007 Challenge

6

Night washed walls,
Quiet and slow,
Bid home
All messengers to rest.
Land in soft
Cotton. Bank leftover words
beneath the matress.
You are the moon's beam
On feather cloud.
Deeply breathe
 
7

International Superstar
Is the name of my trainer
Who eats 12 miles for breakfast.
Superstar talks loud
Walks high
Eats fast
And taps a cane home.
"You sound good," he says.
I reply, "In the right hands."
 
1-7

Pebble Beach

I breathe easy
for now. It's a shame
what we take for granted,
even the air, look you,
but I'm still working

the puzzle. I try
to match the blues
bright as cornflower petals
to the fog where it fades
into lighter wispy grey
shading white as cotton,

the clouds that dip
toward aqua into the sea
and the surf that spills
into turquoise tide pools.

All the gold turns
to brown, turns to rocks
I've not found yet, nor have I
pieced the lonely cypress
standing upon them,
its branches forest colored
and raised as if beseeching
the watery horizon like me

beseeching my breath
to flow easy, easy so I can
be right here with the pieces,
seeing what fits where,
making an image stay with me
just as you described it.
 
001

All our hand me down trumpets
Still bear fingerprints
Corresponing to those on the pawn tickets
Dutifully paid forward
Toward the day of the parade.
That day we will carry our collective blues
To the corner and carefully unwrap
The many velvet envelopes of hush.
That day we will brass up every
Redeemed instrument of faith.
Yet we breathe. Hear that? Hit
That note.
 
002

The Party City line
Unhinges python jaws
Over full grown cashiers
And also encompasses
The five empty registers of those
Who didn't make it to Valhalla.
 
003

Loki weaves a love poem
Of his bubblegum on my step.
Foiled! He will snare
The Super instead. Even cats know
It's Saturday. Come, Loki.
Come to bed.
 
001

Money spreads plume,
Leans into the few shafts
Of light vaults afford. Perhaps
Money remembers, then,
One hopes, that green
Rose up through ice
Breathing. Which is exactly
The opposite of money.
Money copulates in dark boxes
Until the locks ooze milk.
No war is the same.
Every war is the same.
 
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002

My Trumpish cousin
Is too tired
Too close to tears
Perpetually
Between phone app games
To read or listen or learn.
She is done with learning.
Wow. How can anyone
Be done with learning?
It is a walking coma
Bargain she has made
In order to support the
Child rapist in chief.
 
003

My friend the athiest
Casually invited me to party
With Satin. I regret the scoff
That sauced my reply. I could
Have just brought fabric.

Instead I launched spelling
Into the welcome
Of the athiest in the bible belt
Who is braver than me by miles.
 
004

Of course I knew the song. I hummed it too.
Though Jack/Diane, were skins we wore then shed
The football player always looks like you
Diane remains the girl who never bled
As real girls bleed. Those teenaged lovers haunt
Our amber radios from shallow graves
Now scuffed to surface, made to sing the want
That lit old fires in dark and ancient caves.
The first time you returned, I just played dead.
Refused to answer. Finally had to voice
The questions and proposals never said:
Diane, revised, gives Jack another choice.
Perhaps a kinder universe exists
Where Jack and his Diane resume a kiss.
 
005

First the center
Of empty rug surrenders
To morning the secret
Claw and crumb
Evidence of life
Then the corner boots
On magazines. Finally
Even the walls confess
Plaster cracks over
Years of other
Plaster cracks. One bed,
One bath.
The radiator shushes
Dawn. Slowly
Without alarm
We push up.
 
Nothing much

If solidity was all
As advertised, damn
Near impenetrable,
If we were that American
Leather--John Wayne's
Chaps, we could shed
Struggle, adjectives,
Question marks,
Curiosity down by the fire
Of the oddball hobo
And canter off
None the wiser
Into some constellation
Of young Ronald Reagan--
Worshipped by astrologists
And top grossing country
Music performers. If.
 
Quiet

Duvet smothered chill
Sets an even skin
Invitation to spoon.
Just us, winter window,
And the distant whistle
White of moon
Braid ladders
We climb again.
 
Sincere thanks

Is this mic hot?
Silver starlet
Pretends she had
No idea
And is SO
grateful. Still
She absently scratches
The hand stitched
Label on her gown.

Funny how merchandise
Takes comfort from being expensive.
 
Presence

Probably there won't be guns
Well not many. They won't be
Obvious about it. The honoree
Turns 70 today. Probably
Only a couple of guards.

What does one get a man
Who can take all he wants?
This invitation snags
Fringed outcomes in the zipper
Of my pocket.

Two kisses and a nod
Is the aim.

My tithe is a painting
Simply framed.
Sunday supper--I'll sing
Only as required.
 
Velocity

Wind ripples snow across
Vacant lots
carving whisper rivers
Echoing the curve and stretch
Signature of perpetually
Whisling dare to chase.
 
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Salt

Before I wash the sheets just stripped from bed,
I lift them up to breathe us in again,
Our silhouettes of salty water shed,
The proof of years we gained in acumen.
For twenty years, whole continents between
Lamented love too young for shape or scope
Survived somehow, miraculously green
Though starved of light and barely any hope.
The boy you were became a stronger man.
The girl I was discovered her woman's voice.
So now we're here unmapped, without a plan.
Responsible adults who made a choice
To close the photo album of the past
And kiss as if each kiss could be our last.
 
Zero fucks given

Caricature is impotent
When wildly inaccurate.
People hate because
Otherwise they are empty
And lonely.

Your hatred grows no rice.
Your hatred is tinny and distant.
You had to hire a fluffer to keep it hard.

Your caricature has turned into
Angsty self harm.

Feel better.
 
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Visiting Famine

In 1921, Hoover was still
A hero to people
Eating bones and rooves.
16 million people
Paid peasant seeds
To the revolutionaries.
So Hoover sold
Harding on the plan and
Moved surplus to the Soviets.
Insisted on seeds as well.
He sent 300,000 tons of grain
To Russia.

Yet children starved
And political favorites fed.
Hoover became a line in a song.
But Blandy had a big funeral.

That kind, stupid fuck.
 
Actually Hoover shaped the vision of Ameruca as provider of humanitarian aid. He may have fucked up here and there, but he was a hero to millions of Soviets even though he was staunchly anti-communist.
 
Actually Hoover shaped the vision of Ameruca as provider of humanitarian aid. He may have fucked up here and there, but he was a hero to millions of Soviets even though he was staunchly anti-communist.

Humanity sometimes pushes past the hatred and stupidity of ideological insanity that had gripped the soviet. Stalin was as insane as Hitler. As to fucking up.... its basically our main right as human beings
 
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