Pandora's Box

I just got home. It’s light outside. Sunday’s begun. I started my day at four yesterday and went to Itaewon. There, I went to What the book and looked around. I got a call from amanda and went out to find her. We met at the intersection where cold stone ice creamery is across the street from baskin robbins. I took Amanda and Anlee, the foreign girl she works with to what the book. We searched around, found whatever, this and that, I made a couple abooks and sat outside. Sthe duo came out ready to go to Hangdae. So they looked at a map, asked directions, so on, and we walked to the station, where we split ways. I roamed around until Naz calleed and when she did, we met outside the cold stone theI joined Naz and her friends fr dinner – gapi? And we ate, t was delishious, as usual. And ate and ate, then the lion ar went ino i

(this is where I passed out...)

Driftin

New Mexico, 20/20

I miss the mist in the grapevines, the sunrise behind mountain skyline.
I miss the mess of crushed grapes and the sweet snacks I’d imbibe.
I miss the cool breeze through the house, the haunting nights, snakes and mice
the rattles in the backyard, wine washed evenings alone.
I miss the stars and Milky Way cloud across the sky, the fog where rabbits hide,
The nights when coyotes cried as dusk spread the blanket of night and all I could do was sigh

Cigarettes fogged the house and wine blurred nights spent alone with my guitar and NPR and records.

I miss the fresh air, the valley below, the hawks that would glide, the distant snow.
I miss the lazy days, the grasshoppers dancing on the blades of grass that grew from the orange coarse desert dirt.
I miss the silent nights when I couldn’t hear anything at all, but the sounds of the critters scurryin between my walls.

The deck door slammed with the wind, the porch light turned on for no reason, and I never knew just who could see me.

I miss Roger’s slow draw his long goodbyes his little white lies.
I miss the plant I tried to grow, the bug covered window and prospects of ghosts
I miss the spiders who would greet me when I was ready for bed
Thank you to them for not dropping onto my head.

There ain’t no place like Grandma’s house on the side of a mountain with nothing around. I hope it never falls. Grama I’m comin home just as soon as I’m done here.

Fourth of July

I saw you tonight, America. You, your citizens of color, or no color. I saw your celebration of explosions, your children frightened by the boom of small bombs shot into the air. I saw your traffic. You smell like sulfur and gasoline. I celebrated the music that happens beneath your underbelly, on the rooftop of a bar where I bought drinks with friends and nearly caved in the top balcony while listening to your heartbeat – songs about love, work, and getting away from it all in the transient fog of smoking myself high.
HOW’RE YOU GONNA CELEBRATE WAR TODAY? I PLAN ON EATING MEAT ALL DAY LONG. That’s what she said.
I met her at a bar to drink and eat a hamburger. We took photos. My friend played a chess game at the booth in the opposite corner. A group of regulars corralled around the bar, passed drinks and conversation. Baseball played on the Tvs. Music blared from the jukebox. My table leaned heavily one direction or another, dependant upon who leaned on it. My water gone, I went for Jack on the rocks. GRANPA WOULD DRINK THIS TODAY. I sat in wait for a cummulated 20 minutes at stoplights alone. I bypassed traffic on my bicycle. Your means of transport are foolish. They smell terrible and make things too loud. Engines and horns and screeching breaks, whining breaks, tires peeling pavement. And where, in all this, do we hide?

