Preacherman

Hair as dark as brimstone
Slicked back with the oily words of God
Lodged atop a calculating machine
Which contemplates his exodus
From our temple of sickness and death
Shattered truths
The old generations find sweet release
In his consoling and cajoling
Lean against his exclusive relationship
With an ancient Lord
But I see beyond the deceiver's finery
To a soul of fire and recession
That hordes tithes
To save himself from purgatory
A gas-guzzling, economic Hell
This Bible-thumping hypocrite
Attempts to pray away the dark
But candles do not excommunicate inner demons
His own murky heart
No more knows the wandering road
Through the night
Than I understand why
This shadow has fallen across our bloodstained door

Old Mother Knicker-Knacker

Distorted silence
With sinister mouth
Gaping poisonous fangs
Waiting to pounce on
Childish notions
Twisting to form some
Great radiation beast
That devours
What should be said
And leaves
Nothing, a hole
That oozes the Abyss
On the edge
I am fearful
Of the black tar
That seeps into our conversation
And engulfs huge chunks
Of words in its gelatinous mass

Tempest

Swirling of clouds covering noon
Bending sunlight to the commandments of midnight
Uncertainty characterizing the storm
Boiling water whistling through valves
Losing true bits of soul through plastered cracks
And spreading the corners of my heart
So dangerously thin
Until the electricity crackles and jumps
Between fragments of me
Communicating secrets like the
Static of dollar store talkies

Without Labels

The fluorescent bulb flickers
Minds strain to start their gears
A poem is a masculine thing
And labels make it so
Fire may pump though its lines
Words may pound its heartly pyre
Passion can heighten its desire
But a poem is masculine
Without labels it would not be so
Phrases cannot be bound
By organization or reason
A label burdens it down
Because a poem is a masculine thing
And cannot live without a cage

What Happens in the Photograph

Floating in a land of hope beyond the fragile frame
The occupant dives and flutters mindful of his name
Spoken once and now he strides for eternityacross a fallen bridge
Where a lover is ever-waiting left to wonder and fidget
Wonder what he would have deliciously whispered in her ear
Words battering an invisible door waiting for the poetic gods to hear
Walking past, we shall ever wonder as to the meaning

True Love

Two brides stood on the Bridge one night
Each eagerly awaiting an equally daunting lover
To be called home from war too early
Stepping through portals elusive to feminine minds
Where golden waterfalls shower ample bosoms
And crystal teardrops cascade from the velvet ceiling
Here a man is immortal among the gods
Her mind is frothy with soupy feelings
Alone at home his wife sits
When she struts among the clucking hens
Every silence politely stares from patterned curtains
The two have been broken of their naivety
Much to their shallow pitter-patters’ dismay

Tormented Soul

Falling through the span of life
There in the doubts of mind and soul
One soul resides in a crevice of darkness and despair
Where a torrent evokes a passion never seen before
Crying out for help from a long forgotten trust
And hoping to see what is not there
And flying to honor and tyranny in one breath
Inhaling the vastness of his lost cause.
The man has no choice but to fall
To die and lie with the best of falsehoods
To graze from the fields of lost dreams
To wish that once he may know the sunlight.
This is the curse of a soul tormented
Lost in a current of disappearing hopes and dreams
Never to be rescued from his own mind
The greatest tormentor of all.

The Unexpected

Tears rolling down creamy peaches, she smiles
Bows; applause polite dancing like candle light
And she wants to roar to tear at her perfect dress,smoothed hair,
But that would be unexpected
Opens the sleek, black door, a door she didn't inherit
A loser defeated by the red-headed traitor
A spy and a betrayer in a blue dress
But crying would be unexpected
The driver, silent, inches forward toward a quiet apartment
Inside the house, real rain of sadness falls
And unexpected apathy consumes her
The driver/butler stands in one corner
The war inside himself crying with her
An oak tree's crooked branch leans in the window refuge
War and woman weeping, everything waiting in some paradoxical universe
Until time and dreariness fallsFalls into each other's arms
The loser and the lost, the broken and the dreamer
They are kissing oxymorons in a library of sadness and solitude
How long has passion battered at life's monotonous door?
And when can we break away from prisons of flesh and bone?
And fly to our new, unexpected home?

