Blindsight

Gazebo boxers            

Jabbing at air

Sparring with shadows

That are hunting them down

To do their violent dance

At the abandoned pavilion

Drawing an audience

Of few who care

Or even notice the gunshots

In the alley that force

The struggle into the light

While delicate divas

Ride their bikes

In the middle of the sidewalk

Plowing down pedestrians

Laughing at the gunfire

As if this were an everyday

Occurrence,

A mere annoyance

Like a bird

Swooping too close,

Something intangible that is

Only someone else’s problem

Expecting a wide berth

While surrendering none

To the hearth of humanity

While the man

In the upstairs apartment

Watches it all

Fighting his own struggle

With the stinging in his eyes.

Facsimile

The day that I met my clone was rather ordinary since I get used to weird sh*t like that these days even though 

she didn’t look like me or talk like me but I knew that she was the other me because we shared the same first

 name and she had the last name of that guy who wanted to marry me when I was a different me and her son 

was named the name that I wanted to name my son if I ever had one and she went to that same kind of  TV 

con-man church that the guy who wanted to marry me became a preacher at, but all I could think about was 

how he was such a cheap  and sleazy bastard that I wanted to hit him over the head with something lethal so I 

thought that I better not marry him because it’s not only wrong, but I didn’t really want to waste my life in the 

slammer because of him and my clone can have that life with that mess and that sleazebag even though she 

married someone else probably nicer who just shared that same last name and was nothing like that slimy slob 

who lived off other people’s emotions and pity while he polished those gold capped teeth and combed that 

wavy pompadour and waxed his ‘stache and put on that phony smile as he reached into your pocket and 

admired your wallet and I know all about that because he admired my wallet one too many times, so when I 

met my clone, I was just so happy that she was my clone and I was me.

The Winnings

“I’ll take a liver.”

“I’ll up the ante with a kidney and a pancreas.”

“A double? Whoa!!! You lucked out!”

“Are you sure you’re not cheating? Whenever you have an extra pint of blood, you do.”

“I’ll surrender one lung for a heart!”

“Game over. The heart always wins.”

“Yeah, that really sucks. Hee-hee…”

“Fine comment coming from the marrow.”

“So what are you going to do with your extra body parts?”

“Sell them.”

“Hold on to them – you never know when you need extra parts.”

“Are you freakin’ nuts??!! How will you store them?”

“Cryogenic stasis, I suppose.”

“That doesn’t work.”

“How do you know, Mr. Cryogenic Brain?”

“I’m just sayin’ that they don’t last very long without connections!”

“Yeah. We all know about good connections.

“So what about you...in the corner…with all the extra healthy goods?”

“I’m putting them all in my living will, a donation.”

“Bloody hero.”

                                     -In Memory of Frank
                     

IMPULSE

triple soak in a half-cocked desperation

“you ain't mad! you ain't mad”

dripping away and dripping away

shuffle the steam-cloak from your shoulders

shuffle the earth clod shoes to the door

and make a tiled-heart workspace in your throat

where the beater-elves

pound

pound

pound

and work that elfin magic on your tiled-heart workspace

Shoo!

Warm summer winds picking up

Stirring up something in the skies

Listening to the sudden pitter-patter

Of little feet

Falling from the sky

Falling on the roof

Pelting the hood of my car

Windshield blocked,

Sunlight blocking a clear view

Clear day, clear mind

Except for those feet falling from the sky

Crow foot, claw foot,

Big foot, yes, I saw Bigfoot…

Yeti-like and pedicured

Yeti-pedi?

No escape on a clear day

From clear eyes, cat’s claws

Frog feet stomping down,

Stepping down from reality

Sweltering and sweating

Underneath it all

Calling for the parking lot attendant

To make it stop

As negative Nelly and those feet are

Trickling down, sliding down, bearing down

On my faith

Only seeing the palms of those feet

Stomping and tapping

Jumping and jogging

As I wake from

A nap in the park

With a bug on my forehead.

Cup o' the Day

As the cotton candy skies rise 

Over the lake

Sand dune barriers are pushing 

Upward and outward

In the wind 

Around the brush

Through the errant branches

Exposing tree trunks recently spewed out

By the reckless water

Smoothing out, roughing out

Reformulating layers of cells

Redesigning what seemed 

Steady and unchangeable

Dashing upon the shoreline with pixie playfulness

Crashing on the rocks

While in the solitude

 A blackbird is grasping tight, holding tight

Clutching on to the tip 

Of a youthful arbor vitae

As the sails glide by,

Pulled and dragged

By an impish air current

As the surfer floats and gleams and beams

With a beautiful, bellowing gasp of breath

For the first ray of the morning.

Ancestral Flame

Paging through letters

Paging through time

Searching for answers

From the ghost of

A long forgotten memory

An unresolved puzzle of 

A life richly embraced

By an ancestor whose spirit 

Reaches out from the grave

With a longing for acknowledgement,

A delicate touch through the chasms

Of crossed timelines,

Crossed stars

In the ethereal longitude and latitude of the mind

For a tale untold is a person forgotten,

A loss through true death,

A loss that is softened and erased

As we revive the tale,

We restore their being to

A state of immortality

That can never be destroyed 

As long as we talk and search and remember and love.