Bummer Leadstone

images fractured through splintered glass,
weave bile through bleached blond tips
and fake breasts,

cut to commercial wait 20 minutes cut back

a chair wobbles out front,
an attractive woman
clicks by moving north/away
dark hair obscuring her features,
shes Asian with brown smooth skin
and passes by everyday
at this exact time,
Bummer Leadstone times it
on his television watch,

shes on her way to work, school, shopping, food;
none of which he has, or can do,
it's only perfect if the commercials run,
that way the girls aren't there to see him,

shoeless and hatless,
on the street counting the minutes in his chair,
keeping time with

terrible acting and disinterested plot threads, still sponsors run-

Aging more quickly everyday,
bones and tendons yet to warm as the night approaches
and seats haven't been moved,
or taken

elsewhere...

the sun drops over smog LA skies
the Lakers sleeping on championships
the Asian woman finding another way home,

 here...

on past the old RCA television store
destabilized glass,
and a man
sick and old,
hasn't moved in two days,
clerks walking past
and shoplifters,

he hasn't got a wallet to steal or spare,
just wispy gray hairs and tattered feet,

the hills fade away over sunny-side
Viacom dreams
and the exposure he can't escape.

Tally Marks and N keys

skipping stones into sand,
her hands calloused yellow
and broken,
silently broken and classified by me,
set into columns and rows and tables,
fixed into my fantasy,

Is it wrong to cling to these titles
we construct,
for ourselves and others?

watch as we drift unsteady in the night fog,
offering sanity as advice,
waiting on a reservation
made by a phones disembodied voice,
rocking haphazard, stomach upside-down hazard,
under starry seas,
and cold-blue skies.

Blush

I'm flushed in some
jagged circle, misguided
symmetrical circular conspiracy,
bouncing back and forth
through confidence and altered-reality,
a mixed-drink cocktail
glowing Hawaiian punch green into the violet night,
a complementary no thank you to breakfast,
with stomach rumbling starvings
washing over cobweb
painted walls decayed like old play-doh
resting on pure white window sills

I'm flushed into that night glass
ever walk-wandering
into that same same distance,
counting the steps,
kneeling over adjacent graves
cradled away.

Construction on I95? Sure I'm down

The gasoline orange-yellow sun
awakens over tired pilots
sipping coffee
and phasing out
the low hum of a song
carried over radio waves
to work stations
and mistranslated lives,

the one perpetual failure of man
is the north bound bridge on I95
running over the Girard Point Bridge,

Old graying war machines rest
tired underneath, a slumber forced
upon aging metal bones,
in pretend-memory
full of vigor and violence,
now slouched into creaking recliners
and stuffed with catheters,
waiting for unrecognizable dinners
and sunset futures.

Today we asked

The table is cold,
the food acts like
illuminated coils
in open refrigerators
freezing over the landscape,
peaks and valleys
dwarfed by slow brawling glaciers,
moving away
towards chilled bodies
lying still under peach trees
barren and unrecognizable,
sketching letters across the ground
that you scuff and distort with your boots,
a message of apathy,
like a cashier pulling heavy items
and black bars over
steady red light,
dead empty inside and moved by hidden
impulses electric and man-made,
a question smeared across
unmoving lips,
where does the future end
and the past begin,
today we asked.

Over the Sky She rests under Flowers

"If you follow me we'll get there faster!"

She said, over swirling winds. My arms catch the coattails of retreating butterfly insomniacs, a collage of colors searing the night. She dodges day-glo paint coated walls, multi-colored and wild on either side. I hear her perfectly. Her voice travels clear and sweet ignoring the rain soaked obstacle course. Small drops land flat and hard on unstable ground, drawing deep dark blotches on the charcoal pavement. Black spots, bleeding into grey obscurity. No cracks, or history. Washed out by the rain, like everything around us, they will eventually dry.

Her voice,

the only thing,

holding my feet to the ground

as they pat-pat-pat

pull me forward,

her thoughts work like gravity

and build this place

Where no one is. No one but us. Us, alone. The sound is hollow, an earthly vacuum. Space, the theater. She's erased the past and drawn only the present/future. An amalgam of want and have. So, my feet carry me toward her, like a dancer onstage, mesmerizing the audience with his terrific lies. While cables, thin and invisible, control his arms, legs, feet, hands; a puppet master inventing the act. Unconsciously I'm avoiding the nearest puddle, again and again, again and again. They sit still, stagnant until struck by watery meteors falling constant from the blotted out gray sky. A quick collision, a grand concert, a muddled reflection. But I'm already past myself, leaving my reflections behind. Searching for her hand-

She holds it out by the door, her hand protruding from the opening. The light from inside escapes into the alleyway toppling over itself, fiery like the sun and reckless. I close my eyes and stagger towards her. The first puddle is mine. The second is hers. She leaps in with me laughing. her body, the rain cold against her hot skin, against mine. the light rushes behind her

bathing me

in brilliant darkness

the kind that only light can bring,

brilliant and consuming,

is the eclipse-///

Watch us falling in that moment. Watch us falling in that moment frozen, maybe one thousand untold miles per hour through story, obliterating the narrator, reorganizing the setting. We create furious ripples with the clouds, whirling and caught in the storybook. Read it aloud, the sound is what we are. Now and ever ever, threads to be woven, so picture this...