The Sportsman

Forest crowding around him
Each tree shading him as he passed
The gypsies were on the move.
Ratuana
That damn song of the revolution
“Oh the great sit on their thrones
As we sing to the ruler of all
Mother of our fore-fathers
Lives among our brother
The wolf
He sings to the moon.”
Twenty-three of them.
He had counted
Two miles back when they had
Broken for water.
Ratuana.
That damn song of the revolution.
“And the owl
The wise owl
She sings with our song
She knows the words
Better than We.
Sing owl.
Sing to your mother the forest.”
One was struggling to keep up.
Ignored by the others.
Now was the time to strike.
That damn song.
“Sing brothers and sisters
Of the life we have
Here among the forest
The Great Mother
Welcomes us into her home!
Sing brothers and sisters!”
He fed an arrow into his bow.
He could feel the heartbeat, hear the animal’s cry to “wait, slow down.”
Soon it wandered off.
Then pop.
Gone.
Twenty-two.
“Sing brothers and sisters!”

The Penultimate Moment

An impending doom creeping upon us
The General’s breath a billowing cloud of smoke
The portrait of Honor atop his starving horse
Feel the battle rushing toward you beneath your feet
The final moment of Atonement
Before the great powers Above him Surrender
The chess pieces move about in a charade
Nothing stops a soldier’s destiny
As the gods atop Mt. Olympus deal out death
Fighting fate is futile
The inevitability of a clashing of swords and drawing of blood
Makes him shiver in a draft blown from the thunderhead
The end rushes toward him on fleeting gossamer wings
This is the penultimate moment
And only time knows for whom death will toll

The Last Bridge of Wimberly

Two miles past the old church house
Stands the last bridge of Wimberly
Where two sides met to fight their war
And two true lovers devotions were swore
Stands the last bridge of Wimberly
Twas long ago when war was made
And friendships thus began to fade
Among the town of Wimberly
The battles were fought hard and true
And blood gushed forth into the river blue
In that sad sweet town of Wimberly
But two lovers took a chance that night
Enemies found true love despite the fight
On that beautiful little bridge in Wimberly
But all the bridges were torn down
And everyone soon began to frown
On true love in the town of Wimberly
So one dreadful night
The people did alight
And decided to stop the fight
By burning the last bridge of Wimberly
Two lovers soon discovered the plot
And though their families blood ran hot
They went forth to save the last bridge of Wimberly
Torches approached from both sides
But today the river a body cleverly hides
For one young man died in Wimberly
As they approached his darling fair
Coming with hatred that caused nary a care
He stood up and was shot down on that place in Wimberly
The war was over the battle won
But no one knew quite why it had begun
“Two miles past the old church house
Stands our bridge of Wimberly”

The Humanity of Monsters

Play in the land of dreams where the beasts roam
Nothing can bring you home
After humanity has been deleted from a mind
Then taunting characteristics form
Are we not the monsters?
With our clear-cutting ways and terrible intolerance?
Are we not the destroyers of society on this earth?
Break a heart and cloud a mind
This is the beastly monster of a quality called humanity
That overpowers every other thought in our soul
Though they may not try to fight free
Does not humanity conquer all?

The Funeral

Rotting, cold, covered in cobwebs
He's dead.
No longer will he
eat my Oreos
rub the crumbs in my couch
fart in my bed while I'm trying to sleep
ask why we are having so many
"relationship problems"
wander off while I'm shopping.
He's dead.
Rotting, cold, cobwebby.
I miss him sometimes.
and cry two tears at a time
from both eyes.
My writing is dead.
He ran a writer's block sign.
and was killed by a man
on a tractor.
Now he is dead.
Rotting, cold, cobwebby.
The love of my life is gone.

