The Quill Pen Has a Keyboard
For those here,
blooming in this anthology of euphoric
creativity,
originality,
raw language -
expression vibrates, quivers on the vital pink of the tongue -
words slip under your skin like a velvet hand beneath your sheets.
"This is so good!" she says.
You feel your way through the imagery,
through the ecstasy of the human condition,
sensing the curves, the hidden places of the story.
"Brilliant", he says. "Love this", trips from his lips.
Suddenly, a cerebral climax - it travels down your spin
into your fingertips -
tempting you to respond,
to bookmark,
to create.
A stranger is no longer a stranger.
Your intimacy is scandalous and secretly you lust for more.
Breathlessly, he whispers,
"Fortunately, here, one's words,
avatar,
personality,
and soul are all one and the same".
Vice and Beauty
On the corner of Sixteenth and O, Midtown Sacramento, just before the crosswalk, there's a mashed daisy, and sitting an inch away, a smoldering Lucky Strike butt. The sickly sweet perfume of the charred tobacco leaves puffs steadily and whips around and up the wall of the apartments, eventually able to leave a jaundiced stain on the stucco. Whatever caused such a scene, didn't take very long to transpire, but there is one thing to take away from it, for almost anyone.
Smoking can kill, but a broken heart is an instant life stopper.
Gardens and dreams ruined by cigarettes and words
Remember in grade school
when we'd scrape our nails against friend's arms,
"planting crops" and "watering plants,"
telling naïve kids a garden would grow?
Well I was one of those naïve kids,
looking expectantly at my raw arm. Wondering when my garden would grow.
I remember coming to my father,
thrusting my nearly bleeding limb in his face,
asking how long it would take
for the flowers to show.
He'd take his cigarette
out from between his lips
and placed the tip
from my elbow to be wrist.
"You're too damaged, my dear."
He taught me that
my body is concrete,
meant for people to walk over me.
Nothing beautiful can come
from something so dead.
And I believed him.
Sexy Mexican Maid
On my back listening to music
old albums from the mornings of
youth: waking up lean, ready, relaxed, hair in mouth
and touching shoulders
the world out there full of color and blood
the sand and sun and salt water waiting
the bikinis waiting without expectation
the songs of then, like the one this morning,
the careless yet loving caress
of not knowing
the song's intro bringing me back to those mornings
waking up in my rented room on the beach:
California, 18 or 19 years old
wild-eyed and mad with the words, fast, beautiful,
without stress, without care, without bother for anyone
else's opinion, without the need to shield myself
from the eyes and hateful intent
of dicks and cunts
I was unaffected by their drain
and sometimes I still am
but the years put wear on a man's heart
his skin, his mind, his instinct
and without being careful, the past can spill over into the future
but mornings like this come more often as we cut loose the hateful faces,
let the shitty intent of others
roll off our backs
and keep our eyes on the Sun and surf and cities and towns and fields bathed in moonlight
the present spilling out before us
with what is earned
and nothing else
leaking its way to the
future
the center opens
and we
walk on in.
The Gong and Quiet
Where I lived when I was five will always stay with me. The biggest memory I have is of this enormous gong, just hanging next to these old brick walls near the alley. I asked and asked who it belonged to, why it was there, and if I could ring it, but my parents never answered any of it. They rarely understood what I was saying, and they usually wrote it off as childish imagination. No matter how close we got to the darn thing, I never had the bravery to run up to it and slap the thin sheet metal, even though it was unguarded and waiting. I've asked them years later about it, and they still act as though they never saw the thing. I've even gone to music stores and asked if they had any MTA gongs there, and I always got the same response of there's no such thing. I'm still hopeful in finding it someday, and although I wouldn't be able to hear it, I'd love to feel it pulse after I walloped it a good one.
