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Those who dance have broad minds and active hips.
They think to a rhythmn, step-tap-step, an order they think coincides with feeling and doing,
They are dancers in body and soul.

But we are singers. We know
That thought is pre-ordained on the sheet music and that a pitch can be both close
And still flat wrong
And your throat will dry if you don’t give it an occasional rest.

We are singers, yes, but we ought also to dance.
Yeah, that is the proper state of the musical mind,
Can you dig it?

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I stroll the Technicolor cityscape in a misty morning mood

When a song wafts by my ears, and forms shapes in alleyways,

On hotel rooftops and unlit balconies,

With a sky holding back all the sun it can manage

To share a waking dream:

I scan the edges of the skyscrapers for smiling children,

Thrilled to be free, with such short memories,

Schools where misunderstandings were forgotten with the breeze

And chanting would bring water from underground.

What grieved us was how inconsiderate

The world was to our echoed laughter

When it started feeling funny

And painted apartment walls a foreign shade of pale.

We were bottled for so many decades of shipping

Between bums begging for pennies 

Who burned our oil for a scent more fragrant, not for a warmer fire, 

And tossed in free dessert to celebrate our suffering.

Fifty cents from me was fifty cents for them,

Charged to laugh at the foolishness of their passion.

We are now Bedouin in a city that was ours,

Black and White, all hooded to protect us from the scorching dawn.

But the handouts still are yet to come, the tolls and debts postponed for now,

Manners all remain intact –

For the morning call hesitates to bring out those sleeping in some shared known,

Misty streets laid bare for me alone

And for whomever claims that waking urban dream.

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featured in Calliope Magazine’s Fall 2017 edition.

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Francine Hope
And I myself
At the blinking, dinging
Railroad Crossing
With hands in our pockets,
Our hoodies zipped up.
We pace back and forth
‘Long the tracks
In the Fall.

With a puff of smoke
From the cold and a joint,
Francine began
Complaining a point
That

“Some folks go wastin’
Their lives away,
You know?
Sittin’ on their asses
Waitin’ for something good
To happen when they don’t make no-
Thin’ but trouble.
And then they give in
To depression and shit
When their life don’t get great
From only doin’ things that
Make ‘em happy
For a little bit
All the time.
You know?”

I knew
As I slurped up the nicotine
From my cigarette,
Bitter and burning and black
Like that sulfurous smokestack from Hell,
Coughing three times for good measure,
That I didn’t know
What the Hell she was talking about.

And I reckon
She didn’t neither.

What I do know
Is I’m pissed
That my ass is freezin’
For forgetting the reason
Why we’re standing here wheezin’
At this Railroad Crossing
Where the train doesn’t stop,
But passes on by.

We’ve been here, smoking,
For damn near six hours
And I have yet to see
One Goddamned train.

---

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In the misty mountain morning

I saw a sight sublime:

A fairy woman dancing

Along the steep incline,

Her figure deftly swaying

Among its glossy reeds

With wistful feet betraying

The fairness of her breed

As she skipped across a brook

Flowing with peony red –

The frailest one she took

To ornament her head –

Her silhouette cavorting

Against the rising sun

As the birds began reporting

On the shadows of her run

Then aloud sang she

With a voice as bright as gold

When she jumped out from a tree

With stark glare icy cold:

“This mountain’s mine, fuck off!”

Spat straight into my face,

Held her foot aloft

And shoved me off the place

Sending me a-tumbling

Over brooks and across fields.