The Devil's Hall

I imagine that’s what the Devil sounds like
Marching down his marble hall
His fair head held high in the enveloping darkness
His midnight boots announcing his presence to all
The tormented souls who wait in anguish below
He sounds much like the cry of a dying being
The noise of a dream crushed in silence
I imagine that’s what Hell feels like
Creeping upon you as certain as fear in the night
Bending you past broken only to snap back to
A shadow of the soul that once resided in your hollow body
The hands of death rising to catch you in a similar peril
Fastening you to the life they lead in death
I imagine that’s what life is like when you’re in Hell

Tales of a Sophomoric Fool

Brokenness is a cure for childhood
Silence enveloping small peals of laughter
Life fading into eternity spent under battered wings
Humanity dying in polite giggles
When youth cries of educational starvation
Only time can Scotch-tape empty hearts
Devoid of joy and simple jests
Bareness of emotion running through heart’s corridors
Naked and removed of all innocence and purity
Where shall he hide in society?
On quiet tears muffled in pillows?
In fervent glances from subway windows?
By drowning in the bottom of a pint?
Behind transparent cubicle walls?
Where shall he stow his heart?
Locked and keyed beneath aching ribs
Never to return to a welcoming smile

Sweeping Gestures

He makes sweeping gestures, bringing the crooked smile
Mommy, watch me, as she runs to the surf
Flying sand beats the yellowed paperback in my hand
His touch, and, motions toward bouncing curls
Dodging among the foamy white waves
A picnic basket leadens my grip
He touches my hand again, but it lingers there
Then runs to be an airplane, the two have matching curls
All mine, my future
I’ll run to join them; he opens his mouth and calls
“Miss Dinwiddie,” he says, I laugh
My husband, the court jester
He smiles back, “Ms. Dinwiddie,” he says again
But something jerks because he’s growing fuzzy
“Ms. Dinwiddie, you’re not paying attention.”

Staircase

A grand staircase spiraling toward heaven
Fierce billows of air thrashing from the thunderhead
Everyday is an uncertain step toward a year
Though all of humanity must climb to meet Death
The climb devours youth and gives wisdom
Over the rail, jumpers eternally fall
Soon the thunderhead will be upon us
Awaiting us is a black cloak
That moves mountains and crushes empires
A whisper of an idea that has been in existence
Before the beginning of time, prepared for humanity
Blinded by what awaits them, they climb aimlessly
Focused on one thing; none seeing; none feeling
Fools trudged onward and fear the inevitable
Never once, do they stop and enjoy the view from up here

Southern Aristocracy

The beauty of a sunset hidden in a sweet smile
Welcoming an exchange of neighborly words shadowing hatred
Disgust at the loss of the royalty that once was
The kings of good food and lazy weekend afternoons
The poor of the world who live in luxury and love of life
Baffling all but their own kind who understand only the songs
Songs of the heart’s deepest desires for all perfection
Heated tempers cloaked by gentlemanly smiles and lady’s wiles
Where imagination is never forgotten but exaggerated
To hide the faults in character that provide regional peace
Castles atop rolling farmland fall into disgrace and despair
Only the conquering enemies of old can afford the deserved repair
While the aristocracy sit and ponder the change

See How She Bleeds

How her heart bleeds for his
But she wants to fly alone
Must to know that she can stand on her own
Ugliness and the mockery of apathy swirl in her head
And she wants out; she wants to be free
More than him, even more than greatness after she is dead
Cut her life’s string; let her swim in this blissful trance
Let her dream of his imaginary dance
She can’t ever be good enough
Not for him or the words
Both of them make her life
Look at greatness, my child
See it so close to your fingers outstretched
But don’t come any closer or it will flee, fast and wild
How her heart bleeds to have everything it could want so
Close

