clattery old grey bones of a winter’s tree
tap upon his frosted window urgently
but this half-crazed, tired occupant
is lost in slef-made fog and wandering intent
just a man in a suit of skin upon the land
getting away, walking fast you understand
he could never bear to be alone with himself
better hidden in the crowd then still upon the shelf
a wandering set of eyes soaking the world in
until the weight drives him back to where he’s been
and it all starts over again…

“Where and WHEN the hell are we gonna go?”

Where and when indeed. Billy knew where (he’d known for a while now) but he felt it best to simply stay quiet and let the silence of a 3 a.m. winter night settle in for a spell.

“I want to sit for a while and enjoy this crisp, black night,” Billy said. “I want to breathe in the air and feel it near freeze my insides before we do anything at all. I want to be ready.”

Billy always paused. He knew that every moment could have been the last and so it was important to make the most of them. Savor the smells…even the soggy, rotten smell borne on the air by by deceptively clean, white clouds of sewer reek that drifted across to them from the manhole nearby. Even this was beautiful if a guy stopped to understand it…if a guy just waited.

J listened with a stupid, vacant look on his face.

“Maaaan, sometimes you make no damn sense,” he grumbled. “We’ve planned the shit out of this for like four hours now and here we are and all you want to do is sit here. Sit here til’ what? Some asshole comes along and stops to ask a damned stupid-ass question like “what’re two idiots like you doing out here freezing your balls off in the middle of the night.”

“There’s time,” Billy responded in a quiet, raw voice that sounded like the strained, frayed end of a last thin rope of patience. “Like you said, you’d have to be an idiot to be out here in the middle of this frozen fucking night. I’m betting we’re the only two such idiots in this town right now – so……we…..have….time.”

He finished his words in a way that pretty much ended the whole conversation. There was nothing to say or do now except wait on Billy to move and follow along like a dutiful dog hoping the end result was worth frostbite and the maddening tension of the headache that was starting just over J’s eyes.

The night wore on and the sky clouded over and cast an eerie orange glow as the light from the city’s sodium-vapour street lamps reflected back to the earth below. It was as if a great fire was burning somewhere in the distance. A fire J would have relished by this point having near froze solid waiting on Billy and his damned “intuition” to kick in.

“Now,” Billy said and with this one word he rose and began to walk.

“That’s it? You just say ‘now’ and we move? How in hell do you know and why not 10 minutes ago. Why now?”

J was a professional grade A complainer. Not your run of the mill whiner but a top notch, thoroughbred. J,  who could complain about sitting still and then minutes later complain about not sitting still, had developed the skill to such a high and natural degree he never even noticed the contradictions that always arose.

Billy already knew this and knew the questions would come as they had so often before just as he knew that J never expected an answer because one never came. How could one? How could Billy explain the low, dull thud that came slow in the back of his mind like some buried diesel pump come to life in the distance? This thud, this thrum that would not stop until the deed was done? There was no explaining it because even Billy didn’t understand it – he only knew that it was time to move…and so he did…and J followed.

i hurl my words into the world
as if into a well
and each one’s a wild wish
a child born of desperate times
seeking the cold black water
echoing off the edges
to return to me ten-fold
filled with the promise
that there’s a bottom

you
you are
who are you?
you are who you are
unique star-bright reflections
fearless, unashamed and unleashed
singers in an ever mute world
colour in my grey heart
I love you!
you are
you

Hell’s a fire that’s never extinguished
living bright in the hate-heated heart
that death-bathed; that endless, eye-gouging anger
entombing the phantoms of past wrongs
every Francesca and Paolo flayed to
every Dante’s desperate desire
hollow shades bent to a baser need
while the flames burn only against walls
the walls of the one carrying the coals

you want to run away
fleet-footed Mercury
hidden in a hoodie
or fly if only the wings
we’re big enough
big enough to carry you
and all the baggage
still where would you go
when everywhere exciting
is filled with people bored
they’re bored of even the best
and you know –
you bring the world with you
wherever you end up
so mayswell stay put
’til the wind drives you on
like dust and ragged paper

Every hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, mudslide, fire…every destructive consuming demon is an empty child born of all the dark rage that pours from earth’s inhabitants…a planet long since driven insane by its own corrupt children.

sun is pale egg yolk
on grey-plate sky
cold, unappetizing
left out too long
sickly, sour hen-laid
it does not nourish
it leaves us hungry
for warmer things

so you’ve written all your life big deal…i’ve been breathing my whole life and i ain’t no expert on breathing
i suppose i suppose but somehow it feels different and anyway how am i to know what’s good and what ain’t?
there’s no way to know anymore no not anymore the old absolutes they are all being torn away and buried
so is this a good thing or is there such thing as a good thing anymore and whats the point of writing if there is no measure
same as breathing i suppose…you write for life you write for yourself and if a perfumed breath lures another so be it
but mostly i am breathing garlic and onions and halitosis and every other reeking repellent – it sends ’em running
than you need a breath mint in your words and watch your diet if ya know what i’m saying…if you care at all
why should i care if care no longer matters cuz God is dead in the hearts and minds of the world and measure is gone
so says you but an ignored standard is still a standard and care is care as long as there is a bottomless well somewhere
i get you but i don’t like the well idea it’s dark and dank when a fountain or a spring everlasting works better for me
that’s nothing to me, you’re the writer, you know which lies/which truths work best for who in black or white
i suppose i am anyhow and whether or not there’s a signpost along the way i’ll do what i do ’til I’m done or done with
and i, well i will breathe and breathe and breathe and maybe just the act of living changes the world but that’s for poets

in the end.