Monthly Archives: April 2012

Yesterday my name was mint leaf

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Yesterday my name was mint leaf
Cool and crisp
An oasis in the turquoise stillness
The cries of the flycatcher above
In my pale green

Today my name is abyss
Wide and void over the wild expanse
A tornado cracking
Over the mouth of a volcano
Its molten center about to release
Destruction and creativity at the core

Tomorrow my name will be Shiva
Yellow in the noon hour
I cross the shadeless square
Holding the handle of my pistol cocked
Poised to take flight

My father called me Jesse
A bandit in making
Leaving me to unfurl
And shed the skins of experiences
Lives lived like indelible
Watermarks on the soles of my hide

My grandmother called me “gioia”
A joy to her heart
Her voice an echo in the sunny afternoon

Sometimes I was also the oximoric giant dwarf
An outgrown baby swathed in silly innocence

Today I look past the broken eggshell
At what lies ahead
Sifting seeds through my fingers
They are earthy and warm

The story is there to be told
Of the nameless mother who
Lost in time, forgot her story
And now it is ours to unravel
Through capsules of life
Ours and hers
In a mouthful of bliss and a tear of hope

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My head on a seahorse pillow

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My head on a seahorse pillow
It yawns blue in the evening’s lavender hour
Minutes slipping by knocking as marbles
A knot in my cheek
Reminding me that

Dreams come and go
And some reflect
The aquamarine underworld
Of lingering turtles

Gingerly laced with limber movement
I whisper listlessly to the droning traffic
And the cat glows while she pushes my buttons

I sit on my mat
With my hands on my knees
And contemplate the moon
In its meanders

I hold its roundness in my presence
And sigh for the mystery
That lies beyond the echo
Of a seashell

The calling of the wind and sand shouts sailboat
My horizon is the bridge over the highway
Mountain ghosts come out seldom these days
Peach glow and apparitions

I wander while the world squanders
Finagling a fingerling possibility
A diaphanous feline existence
Motivated by footprints, teacups, mint leaves…
The knowledge that contradiction is the shortest way to truth

The boy walked down the street

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The boy walked down the street
With his hat on backwards
A bit of a belly
And fingers busy pulsing a keyboard

Downcast on the pavement
The highway screeching by
Fast moving capsules
A truck rumbles
In the summer grey
Seattle calling
A yellow schoolbus in a dead end
Orange poppies cupped inward

Outside the smell of rain
Wet dust gathering in the air
As the blue lavender sways

Singing solo
My name is Hans
And I am dauntless
A cowboy lost in space
With a drum in my heart
And a beat in my head

Skipped, I pace down the street
Remembering to exhale
I count the petals
And slowly finger the possibility
That lost highways tear through
Cities in the afternoon humdrum

My mind backtracks
To the flowers in the morning
Luscious rose blooming carnal coral
Carnivorous in the odorous softness

I find the dead end
Yellow on black
A diamond in the stillness
I say deliberate
And the book closes
Leaving us all wide-eyed
And hallowed
On a journey to the land of skipped beats
And pulses
In the nevermind of nowhere
Where tomorrow never happens