl Jam evokes Herodotus?
Cormac evokes Cicero?
We teachers are scapgotes, are cynical bastards,
yet bards and jokers
whereas Socrates’ magnetism attracted pure students with affinities for absorbtion,
for elucidation,
for a metaphorical mortification of the mind, soul, spirit,
while we evoke policy, paradigm shifts, and a fallacious framework of erudition!
We are fawns with frowns.
Sitting on this old Detroit porch,
With the large maple trees blotting out the June sun,
And the mellow hum of traffic in the near distance,
Somehow makes me sad…
To think that I may never experience this again.
The train rolls by as the remaining vestiges of the autumnal sun warm my face,
A tree still holding on fiercefully to warmer days blots out the sun,
Poor star only needs to shine and warm yet cannot,
Not that is is indolence for she is most punctual of all women.
Only the steely azure sky left to drive my imagination,
Left to stir the soul.
The sun, though, has only one purpose,
And that is to return again tomorrow.
A beautiful twilight to have a cigarette
An autumnal breeze winds through the trees, the leaves.
Too warm is the wind, some may suggest…its orchestral cacophony swirling melodic,
a gentle rain, a cricket chirps
Oh! do the trees speak…to me…At this moment I exist
At this moment I embrace
At this moment I want to die, but a peaceful death,
as the clouds, the swaying breeze offers me up,
A sacrifice to what I already know:
Beauty
the bully winds of October play tag with leaves
curled in colors of brandy wine and amber orange
nudging them from swaying boughs
where they’ve cradled since last spring
pushing them out
and down
falling into the faces of long shadows cast by an October sun
an ocean wave in the treetop
the sounds of surf
soft whispers
autumnal seascape
hurtling,
spiraling,
spinning
as remnant leaves linger
hangers-on waving frantically like school children
or long lost friends
who too soon called away
madly wave goodbye
I. resurrection with nods and misgivings
the season is here, at last
hurrah, hurrah and the ipa
that sits on the newly cleaned
desk glimmers with hope
and possibility, sublimely
surrendering to the moment
muting the melancholy
that threatens to creep into
our lives amid doubts amid paranoid perceptions
as the pervasive fear of tomorrow
threatens to destroy the
promise of a new day.
cliche- i hear you lurking
in the corners, i see your
ill-defined forms as you seek
to establish yourself but
i shout out your punchlines
and i hit on your date, whispering
in her ear the things that i
would like to do to her
and we know that it is
of course, all metaphorical
irony, illusions and allusion
and you haven’t ever had
a heckler quite like me.
more drinks for me and my friends
and perhaps we will channel the
lizard king tonight.
ah, jim, i know
your kind, sad and desperate
and on fire, flaming brightly, dying
young, singing to the ladies in
reptilian splendor orator extraordinaire
the drunken cavorting the mystic rhythms,
the drums of the whole earth
and the beat of the universe
spurring you on in ecstatic brilliance
like kerouac’s mad ones-
exploding across the sky
ahhh beautiful…
you child in the wind.
we were like you once
and yet we still do not sleep.
i could spend days in bookstores
lost among the new arrivals fiction & literature reader’s recommendations
looking for old friends and trying to discover
something new and fit for this time and place.
smelling the coffee
glancing at the ass of the pretty girl who is excited by hemingway
wondering if i could excite her and
wishing i had more $ to spend.
i open books and begin to read
so that i might know if i want to buy the book
and devour it
and put it on my shelf
another trophy
another life lived
another story told.