Seagulls Scream Above My Head

Seagulls scream above my head
The sand burns my feet
A castle built for his princely stead
And the finest cheeseburger you will meet
Surfers and tourists swap waves
A game of volleyball to show our skill
While some just check out the babes
Your beach

A storm brews overhead
While one unlucky ship wishes it was dead
Waves crash on craggy rocks
Icy surf dampens my socks
I’m a lonely figure on a giant stretch
With nowhere to go but as a shark’s catch
My beach

Parlor Tricks

Lies seeping up from carpeted floors adorned with Persian rugs
Tangling themselves around wooden legs and glass shelves
Crawling from open mouths into innocent ears
That listen with hearts unfolded on the surgical table
Riches and beauty shroud faces of real hatred
Only the dead eyes speak of the horrors that fill them
Murder in the core of a column of stability
A flaw in the crème of the alabaster stone
Reigning dominant over blue collar fools
Astounded by the diseased souls that fill the room

Open Heart Surgery

Chaos reigning supreme over hearth and home
Poverty striking dreams down like stoning birds from nests
Where once the majestic stood now the pathetic fall
Abolished and swept under a great canvassing rug
Hidden away to ferment until their extinction

Ode to a Goldfish

Everything seen and nothing lost
In your prison of scrying glass
With bugged eyes that see the
Hurt and pain of a world gone
Forever embedded in its own sins
And yet you see past the dead and decomposing ways
Of societies past their prime
See the love that resides in the dark alleys
Hate that shoots like flames in grungy fireplaces
You see the forbidden and tradition
The children hiding from the ways of an old generation
The great bowing to the senility of age
Families that deteriorate before the eyes of all-seeing
Gods shading themselves from poverty's view
Caging each other in palaces of power and pleasure
Never worrying about the damned souls of youth
You see and feel the sores of the world
And help with your infinite knowledge
Found in the silence of your bowl

Men on the Battlefield

The men on the battlefield lie
The widows at the sideline cry
For them, the truth is the only thing in the world that hurts
It pains their miles of smiles
To see the darkness fold around corpses of love
The gunshots no longer will be heard over just masculine faces
Now women fill up their empty spaces with talk of this equality
Tis a sad life when more men and women
Must continue to die for a land that is free
We fight for what?
Perhaps we fight for that spark of hope in all humans
That light that whispers the lie where one day we’ll find peace

Love Poem

If life were a poem and love the words
My life with you in it would be filled with a lot of words
That don't make sense
But to me the poem would be the most beautiful in the world.

Keystone

Every breath taking time closer to something that was
A center enfolded on both sides by the rise and fall
An empire forgotten washed away in the shores of eternity
This heartbeat of the universe hidden in a glance
A grain of sand to keep the balanced scales from tipping
A soul of stone wedged to stop the crumbling of gateways
Dotted among the paths of life's narrow halls
They are arches that lead to nowhere and everywhere at once
Doorways that lead to the palms of the gods
Where one can learn the secrets of the centuries
And feel the pain of innocents and soldiers in the currents
Mixed and mingled blood that glues the past to the future
Stopping nature's ebb and flow
In the kiss of trees touching sky.

I Wish I Was a Drop of Dew

I wish I was beautiful
the way a single drop of dew looks
before she joins a puddle to
muck out the rest of her days.
I want to be as virtuous
as that chaste droplet
she saves herself for the right
perfect, exact moment
when the Cosmos agree,
And her little liquidy body
melts into one of her larger fellows
holding onto her virginity until the end
of her morning and the reassuring spring rain.
I wonder at the flexibility of her temper
the agileness of her emotions
anchoring her to her birthplace
until she goes rolling off.
I wish I was that fearless.

