The surge & still

I had a friend
who, grown on corn in south Texas

lamented the lack of people

for she saw

only dry land stretched like a fried gut spotted with tumbleweed

I had a friend

who grown on concrete and painted faces, bricked up in city smite

longed to rid herself of bussle

walk out into emptiness like

a star explorer 

I knew both the longing and insilubrious pull 

of city magnet

its desolation and feeling apart in a crowd

the surge and still 

of expectation and liquor 

I knew the raw blister of

a pure and scathing emptiness 

nursing a need to create syllable of void 

two extremes, no unity

can betwix between as jugglers, relieved of balance will continue motion

I was born in cold city breast 

disgorging from its loins the dour faced babes of 21st century ad-lib 

my elbows broken at gold vein

between reaching and closing off

crowds or empty skies? 

noise or bird call? 

city folk looked agast as I packed into concertina, the music of my life and let it out in one sonorous exhale

how will you bear the solitude? They asked

nothing is more lonely than isolation in a crowd, I replied

but what of the museums and new trends and restaurants? 

I can live without the majesty of men, I said

It has always seemed inflated and grandiose

there is more meaning in a dessert rose, than anything we in our dominion, believe worthy

we are spectacle at best, a blight in our thirst to take up all the room

the richest man is one who inhabits an unkept land

with all the wild flowers come into bloom



16708220_10208952052418165_5456016437649641167_nSkim the stone on the surface

watch it butt against reflecting light

until falling through surface

out of sight it drops

to a darkness

or a peace

depending upon your vantage point

I for one would welcome

a life spent below, than above

listening to the mocking calls of unseasonal green parrots

filling trees with their envy

they make everything brighter it is true

yet something about the jarring

competitive nature of their plumage

strikes me as less sincere than

the drab and disliked pigeon with

old face and white circles around

his rumey blinking eyes

who can always be relied upon

to lose a toe in Winter

I think of how often I have watched

something curl to the side of a street

and wait to die

how a part of me felt helpless

inhabiting stages where stories

rent through armor and pierced

my conscience

after the third pigeon in a box

tucked beneath my office shoes

my boss told me

look, this is enough

he preferred I collected his shirts from the dry cleaner

bagfuls of shopping for his wife

my perk was

one day I could grow up to be like him

ignore dying birds in the street

driving silver BMW to my Thursday mistress

whilst another slave worked after-hours

filing life upward like blind builb

it came to me then, ungluing my eyelids

leaving behind one word


written in magic marker on his desk

I took the cooing box I’d hidden

and the pigeon and I went home

to a cold flat with no furniture

where he proceeded to try not to die

and I watched understanding very well

the hue of his life

for I am a stone who sank before

she saw the sun and only the moon knows

the way to lift me up