let me

today i just want to float as a feather, so let me  
so close to march sun 
i just want to float as a feather, so watch me 
raised so free in succumbing
to this noontime spring breeze 
soon pounded down and ripped apart
by the coming flood 

i just want to be this feather, let me 
watch me but don’t want me 
i am meant for no one’s cap

you win again, but to wallflower

as they played you win again
you asked me to dance 
and i replied only 
hey one of the metalheads came in

you said maybe he’ll dance with me 
metalhead cranes head to reveal 
the high cheekbones of a smooth neutral face 
slender ivory fingers from a black leather sleeve
lay on the table at the ready 

i said go ask, will you
and you did and you and she 
slow spin with huge timid smiles 
beautiful, to wallflower 

there’s your human touch for tonight
and at that, novel and free
of all our fictions 

skip stones, sing or don’t

throw words sidearm at this pond 
to sing the glass picture of sky
we are given down here

they may skip graceful 
whishh swift rhythm off a flat sun
but always break the mirror
that in the first place called them

if i could only float one above
suspend it in air, reflected still 
it would join this frame of heaven 
and leave our love intact

but i’m not a sorcerer
and must be content 
to crack the world with song
or let it be and pass on
without a trace of what i saw

brand new blizzard

there is no precedent for what you just did 
scream restrained into the mic
jaw stretched all out as a banshee
ash hair slicked but still admitting branching curls
like an ariel view of the super highway
stacks of looping off-ramps 

this snow small, sticky and of criss-crosses
shaped like a frozen spark and coming 1”/hour
i circle the brick building beside my parking spot 
through tens of thousands of pounds of it
hit gas and the front end sweeps side to side
all on the wrong axis
and i can’t surmount this laughable 10 foot slope 

but then i do by flooring it with my whole ass
gain a foot, twist the wheel, pause for the correct instant
feel the catch then blast it again
for one more foot 

for so long i’ve robbed life of 
its true and golden voice 
by pretending there is a precedent 
there is none, for anything, ever

a person’s essence

flipped past a close-up b&w portrait of dylan
went back to study 
and it was actually a naked brunette pin-up 
smirking and covering her torso 
with a red sunburst rickenbacker 

highway dictation rewind from car crash

speed and slow revv and brake speed and slow down the highways of my childhood through driving rain sky and blacktop indistinguishable all the ten thousand yellow lights of industrial park upon industrial park upon shopping center upon cul-de-sac yellow lights make the same galaxy as the driving rainsplats on the windshield, trying to make my ears bleed for the thousandth time with don’t fear the reaper considering how best to tattoo its essence onto my skin northbound away from this weekend of reminiscence with reminiscants and every absent dunce glued to my tail or blocking my trajectory must be braked for or charged round as i will not be braided with their complacency i see the possibility of this Buick flipping into a wet inferno tonight blasted haphazard by utter carelessness or flicked by a massive spectral skeletal finger for pushing too hard at death but i know at least i want to see my love in the North before the sunrise and i want to be living when this killer rock and roll show happens in two weeks so i can burn properly