Life Ain't Perfect, but It's Beautiful

I went out on my own – just followed the open road that led me into the unknown.
Sometimes, when life gets numb, you gotta take heed to the feelings that come and follow em.
Come across slick streets and beggars at truck stops, all-night girls and lovers at bus stops, comedians in bars drinking their jokes down.
Find the grey skies or where trains sigh by, where you’re lost but lovin’ it, sad but can’t cry, away from what’s known, friends and loved ones, all on your own and fallin’ snow’s your lullaby.
Cause I’ve seen a tennis match and I shouldn’t live like that. I oughta wander like a stoic cat and watch the rain pitter-pat.
When you fall asleep on a pitch dark road and you wake up in your car to mountains that glow under the risin sun reflectin off the ice and snow;
where it rains so much steps are covered in moss, where the fog’s so dense you’re lost in your own backyard;
when you coast down a mountain into plains that roll across an arid desert that formed long ago, and everything you see is sun-burnt red or gold;
where wind cyclones down through pines or you pick grapes through a New Mexican sunrise,
do you see God?
Somewhere out there beyond routine; somewhere paddlin through the jet-stream; somewhere growin in a forest of pine trees, somewhere farther than any hawk could see, somewhere closer than you are to me and everywhere in between, do you see God?
When you’re tryin to get to shelter and it’s seven degrees, and that don’t even matter cause she’s just so sweet, and her smile peaks through her chattering teeth;
where expression’s just a cloud or a child that points and says, “Daddy, don’t that look just like a unicorn?” and Daddy see’s it too, cause Daddy never gave up.
He pays the bills after playin with his child; his marriage ain’t perfect but disagreements are mild; and at least once a week the whole family does something wild.
Where church is a treehouse, God is a chapel mouse, to pray we roughhouse and love is worship.
When we realize the sun shines even behind cloudy skies and with each rain we’re baptized, we’ll all be saved.

Disjointed Memorized Words from a Cell

My reflection drips from the steel bunk above me.
White brick reflects flourescent light that glows from the corner.
My bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and study are all within reach
Inside this joint on E. Hickory. Once green prairie,
They try to replace Dionysis with roads –
Oak, Sycamore, Pecan – named such to tell us what they took away
In the name of Justice, Law, and Order.
But Apollo cannot survive on her own. Cells must be filled
With those who live organic; those who say,
“this is where I find myself on account of my vice.”
Some lose their liver, some lose metabolism, I missed a party.
Who said freedom is free? I gotta pay 500 dollars to get out
Tomorrow so I can join my family for mother’s day.
Men always write about the ladies they let down,
However, I cannot write, for they kept my pen.
So I lay here and recite aloud to myself in isolation.

As News Spread

Jack sat alone. Seven o’clock, Saturday morning, within cinder block walls and one door with a single window and a gap like a ticket booth through which food is passed, room service pounded on the other side of the door, shouted, “Breakfast!”
Jack stepped off his cot, across the cold concrete floor, and took the microwaved biscuits.
“You want coffee?”
“Yes, please. Is there any way I could get a pen?”
“A what?”
“A pen, to write.”
“No, we don’t issue those,” and the man walked off.
Jack stepped to his steal stool, sat at the steal table implanted into the wall, and ate slow. He wasn’t hungry. Eating passed the time. First he ate the top half of the biscuit, half the sausage, the bottom half of the biscuit, then finished the second half of the sausage, sipping coffee with each bite. He went to the window and looked out, as if looking across a back porch; across a green field where morning birds come and go, grasshoppers flick dew off blades of grass, caterpillars squinch and stretch across leaves; but Jack saw none of that. He saw cinder block walls, a desk, a finger print machine, yellow tape to direct people where to stand for their photo. To his right, Jack read a sign that hung on the wall: “Guidelines for obtaining classifiable fingerprints.” He discovered his right thumb has an irregular print – his only point of pride during his 17 hours in that room.
A room like that diminishes a person. Cold metal, cold stone, emotionless colors. Nothing to stimulate the mind, but they don’t want that. Nothing to stimulate the soul. The one thing that kept Jack’s spirit alive was the thought of how high Ryan must have been to tell the two arresting officers, so nonshalantly, “We’re writers and this is such griss for the mill.”
Jack waited. Time passed like a locomotive unable to gain pace. The flourescent lights never changed and endlessly buzzed their sterile white light. The sounds were the same over and again – the clasp of a door lock, rollrollrollroll of the telephone rollrollrollrollroll, a flushed toilet several doors down, shouts of frustrated arrestees, shouts of jaunty arresters.
“I suppose I’m to consider my life choices and path?” Jack thought. He paced the floor and grew embittered at such wasted time.