My body caused a rumbling

As to gravity it yields

And my puzzling descent

Leads me not to figure out

What for I was rent

From picturesque to now without

A fairy woman to appreciate

And a scene to be blessed by

But hurtling at increasing rate

All blurs inside the eye

When the valley fast approaching

Sends heavenborne its lakes

As her mountain falls a-crumbling

And my misty morning breaks.

featured in Calliope Literary Magazine’s Fall 2018 edition

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There are many self-proven poets who will write a big block of text like this and call it poetry but they’re all scamming you by forcing running monologue through a half-baked story in their lives that they could tell in a more grammatically-polished format that’s completely readable and artistic at the same time yet opt instead for a lazy hashdash of thought constructed in five minutes as I have done here that takes the reader thirty minutes to read by helping them to recall nothing for what is the point of writing something that a reader will forget especially if you don’t give them tools like rhyme or meter to drill it into their memory because either the story must stick out as original when it usually is not or there must be some spice of clever construction that makes it last for example all that I have written here will be forgotten by the reader because I have not helped his or her brain to categorize such a massive dump and there is no denying it is a slippery dump of information just how no one can keep an abstract painting entirely intact in their mind’s eye when a landscape is so much easier to absorb while also being harder to create well so is this block of so-called poetry exactly like an abstract painting except I’m actually trying to make a concrete statement that will not be remembered except as “oh that poet wrote a poem about how much he hates the style he wrote the poem in” but my particular word choice will not be remembered at all not because of free verse which I acquiesce as poetry because the poet makes a conscious arrangement of his words in lines but this is just a bucket of brain-paint sloshed onto a canvas where the word “poetry” is written everywhere even though there is nothing poetic about it but constantly proclaiming “Behold my poetry” which is about as legitimate as someone having a vicious bowel movement and proclaiming “Behold, my child” only because both were brought into the world near the ass though the baby will be remembered because it is organic and continues to grow whereas the other is just excess waste spilled over from an overdose of emotional laxatives and will be flushed down the toilet of time as this long rant of mine might be except for the title which will effectively stick with you since that large block of text you were hesitant to read below it was in fact not a poem and you only read it because you were ready to agree wholeheartedly with me or fight my stance but now don’t care because it was too much of a nuisance to follow such a cataclysmic mind-dump and keep mental notes on the points simultaneously though you are thinking hard on whether this is poetry or not since I have clearly said it isn’t but you have seen poems exactly like this and so now I leave you as confused on the subject as you were before or might not have been but you will still forget the body of what has been written just as you always have because this is not a poem for the reason that I say it isn’t if nothing else but none of that really matters in hindsight or does it?

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Between the lanes of Spice and Sugar

At mailbox twenty-seven,

Past cobbler and tinker and lawyer and butcher

A sequestered shade of Heaven.

Swaying sign of carefully carved coal

Marks its awning entrance –

Relinquish, curious convoy, your palatal leader

To steaming, sweeping essence!

Come inside, rest easy amongst friends

On stools of scarlet leather,

Smiling round faces of maids serving blends

At ends of slackened tether.

Beams of chestnut lacquer, home of varnished cedar,

Erected flat-roofed steeple –

Scented burgundy bookshelves, dim warm chandelier

Sheltering tranquil people.

Perusing newspapers, novels, poetry –

Sipping silky brew –

Sketching portraits, landscape, liturgy,

Ink slicks black and blue.

Sample a slice of our sweet sponge cake,

Dollop of cream cheese frosting

Whipped and flavored to tenderly bake

Every misty morning.

Any café can only amount to the best

Of its valued patrons;

Out of their satisfaction buds the kindest

Kind of motivation.

Fare thee well, dear guest, ever blessed

You followed curious curve –

For as long as this hearth burns none the less,

You will find us here to serve.

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Just pour a pack of sugar

And drown it all in cream,

Then spurt a spot of honey

For a Pumpkin Spice Dream.

Fill up your favorite mug

With that pumpkin spice roast,

Then stir it all together –

‘Tis what I like the most!

Two cups in the morning,

Three in the afternoon,

Four and a half at tea time –

When night comes, you shall swoon

And rocket way off into

The Pumpkin Spice Realm!

Hop aboard the Dream Ship,

Be our Captain at the helm!

Once in an Autumn, that drink comes around

To lift all your spirits miles off the ground

Coloring the Moon that red-orange of Mars

Your taste buds will twinkle alongside the stars~

Before your tummy tingles,

This Dream will meet its end.

That creamy cup of coffee

You finally comprehend

Is drained from its container

And not a drop is spared…

Perhaps I’ll brew another

Then, maybe, we can share!

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