There's a castle, old yet new, resting under slow moving clouds. A princess sleeps inside under careful watch. We've heard there have been many suitors. Each wish to take this beautiful maidens hand. In marriage or treachery. She's frozen in time. In future time the mystics say, not that the court would understand. She's come from somewhere else, some other place, far away. The king's helpers whisper strange sounds into the night, a voice calls out to her, from over walls, under fences, through reality; "roll them mouse over yonder the heart eye faces." They're scared, "what could such strange things mean." Ingrid to Solomon, her slow witted but caring husband. He's lost his arm in the war, but it taught him to love what he could never have, and vise-versa, or so on. "Two arms aren't for every man," he's liable to say. If you listen, of course. And most do, he's quiet and wise.

She sleeps on a bed,

unlike any other in the kingdom,

and the king hath checked

but found no clue,

They hover above her, and hold her hand. Standing over her continuous stream of...humanity, worshipers, those who are afraid, seeking guidance, seeking her hand. From far away lands, and surrounding hills, boasting of great deeds, or offering gifts."If she should awake," says one, "I shall take her with me, as my prize eternal." He peers out from behind dyed blond hair and fake smiles, "Your prize shall be mine," responds another looking quite the same. You know how these princes talk, all selfish and robust, or pretentious and haughty. Either or, the point is made. They waited for days, or an evening, steadily grew old over their bones, slow in their thoughts and words. Tired and defeated, stealing quick glances into the past. And she didn't wake up,

not for them,

not for any of them.

And the king grew old

and the kingdom grew weak,

time passed, the trees wilted

threw off their leaves

lived as skeletons

under the cold sun

and grew again.

The light grew brighter

transforming the smallest shadowed place

into goliath, towering in corners

across the bedroom floor,

the setting sun;

As her face drew close to mine, her arms folded around my neck. Her feet lifted up, like in a movie or some pivotal romantic scene. She stopped the clock and held us there for the artist. You know the one. The artist that draws all things, the one that lets you, in those few instances of happiness unlike any other, watch yourself like through a kaleidoscope looking glass. You remember those moments forever. Most keep them held close, keep them to themselves tight between their arms, a beautiful seconds long eternal secret. But when you hold each other, it's always there. Unspoken, that special thing. That artist painted thing. That no one can have, or take away. It's a forever thing, for you and me.

So we're through the door, and all the princes are knocked down. Some drag out barroom brawl, or they all fainted. At once? No one was ever too sure. The jester pretended white, but they tore him apart. Figuratively; he lost his job. Finding nowhere to lend his talents he crossed many oceans, found a small cottage and settled there. He tended his small crops but his stigma remained. Can't go telling lies the King said. He's a righteous, do good King,who missed this jester to the end of his days.

In the castle more empty with clutter by the day, conspicuous-

The bed was left

and the girl,

this magical-cosmos

looking girl

with jet black hair

and pink calming lips,

they defined the word pink,

the explorers found it

and the guy who named the crayon,

a collective memory etched deep

in the mind,

"the perfect-perfect girl"

If only one could touch her,

steal her magic for a second

a millennium,

what could they do?

for themselves?

they'll never have it;

It's her.

It's only her.

A figure, standing in the doorway, a man, blocks the flickering fire-light of the torches that line the hall. In the rooms adjoining/adjacent, asleep the King, his helpers, the guards remain, undisturbed. Solomon and Ingrid turned in for the night dreaming of their children grown and moved away. She is no longer alone. His breathing slows nervously, he takes a step, two, three, four, uneasy and disoriented. Her eyes hidden beneath sleep blinking in and out in the dark. He loves her.

And he wakes her, unlike any who have tried. He's traveled one-hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred miles, in circles, in straight lines, over cliffs where men have met their ends at peace and at war, slept alone on uncharted shores. Without light he's imagined the world. Imagined her in it. He's never heard her tale and sure the castle drew him forth. She doesn't open her eyes. Undeterred, he lies beside her. She turns like the tides.

     “Hi...” she offers, her voice muffled by sleep, but no less-- it fills his heart, his tears, something wild, future-like dips into his heart.

     “Hi,” He answers back in a daze of movement and afraid to move-stillness. The castle shakes off the icicles of recycled pasts. Irradiated from within, it feeds the sun. A gift shared between the moon and his estranged sun, appearing together on that rare late-afternoon when he sneaks ghost-like and transparent up to the tired sun. Burning orange and yellow and hot, all day.

