Wading through the summer

My palm would press into the small of your back

as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile

of mirrors and buttons and frivolous shoes,

-Billy Collins

Sandy towels and sleazy girls

Whiplash music purring

cheap beer awash in the sun

horseshoes and fizzles

and wealth displayed

in ears and noses and teeth

Shes got a swagger in the way she smiles

talking of art and New York as if it isn't terrifying

as if it doesn't send shiver

revived by the wind

as if today could have done without

the future

The Sun should have stayed

frozen at its apex

painted blue eyes smearing

heat-lamp reeling

artificial euphoria

suspended

We remain in the places

where the bile has yet to seep

through the cracks

and poison the day

with backward memories

Black bike whining

almond-eyes-slanted-rooftops-slick-soldiers-duck-waddling-toddlers-burping-booze-filled-rooms-packed-tight-waisted-girls-grinning...

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful

-Don DeLillo

If you like love and fame

Shop early, get your shots

Don't spit, and pass with care—

Avoid it at all costs

Death, breakdown, despair;

They'll fall on you

-Eleanor Ross Taylor

the grass was too green

too polished too thick

the fence posed a lie

separation the trick

Greasy

Freedom yells, It don't cry -Connor Oberst

Britt Patterson:
Oiled hair
Slicked back
Pluming
Cigarette smoke
Through nostrils
And lips and eyes
Every orifice.
This leak must
Be absolved
Close it up friends
Protectors
Watch after children
And don’t let the
Oven stove
Poison the walls


Time machines get grooving

Twilight Zone

And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything,
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other’s empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don’t weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.
-Don Paterson


All pain is a warning
The hardness of stone
Slumped shoulders rising only to shrug
A finger pressed between a car door--
Clicking closed
Compacting skin and blood
Swelling.
An ache--
The only thing felt
Through the numbness

Hurt murmurs
The lights shutting off
In violent echoes
The hardness of stone
Teeth connecting with flesh
Wide-eyed revolt



Probing grimace
Steel splinters
The hardness of stone
Waking in the night
Gingerly rolling over

Turning into impact
Momentum acting as fate
The hardness of stone



Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
-Albert Einstein

Crash Course in Mistakes

Well--
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and--
dreams are not a bad thing.

-William Carlos Williams


I didn’t want to be here
Outside of comfort
Shouting through the dizziness
Holding hands in a sign
Of goodbye
Rolex face
Marred with running glass
The sidewalk twisting away from us
Taking our hopes of communion with it

When the red pond fills fish appear
When the red pond dries fish disappear.
Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.
Electric cable transmission wires swept down.
The lizard people came out of the rock.
The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.
Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.
One rain turns red dust green with leaves.
One raindrop begins the universe.
When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.
-Allen Ginsberd


Desperado-danger-deceit-disappointment-sorry