words smell of good wine and rare meat
I see right through you
as we sit at a table tattooed with memories
and martini glasses all in a row
cold french fries slither into everybody's hands
eating guitars
drinking daisy's
drifting through life without a pillow
I see faces
everyone I love
best in all the world
buzzing and settling and landing
agitated bees in front of me
holding smiles
photo copied from easier times
conversations miss vowels
a drunken profit
wisdom comes in sips and gulps
hair striped with lessons learned
with unsaid judgements
with glasses shared
I turn my head to see my friend chatting
with his finger
he stares through the reflecting glass
holding onto tears for yesterday
everyone means well
with stories of nesting birds in fluffy beds
I watch and wait to be asked
and once I start I have no idea what I'm saying
nor how I know what flowers intend
and cyclones think
I just do
I can tell by nods and furrowed brows
and dried up sweat
that I'm onto something
so I talk and stroke and cough blossoms
while reminiscing over sawed off trees
bursting into flames
my favorite weeds produce red teacups
I return home to flirt with the moon
and wink at the weeping willow
swaying to the water dance in her head
it’s time to bring tears on my deck
and flip memories on her back
questions comes for a spot at the table
in an alligator’s tongue
I never did trust her eyes
life is a bucket falling into a well
blue curtains sway without a breeze
I cry for many reasons
but seldom for the right one
I took the head right off her
making her grumpy for days straight
impressions have no sense of humor
I left behind hugs on the left side
bosom to bosom
in the place where I forgot my shoes

I’m riding out the storm. That is the story of my life. Riding out one storm after another. Blown helpless across the sea, or planted ankle deep in mud dragging firewood. As sure as I know the sun will come out, sending rainbows through shimmering spiderwebs in my soggy garden, I can bank on the fact another storm is coming.
It’s been uphill all the way, one foot in front of the other. But, I can’t say it hasn’t been interesting. I’m grateful for all the gifts, the wonder, the love, the laughs. 
My memories are all I’ve brought home from the trip. In eternity I imagine they will amount to some sea shells collected at the beach.
In the next thirty seconds, NO, that’s not going to happen. Later today, after lunch, NO.
What I’m asking myself to admit is, “OH Fuck, I don’t, in truth, exist. I could be gone at any given second.”
No, I have plans, that’ll have to wait.
Still, I have this feeling I’m trying to hide, from something that has already found me.
I forget that I’ve known this all along. 
I learned the lesson so many many years ago. Sitting up all night, sketching self portraits, one after another until they litter the bedroom floor, none of them proving my existence. 
It seems the only real thing in the room was the exit. Kicked under a pile of comic books with a bullet in very chamber.
But what’s the point of an exit when I’m already gone. When I was never here.
I will never know that I’ve left the room. I will not enjoy a feast of friends in the severed garden. 
I believe it will be a solitary path, deaf and blind, returning to the stars.
No more lonely than a night at the kitchen table in the company of a blank sheet of paper.
I am not interested in vague spiritualism or the dissection of the universe into quarks and monads. 
Instead I would like to spend my time raising a whiskey to some kind words for my fellow travelers.
While enjoying the satisfaction that I am, at least for the moment, one who rides storms. ​

Something vague rattles the dark, penetrates the singing in my ears, and tips me forward into the room. I assumed it would be the fan slipped its pedestal to bring the fly-swarming steel petals across the bedroom floor. 
Nothing. 
I can feel the slow breeze rapidly cooling my sleep-sweat through damp bamboo sheets. 
I was so very sure something fell. Both dogs are deep stillness at the foot, and under the bed. 
I was dreaming a dream forever lost when it . . . whatever it was. . .  
                    called me back. 
There was nothing ambiguous about it and my heart is still running in the wilderness.  
Sometimes at night I can feel death standing in the hall outside my room. Her fingers resting light on the knob, waiting, listening, checking on me. 
It’s a standing offer, she’s been waiting patiently for my invitation, which to this point I’ve neglected to extend . . .  
And . . . I have to admit, there’s an extraordinary ease and freedom to knowing she’s left it in my hands.
I am extremely careful, and all of my risks are well calculated.
Even on the motorcycle. 
But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that sometimes when I am sailing the asphalt dragon with music overflowing from my helmet, I shout out “skip this track”, because god forbid I should die listening to the Doobie Brothers.
It’s the only thing that truly terrifies me on the highway.
Beyond the singing in my ears, beneath the swarming  fan, out past the hum of the air conditioner, and way below the doppler trucks on the distant highway, there is something deeper. 
I never know if it’s a hearing or a feeling, but I sense it spreading. 
A vortex slowly pulling everything into the earth. 
The eater of rust. 
I think it’s always been there, and that’s where everything is headed. 
The wind chime will inevitably fall from its wire. 
The cast iron door to old furnace will never open. 
A fleet of ghost ships sail deeper into the ocean mud with every passing moment.
If I pull this nail from the wall it will leave a hole . . . and that is how the dark gets in.
The squirrel in my chest is choking on a nut full of orange dust.   
Ivy asks, “what is it?”
I didn’t know she was awake.
“Something fell”
“I didn’t hear anything”
“Neither did I”

it’s ballet
flipping lightly backwards
whether or not I’m listening
earnestly showing me endings
in quilts and poetry
it’s almost always in the beginnings
where strings get drawn tightly
while we  pretend at paying attention
slowly shoveling assumptions
while playing accordions behind our backs
be that as it may
it’s only fair
that the moon sheds and grows
depending on my pitted sleep
it’s more of a tale than glory
I’m desperately hungry
no not for food
but for the underground erupting
the gift of the serpent
rearranging my rocks
fending off dust where rituals begin
it starts in swirls
leading to spirals
ending where i play my horn
in a  shining Cuban moon
while birds bring ribbons
that circle him wholly
he clears his throat
as they dodge and flutter
him not brandishing mistakes
a look all dimples
a flip of the hand
a start of scent
no not of herbs
but a deep rich intuitive smell
scattering feathers
starting my groin
raising my arms
bowing before glory
receiving his gift
it’s through a single flower
I remember love
the color of my mother’s skin
blowing kisses through our hearts
serving blue all night long
it’s the contrast of etiquettes
that sets my soul a sail
not the words he recites
it’s the way he stares
he came to me through a song
one that only bees can hum
it’s the flags I put up
to tear down yellow
that wears my skin to bleed
he sits in a tree above my head
turning words into rhymes
taming my curls straight
placing spit where I tickle
carving curves with hot iron
it’s he that soothes the beast
leaving only black behind