Before You Skip Town

I shouldn’t have answered your call
and I shouldn’t have asked you to call again
I know this now, somethings just have to run through
As others stand so very still
encapsulated in ice
that freezes the tops of my feet
spreading, till my hands are unusable

But lets have dinner
just one more night
I’ll light candles to warm the air
and you can dance around
and over the pressing issues
that nether of us care to cover
with simple white sheets, left
in old shelters to gather even older dust
waiting for a remembrance day

And don’t be mad at me for wishing for change
it was change that seemed to be
tugging at my particular sleeve!
Its pulled me down back streets and around corners
over manholes breathing out ozone
and passing out only more delicious questions

Won’t you come see me
just once before you skip town
we’ll draw with sharpies on our wrists
like scars of a last attempt

For in this state we have overstayed
my dear you and I are overused
falling to pieces
but lovely still in candle light
with the voices of children
laughing, like a reason for celebration.

Indigo Generation

Did you see my breath freeze?

Like a car crash

Resting a beat before impact

Into a icy north-west night


We were the imported vagabonds

Set free on the street corners

To stair down satellites

And holler underground love songs

To an acoustic strum


Did you see us on the sidewalks

Prophesying with Dylan

And rewriting the constitution

With a sharpie pen

Rebelliously held in our left hand

Waltzing with the Birdman

To the metronome of car horns


We lived in coffee shops

Huddled in corners

Sipping venti americanos

Talking activism

Folding The New York Time into paper flowers

Bouquets for the next potential squeeze


Catching their eye with cardboard protest sign

And graphic t-shirts

Stating This is what I stand for! This is who I am!


Counting the goosebumps running up our arms

Like we were tallying votes

Zipping up our thrift store fleece

To keep in the radical imagination

Or the cloud of pot smoke wafting into the ether

Wrinkling our pierced noises

At the undertone of false doctrine

That permeated even the indigo generation


We picked fights against the masses

Belittling the upper class


Sleeping on friends velvet couches

In vintage converse and wool coats

Waking up late

Extending the dream

Of a world who understands us

Terrified of beige, mediocrity, normality

Living like our parents or not living at all

The moment we might become unremarkable


Death to the street dwelling standers

Prescribed by the western world!

Toting gatsbys and hobo gloves

We shall trek onward into the night

All The Rest

Talk yourself to sleep.
Count out, on fingers and toes
how many gold stars you keep on your ceiling
and how they sparkle off gleaming kitchen appliances.
We all nod our general heads
pretending to listen.
Pulling your hair back, out of you’re warbling mouth.
Insisting the importance of the galaxy
is pouring from you’re teeth.

All the things you heard in the 60s are irrelevant.
We are intuitive beyond knowing.
When we chatter we are solitary,
heated heavy heads with eyes on fire,
skipping lunch to reveal rebel missions.
Surpassing the mundane.
Expanding the uncertain realms,
calling on cherry bombing, skate boarders
to find holes into China
and sew us back together with common thread.

Untying Bonds

I feel like a little shit! For holding his hand
For asking him nicely, opening the storage room door to call him back
Spelling it out for him, once, then again
Hailing my bluff
Standing on the wood boards, aged in their years of loitering
The light from the grass framed
Icebox flickered

As our hands let go, Now strangers
Done trying, done striving for the
Oh so over rated silver screen
Selling us red lipped romance
Never to be lived up to, where the world took real form
In the back of cafes, between your silhouette and mine
Below storage room spotlights
Reciting carefully written scripts
“It’s not you. It’s me”

We were no more then one rose in hand
One meek yellow rose in hand
One bleeding hand, one sliced palm
Meant to show commitment but ending up
Leaving lips crystal blue, sunken face, drained of blood
Pooling, running down cracks in the also weeping floor boards
The tie is cut with metallic shears
The vibration of the foot steps
The foot steps
The door to the storage room
Closes
One hollow sound
My feet stay planted
Alone like an unmoved shell
Among crates of milk and flour sacks
Stepping back into my body, with the force of necessity
Try pouring my lungs full of air
And still I was too far from warmth
To make my dear eyelids close

First issue of YellowBird!

The very first issue of YellowBird is ready for the printers and should be out very soon!! A zine covering poetry, art, what ifs and a happier way of life!! Look for it in random places near you!!

Love is Ageless

All around the globe,

we sang our songs of grieving

and the pain seeped from our skin.

You were even lovely in the mist of snowfall

and you were adored and cared for

but when your face turned to ash

and all the years became clear.

You were not the angle they had all believed

and so you were left, one bed,

one faded green chair

and two regretful meals a day.

They put you in a home for the old.

On a sign outside, where the pigeons flew over,

it said “Love is ageless” and we knew it was a lie.

Revolution

Wax is dripping from the sky.

The moon carries orphans on its uncensored spine.

It will save Egypt, the dirt and the mothers

and the orphans and the broken down trucks.

It will save them like winding tree branches,

the redwoods that begged for the sky,

hoarding water,

tearing muscle and ribbons

and shattering antique china

embroidered with hammers that brought down the Berlin wall.

I will crave that splitting head ache

and freeze the spinning sky.

Spitting into the kings wine.

Our bleary eyed, sloppy drunk leader,

who could never save the country like I could.

The man with the switch knife,

with a lions face,

with a lobotomy that was supposed to fix the broken mirror,

rupturing with cracks of a revolution.

He will sleep on a park bench,

incased in unformidable laughter.

He will bleed in the shadows of upper-class bathrooms.

Rolling his own cigarets,

turning like spinning wheels,

weaving unconventional thread.

For every window I gave a name.

An idea for every page.

Afternoon naps and uninvited company.

Wings scratched, sewn, brutally tied onto my back

and forced to fly.

A hand for every face to cradle an unblemished cheek.

A silence for every room to fill.

A man for every minute of war.

One arm or leg or young boy from the slums

torn from a half emptied bowl.

Spoons, mettle forks are replaced with a plastic gun,

that will kill no one and defend nothing

but will lay on the oil-drained ground,

next to her first born son,

with a cardboard helmet,

as the scream of life goes horse

and the bodies are daydreams,

and the corpses are summer

and the suits buy a man for every minute of war.

One arm or leg or letter claiming god blessed this earth

and the heavens lurch with a sickness to great to expel.