Happy Willow Tree

Sadness seeps from the willow branch
If a tree could cry
Every forest would mourn you
If a flower or butterfly
Could know the despair I feel
Every inch of nature would beg my mercy
Sadness seeps and creeps from the willow branch
For nature knows nothing of war
Or petty jealousy or success
Only of survival
Seeping and creeping from the trees
I have told him my story
An apt listener was he
My ever happy willow tree

Fallen

Listen children with ears so young
To a tale of an angel fallen
Among the land of mortals
The beauty did sink
Banished till her last breath
She hid among a human family
And watched in wonder the mess they made
And fell in love with their deadly ways
Till one day a fair one caught her twinkling eye
And no other reason could she deny
But that every particle of her
Had fallen to mortal bliss
For no word spoken in angel tongue could name this
Her envy of mortality had turned to joy
For she had fallen to earth for the
Substance she was made of
Love

Exploitation

Two truths
One--reality
The discovery of facts
Comparing and missing the mark
A sub-zero batting average
Realizing what everyone has known
Exactly how high the bar is
Above the head
Two--failure
The world hates the fruit
That has been borne of sweat and blood
Average--No more dreams of extraordinary
Clotheslined
The End

Everything Falls

The flags whipped atop ragged castle battlements
A foamy mass of sweat and terror waiting to roll on them
The enemy’s foul stench carried to them on the roaring gale
Fear fell among the iron ranks as a heavy fog upon the marsh of hearts
Protect the Grove inside the walls
Where the Queen and her lover sit beneath a blooming apple tree
As the flaming arrows rein, the King counts his futile gold
The King’s gentleman and the Baroness ride away
With saddle bags laden full of fragile flammable history
The Viscount and a lady’s maid’s tumble has ended abruptly
When the cook throws the field hands’ stew on the Duke who was passing
And the rubble begins to tumble through the Grove
Soldiers flood royal apartments pulling tapestries from walls
Revealing hidden passages that not a fortnight ago lovers had trod
Only the Royal Advisor paces his chamber floor
Then turns to his window and laughs as a horse disappears

Daydreaming

The dragon’s breath on his princely head
In a moment the beast will see him dead
But out of the sly of his eye he glimpses a maiden fair
With innocent staring eyes and white hair
Fear must derail its course
He will defeat this brute with courage not force
His legs tense, his sword loose
The monster leers at his weapon knowing its use
The two lunge and meet in air
Like two Roman gods of despair
But quick as a flash the sword disappears
And the beast has fallen after many years
The maiden loosens herself from her fear
And runs quickly to her princely dear
And y equals mx plus b
I’m back from the world only I can see

Dark Mood

Sick with the desperation of youth
Tormented by afflictions of the mind
Grotesque visions of festering failures
And great boils filled with attempted successes
Half-hearted moves to escape made in fear
While brooding away at tempests of the soul
Purples and blacks that cloud sight portals
And rain unfinished masterpieces down like broken glass
Sitting among the magnificent
With only procrastination and hypocrisy
To show for a supposed lifetime of devotion
Undecided, undetermined just how far this depression will spiral

Dance of the Poets

Two word-shapers met to have tea
Both submitting to their own poetic-deity
Ultimate power grasped in their pens
The world around them amuck in its sins
Giant pendulums and Trojan horses
Fate, death, love and many forces
Each stowed away in their private hash
But astride the power of love, their words clash
When no call is stranger than that of a poet
Shifting the letters until amor fits
Their love is the core of literature
And all of humanity will stir
As their lips meet amid the rain drops
The world we know halts, stops
Waiting with bated breath
For a poet’s dance always ends in death

Clockwork

My heart is breaking inside
As if the clockwork has halted all time
Is this how the end of the world begins?
Is this why the magic of a heart song has left the trees
Gone like the Lorax
Where are the saviors of our childhood?
Who climbed out of toy boxes?
The imaginary friends who were cowards
That cared only for their own skins
And nothing for mine

Blood Run Hot

Blood run hot
Fire burn cold
Stir the pot
And count the gold
Man grows old
His heart stays young
Life refuses to release its hold
Until his song is sung
The bird in the cage
Knows the song of freedom the best
Only with a new age
Can his chains rest
The fields of green where I roam
Will never bring me home
Never bring me home

