Got One for Ya

Have you heard about the blind novelist, well versed in the art of irony, that joined a five man bank robbery team? Guess what his job was:
the get away driver.

Black Roses

Days of tango music and black roses; not real black, rather midnight red, old blood black and I have lost my soul. Or, I have not lost it as much as I danced away; left it in pieces, fallen from me; brittle leaves and faded petals scattered on a glossy hard wood floor.
I left my soul at the black rose bush and it dripped into the ground. My own vein's water grew thorns and splattered up into the sky; delicate flowers, dark and rare. The black rose: beauty, death. Beauty from the abyss, beauty from dirt, beauty from nothing.
I wanted to walk with no clothes, not naked, but dressed in card board; draped in drab, completely disposable. Ephemeral; a single season seed. I wanted to be true to myself. I wanted to be a gift to this world, wrapped in tissue paper and ribboned, when I entered here.
Still, I searched for the fragments of my soul. Quiet and still I looked with clouded eyes.
The pieces returned in solitary drops from the endless sky and wet my cheeks; tears of gratitude running into my heart. Tears from blind eyes, filling an ancient dry sea; painting it green and wild. A vast field of roses from bleached bone. Sweet fragrance sent to soothe the sightless.

Mice Dream Night Returns

Morning pushes night underground; night rests. She rests too, in the fur of black cats and the iridescent plumes of crows. Before closing her eyes, she hides clues in the deepest shade. Night asks the morning birds for a good night serenade.
In the evening, as the sun sighs into her western bed, night returns, quiet and sly; pervasive and rejuvenated. She sprinkles star glow onto still puddles and ponds, where the sparkles dance. They dance too, in the soft eyes of frogs and the hard gaze of owls. A silence grows; the silence between breaths. Children dream.
Children do not dream of cozy beds and dark houses. Rather, they dream of the day and the days’ doings; they dream and feed the sun; calling her back.
Before morning, field mice trundle underground, their pockets filled with polished pebbles of night; tiny globes that hold the memory of endless stars. Curled tight in dry grass nests, mice dream the thoughts of midnight and first-star wish; of crescent sliver behind veiling clouds. They dream of night and her husband, the Great Nothing.

Apple Trees Leaf and Apple

The gnarled and twisted began smooth and fine. Shaped in time and by circumstance, warped and wound and going deep, the roots fold themselves around obstacles, into the hard and unforgiving and there, in the dense dark, melt the edges, squeezing the experience, bring sweet water into the world.
At the ending edge of summer I will pick an apple, stretching tall and reaching, pull it off and down, that which came from the dark, the fruitless hardness. The crunch of fractured rock is there; the sweet of long days is there; a stem and smooth brown seeds in the core are there. They ask to be tossed aside. Not trashed, but tossed into the wild, into the inhospitable, onto hard, crusty soil where:
Perhaps and maybe another tree might spring. It too, if so, will start small and smooth and fine; patient and unrelenting, chip into the dense, the recalcitrant and joining the heavy with the light to lure another child grown tall; might pick a worldly globe and maybe, maybe toss into the future; hope for the next generation.

All That Is, Isn't

The floor is cold. Cold as if the spirit of the Arctic stole South and hides under my house. Sharp pins like claws push through the spaces between the atoms of my floor. I am wearing heavy wool socks and genuine sheepskin slippers. The socks are a gift from a friend and the slippers a gift from another. The pins claw through these gifts also.
It is cold outside and cold beyond that and colder further away. Cold and empty is all I really have.
I had hoped that someday I would be someone, but I know myself and my core is empty. Everything around me reminds me of this: the slots on the toaster are empty. My tea glass is empty. The bowl on my teaspoon is empty. My house; even the crystal gazing globe on my desk is empty.
I have poured heat into the empty; lovers and travels, things and drugs and it has swallowed all and remains complete and full of nothing. Tears and rage and pleading evaporate. I am married to the Empty. There is no divorce and no parting.
Late at night, the streets are empty. My refrigerator was empty when I bought it. My shoes, all except this pair are empty. My pockets, coats, hats and sweaters are all empty.
It is the emptiness that makes us useful.
This is why I must come to love the empty, in myself and in all things. Even the Arctic, that is eating the heat from under my floor, I must come to love.

Forgetting to Forget

All those damn hours spent training
A spinning mind to glide
Into a gentle humming.
Unhurried and disinterested.
Slack lips on sleeping child face.

A lifetime of red leaf sunsets
Falling through gnarled arthritic fingers:
A failing memory and a shining face;
A remembering of the pieces and
A forgetting to forget.

On Leaving Town

On leaving town, the storm slammed the back door shut and taking a few breaths, a short rest, returned for another night of gust and blow.
November's trees, nearly undressed and clinging to a few scraps of yellow and brown rags, tightened their grip on bark and branch; reluctant trance dancers, arms upraised, silhouetes against failing day grim cloud skies. Homeless and discarded, brown leaves danced a twist with plastic scraps and paper cups, while poles vibrated and fiddled their lines. The pounding of frantic slapping screen doors, asking to come inside and the drum rolls of errant garbage cans somersaulting. Wind chimes wildly clanking, the constant crashing of glasses dropped from high. Warm and furious, the wind shook the town tried to peel the asphalt off our streets.
I went outside for the massage and sights while cozy moles slept peacefully deep underground.

I Walk My Conscience

Long after the late clock chimed the last midnight tone; after the blue flicker in living room windows has died; when the wet, bare and black branches of sleeping trees sag under the weighty presence of an endless blanket of silver star light; with sleep no friend to me, I walk my conscience.
I have it on a long leash but she stays near, too near, and points to the street corner, to the hexagonal sign. Yet, I won't stop. The triangles that I ignore and never yield. All the cautions and wrong ways that I neglected--.
This empty street: a perfect companion to my empty self. Looking up, I feel the elusive edge of infinity with the invisible fingers my eyes sprout. I wonder why and how I came to be here, underneath this endless silver blanket.