I WENT CRAZY AGAIN TODAY
her eyes seduced me
but when I heard
the soul in her voice
I was in love with her
and the desperation of
the human heart when
it blows away like a
paper bag inside an
angry wind that has
displaced our hope
in a way that sounds
so tragic it’s beautiful.
DISPOSABLE THOUGHTS
ten minutes until boarding
an airplane home and I’m
holding in my bleeding guts
so that I don’t scream into
the midnight air upon takeoff,
assigned to a middle seat
between two people who
I will never know because
I’m no one special, alone
inside the dungeons of my mind
until I learn how to save myself
as I fly back to the world of a past
everyone rescued themselves
from, a place of cruel jokes
that have never been funny,
a past I’m too pissed off
to drown in anymore.
POEM FOR TRAVIS BLAIR
your stories are like movies
captured on the celluloid
of my imagination, when
you remind me you’ve
got t-shirts older than me
in between stories about
David Carradine, Bob Dylan
and Tuesday Weld back
in your Laurel Canyon daze.
We both laugh at ourselves
for not having a clue about
what we’re doing when we
sit there waiting and waiting
for a mechanic to change
the flat tire we got on the
way back from Dallas,
seated in the darkness
of a Lone Star night
watching imaginary
movies of the life
I’ve always dreamed of
as you tell me all of
the ladies you’ve slept
with and what a weirdo
Carradine was and how
Willie Nelson told you
to go back to big screen
Texas, which I’ve leapt
into so that I can sit
there in the car and
and co-star under a
silver screen night
next to a man who
is full of so much
stardust, he’s golden.
39 THOUSAND FEET
was the peak elevation of the aircraft I was on,
windows gazing down on a world I could not see
from the window seat because I was seated in the middle,
the candles on my imaginary 39th birthday cake blown out
and my fickle mind blown by numbers who all count
the meaning to my life as a final descent is made,
but not out of this mortal realm, not just yet I’ve got years
to catch up with everyone, halfway across the country
and alone, in search of the daydreams who escaped me
over the desert hills of the American Southwest, larger
than life down on earth, the same earth I’ve returned to
with the same grievous wings my heartbreak left behind.
Dumpster Fire Press 