Balancing Equations

Meaning of life
Every particle moving, traveling
Shifty pieces
Like when you’re in the car
And the phone rings
As the conversation precedes
The particles, atoms and molecules
Align on the puzzle board
Balance

Reactions
Combine two chemicals
Greed and desire
Mixes with salt and water
To yield, heartbreak
Balance

Writing equations
Abusing language
You’re using words to twist
Turn and change forming
Problematic precipates such as
Wedges to cause a fission
Between the factors

Aardvark Collection

Lost in the fringe of the mind
A black spot remains unidentified in the fray
A hole through which escapes everything creative
Slipping away into a giant puddly void
Where it collects on the fingertips in a single dew drop
And tastes of disappearing innocence and forgotten memories
This abyss is where originality was first conceived
When the very first artist drew his first breath
And humanity discovered the value of pondering
The beginning of life and the meaning of the heavens

A Gentleman and a Lady

Perhaps another time to go spinning about
Another heart grown cold waiting for love
Another dress overlooked as winter’s breath kills its splendor
Death and destruction and mayhem making the world turn
Pivot about on its axis and laugh all the while
Across the Last Bridge is where we’ll meet
To spend eternity under a violet tree
Gone will be the beauty of youth
Away will have flown the memories of her
The grandeur of a lady is hidden behind a smile
But what does that smile know of the tragedies of life?
Warmth, it knows, and a love that is true
A love that is lasting and strong
Dance with death and heartbreak
Cry your heart out, is it worth the pain?
To see a gentleman and a lady waltz hand-in-hand
With their fair heads held high
Knowing not that I wait on the bridge for a gentleman
A gentleman’s gentleman who enjoys ripping hearts
A tormenting demon who shredded my heart
And now its raining pieces of me like snow

A Door

A barring portal between two worlds
The ultimatum of private events
To keep your love in and reality out,
The gate to thoughtfulness and deep discussion
Causing hidden laughter and elongated whispers
In the ears of lovers,
A shelter to the hole of dreams,
A red frame hiding the picture of life,
A quiet place and a simple hovel,
This brass sphere that loves and loathes
Locks and opens the truth in our hearts,
Every piece of knotted wood smelling of secrets,
Stairs to eternity and nowhere nestled behind,
No entry and free-for-all trespassing on a shimmering island,
A midway point between fate and destiny,
Such is the nature of a door.

An Ode to the Monster Under My Bed

Lost among dirty jeans and discarded novels
What a childhood you must have had
Growing up alongside mice and stale coffee
So close to being discovered countless times.
Every night that I do a running leap onto the bed
And talk well past when the lights are extinguished
I thank the almighty monster in the sky
That I have a place in society
People believe in my existence
My name is spoken on the lips of adults
Without a smirk or a scowl
How similar are we
Forgotten by the great and governed by impulses
Sometimes after the phone has returned to its chair
And the sheets have warmed to my touch
I lie and wonder where the monster ends
And the human begins

A World of Difference

Sitting side by side on a seat of equality
Words all appear as boisterous poems
Cascading over lines and molding to a predestined form
Nothing accomplished or grand
Just a poetic emissary
Sent to Earth to weave fictitious lies
And shout magnificent tales
In the shadow of her college-bound gods
Who rest beside her on equality’s seats
Telling her that she can achieve her dreams
Not realizing that she only yearns
To be one of them

A Fairytale of Youth

Trusting their faltering first steps to invisibility
Exhausting children’s minds beating against issues of pride
Believing they can change the world
Waiting for a hero to step from the midst of their ranks
Dreaming of destinies that will never come
Hiding the truth in their hearts until it grows rancid and stale
Wishing upon fame and stardom
Sitting eternally alone under the Bridge
Transferring their sadness one to the other
Making the whole world dread their oncoming age