Yawn

Waiting for night to yawn,

like a sleepy black cat,

so I can leap out, and

leave behind my story,

plus all that I touched

and a low, soft whoosh.

A good tale, told twice,

is all I could hope to be.

First, I shut the left brain down,

small room of shrieking panic,

gave the right brain its space,

and it crawled in slowly,

blob of cautious goo.

"Why be here," it said,

king in a low-rent flat,

"When you can be

everywhere?"

A Cowboy's Journey

I
My old road was a railroad track

to the packing house and back. 

$7 a day. Worked dark to dark.
Crate each month to eat or sell.

House that whistled and wept.

Born to help pay my parents' way.

Beat me tough. Taught me silence.

Enlisted when I was 21. Viet Nam?

Yes, sure. Not a problem. OK.

Billion dollar crazy! Murderama!

Just to get some guys re-elected.

II

That blue sky we invented

to spark up languages of hope,

nothing behind it but the nothing

in which we dream stuff up,

just as the tile floor underfoot

holds nothing below, and

nothing's behind each wall.

We carry our world as a box

suspendered from our shoulders,

shocked and dismayed whenever
we bump blindly into other worlds.

III

Don't need to know any more about myself.

Nothing to gain; nothing to prove.

I'll never be interviewed.

Money erases all of us.

We survive by getting lost.

For the rest, walk in fever.

Then, lasso the golden palomino.

Bust it, like you broke the world.

The sunset is your tunnel out.

The Story Of Sun-Gi-7 On Hospice Rock

Sun-Gi-7 came from space,

ordered to sneak around, get

the latest on Planet Dumb.

Death everywhere. Hospice rock.

"They're all set to kill each other!"

Sun-Gi-7 shouted, in 'bip' 'bop' 'click.'

Like us, Sun-Gi-7 wished to leave

before we cut down our own lungs.

"They bow to tech tricks, science,

and take orders from one God

who's only allowed to speak

through liars, pedophiles, thieves!

And they all look exactly alike!"

(Some have bigger houses.)

???

Sun-Gi-7 took form in Alabama,

on a dark road out in the country

and some guys came along, guns

in a Chevy truck. "What the hell?!?!"

Shot Sun-Gi-7...buried roadside.

But the Go Star said, "Body up!"

and Sun-Gi-7 rose, hovered, then

found each dude and ate him.

Merchant Magus

He got promoted and now sees

the undersides of speeding trucks,

anger of the ocean as it flings

empty message bottles wave to wave,

wind demanding plastic bags jump and dance.

Nothing more than a middle manager,

but he thinks he'll move mountains

because he now knows the mechanics,

the meetings schedule, the budget items

that will get hit the hardest despite best plans.

Avalanches to flat tires, forest fires to overtime,

all that might happen!

Still, a distance from the shaman's cave,

where he once slapped off the spider webs

from his head and shoulders, and now

eats them as he finds them in his garage,

alert to the change, where darkness

turned from nothing to everything.

Saved By Dawn Again

Asleep I was into the afternoon, a shock

to see my 3:30 appointment on Del Reyes

across a folded out piece of scrap paper

held up before my hard focusing eyes

then have the digital clock tell me it's 3!

I jumped up in a motel room dank

with a light mold fog, and I slaughtered

one of the closet doors, to find it empty

except for a radio that wouldn't shut up,

a global radio, and I leaned into it

only to be overwhelmed by dials

that wouldn't work for me, and inputs

like docking stations for little UFOs.

My family was there, except I didn't

recognize any of them. Switched out.

Then, I had enough, but I loved lost

at that moment, revisited the ham radio

from another planet, or sci-fi story,

and it didn't work, but that soothed me,

while the closet stayed empty,

and the wrinkled paper said 3:30.

I screwed up. I couldn't do it.

Failed. My family in witness,

except they were not my family.

Like a warm bath, failure.

Either I, myself, disappeared,

or something worse did.

the sorcery of things

with this life, maybe, i used sorcery

it came to me like everybody else

because i never had a choice

they teach you how to be stupid

how to cower

how to shut up

how to agree

it just wasn't me

ever

and the world finally came my way

(I said, selfish as most sharks)

Now, finally, the sorcery of things

How to rise up in the air?
To prove something else...
simply something else....

and make the world believe

I don't have cancer.

(Selfish, still.)

Not the way to start the sorcery of things.

Except, there is no other way.

Might

The street lights blushed as they looked on us.

Kissed from 9 pm to quarter to two!

Wait, is that trumpets, or live ammo overhead?

Depends. What was it, again, I just said?

"Hold tight to your blanket tonight,"

the voice announced once more to the world.

Unless you believe in whim,

and that moon inexplicably

three times its normal size!

Or a sense that life is not meant to be this hard,

that I dreamed it up wrong, and it needs redreaming.

Maybe a story might...

well, it might.