city creasts and beatures

Souls shiver in the wake
of good convictions. My
hand's a hammer and is
rusted at the handle.
Doors are grey eyes and
they're looking through
stained glass shards.

I cringe at the bellows
in the morning when my
eyes are still sifting through
images of yesterday.
When they are still playing
in the skies and I'm
eating clouds. My shoulders
turkey vulture to the
cracks and whistles of
brontosaurus machines
erecting anthills, piercing
atmospheres.

Rhythms emerge.
Breaks in the infinite
Momentary lapses in chaos.
I'm submerged.
Human phenomenons
the animal wonders.
Us like the sparrows
Call and response routines
How the ear struggles
for plaid sounds!
Flannel noises too.
I will die humming
a polka-dot tune.

I fly south all day
when I'm tempted.
I make honey out
of no control of my own.
I follow the scents of
passing asses and
in the spring it is too
strong and in the city there
are too much.

I ask "what is my
burden?"
What is this road block?
This great wall of resistance.
Guards stand on top with
mounted machine guns. Dogs
tell me to turn back. I've
got a sling-shot and a
pebble or two.
I crawl along the bottom
corner when no one can see.
I gnaw the cinder blocks and
craft a hole. I push the
final rock flake out with
my tongue and a light so
hot and yellow pours from
the crack.

I see my children and their
children and the child
I was and every one before
who made me.
All are bare and do not speak.
They lift no finger in a work
effort. They answer to no
superior. They eat without utensils
never wipe their faces.
No buildings stand and none
in the blueprints.
I've seen them myself and
folded an oragami ship.
I might sail it down the
reservoir and let it disintegrate
into our drinking water.

My good eye closes
I run with butterfly wings
and antennas to receive
the good reception and
the prime time popcorn
brigades all zombie
their faces
They end, with open mouths,
any ash of hope.
Now the ember floats into
the blackness or better the nothingness
that isn't even black, or white,
or any color at all. It
doesn't even sound like quiet.

Fly traps paint the scenery
Our eyes are the flies and
we love the sweet sugar water stench
they emit. I'm no fly I
respond, explain, I disagree
and reject all allegations.
Perhaps a fuzzy rodent with
nothing but a little organ
singing sweetly and I'm
too simple to ignore the chords.

I'm no wishbone broke over
two brothers' envy. The dirt
I tread is a spiraling circumference
of miles and miles.
The ground's teeth grind
my naked feet and the
mouth of the canyon speaks
a nightmare and spits
sour apple juice acidic

I walk on my hands and knees
deep in muck barb-wired
tentacles imprint like
soars in that spiral pattern
reminding me days i've
bent my neck into cold
soft sand and let my
head do no thinking.

This may have no foreseeable end
but it may close when all
my attic doors are sealed.
When all the loose spaces
are cemented shut and
no stinging winds can
live and break glass in too
high of tones.
When all the artifacts and
keepsakes in boxes thaw
and move about-pictures,
photos, stuffed dolls, old clothing, souvenirs.
When they all evolve back to
life and converse, dance, and
love and kill each other,
a glow will return
a burning sun so missed
I kiss her and my lips
remember that certain warmth

In one installment, one room,
one day, one one of many.
In one second here and gone,
I stop all pacing and ground
all charges. I leave the window
be and all it shows me. I and
the wall.
Something dies, one is born,
and to all that keep on living,
I join all from here to Minnesota
to Japan to a rock orbiting Jupiter,
I hear the clinking-clanging-
roaring-hissing bellows and
cries from a rabid giraffe machine.
She knows no love of calves,
or the taste of the highest leaf
on the tallest tree.

-All a fleeting thought in one
pump of a bike pedal-