Slowly, slowly slowly an arm under her star-clustered hair supernova. She moves with him, in sync with the fluid motion of his body. He brings her close \explosion\, coated in careful blue green red sparkling gold. A small parting of lips. A brilliant light, She turns her head. A small fissure in the fabricated unreality. It hangs by the edge of the bed, love and time in conversation.///

The End.

The book is closed, ink black and blue dried in the corner of the world. All that remains is the constant flow of time, churning like waves on the shore. The heavy crash of salt and sand. The ever present reality. We can find love in the never escape. Proceed--

Through the door, after door after door. Moving pictures and sound drowned out, stepping aside. A hand brushed over that hair and we're wavering. Black like the night and shining. In my arms and no weight, we're one. Can you see us? Lips moving over your ear? A whisper goodnight? A kiss? The artist finishes his portrait. It's ours to share forever, silently but knowing. In the darkness between the morning and the night. In your bed across time, I hold you close by as shooting stars and milky ways die and light up bright, brighter than man and earth and thoughts, but not brighter than you.

It's for you.

It's you.

It's only you.

Watching

Sunset sunrise sunset

from your bed.

Lullaby and goodnight sun

sunset over trees
hours ago,
burnt fire red
glowing orb melting the sky,
clouds engulf
mesmerizing the clock
counting its steps
backwards-wise forward
in time, in rhythm
count it
you hear the bell-steps
clang-clang-clang
against the wall,
your head,
feeble curse
predicting
thy name
thy kingdom
come for a name,
sacrifice so same sacrilege
in the sky
burnt umber sky,
spilling over us and out of control
and forgotten
by head
hitting pillow and sleep
and the morning,
the sun has risen back
new again,
solid and official,
a stamp on every door
a lie on all our backs,
turn deep sun roasting
cool our backs,
squinting
the sun sets
on extra days and other days,
the night looks so young.

Upstairs we are thinking

where'd that fucking beetle go?
setting fire to laundry landfills
and beetle trash piles...
can they get any closer
under this light? fuck,
who was she? this bulb isn't
strong enough, everything looks
milky yellow, or cold,
beetle cold and shiny,
ugly scaly wet shiny,
clinging to metal wires,

here first aaaaaand...there,

off to the right, the shiny beetle right,
where we know where
and for-
a single second eternal,
she places her finger
to the fire,

you remember it red with pain
and dancing,
beetle dancing,

buzzing concentrated,
fills the night 100 degree air,
where fans limp slowly onward
toward failure;

where

she ignores stinging
sounds rising above
injured animal screams
out into the distance blue.

Happy Anniversary

the night dances ready for
unseen missiles-

quick! up above us
as I hold your hand,
soaring into this
illuminated explosion,
color burns
in the dense purple-blue still sky,
we shatter the easy silence
with bits of fiery colorful green red silver and gold
shifting the balance of time
a before and after time,

blinding twilight your midnight kisses
bring, it's beyond where we can touch them,
so far beyond they're close
and real, pressed against your skin,

that invisible torchbearer
believes he leaves the mark,
but you make them shine,
radiating you out from you
incinerating the bleak and lost,
hidden behind eyelashes for me,
many worlds die and live
an infinite life,

benches line these concrete
and metal airways,
a spiraling pace set by
limitless ends and beginnings,
I count the moments I fell in love with you,
with each
crashboomcrashssssssssfffffffCRASH
in the daylit-night,

when you shook my hand,
kissed my cheek,
cried in my arms,
when I held you solitary in the night,
when the sun warmed our faces,

crashsssssssss*the sound drowns out now
ssssssffffffffffffff

when we sat in the wet grass,
you wore sandals on sand,
there was ketchup-there was my streak,
you moved far away and we waved many good-byes
and hellos,
I sang to you at home on the beach
under skies like these,
you came back and panicked and left again,
when you taught me how to play blackjack

crasssssssssshssssssssssssssssffffffffffffff*

under pulsing lights we danced,
you giggled and reluctantly sipped,
sinking into your bed,
you reach out and pull me in,
all is black and right,
a fire, a meal, terrifying horses,
an intoxicating smile,

BOOMCRASHssssssssssssffffffffffffff
louder now, not much time to think
CRASH-POP-ffffffffffffff

another fizzles out,
there aren't enough explosions
there isn't enough time,
so that we could freeze it,
and bottle it,
design a pretty jar,
maybe with flowers and vines
curled under/between/over
stars and hearts
perfectly otherworldly,

the finale is a solemn affair
fantastic and finite,
sad even as its grand
a past before it reaches the present,
its over, the clamor laughter hissing bright-
we're left,
hand-in-hand,
a beginning with no end,
a forever agreement in a forever future,
lovers, friends, soul, heart, mind
I hear your voice quiet and building up
to whisper-

but I'm too fast
and my lips are yours.
happy Anniversary <3