skonen_blades

The shaved arugula that makes up my excuse for a hangover ex-wives the plantation owner of my receding hairline.
It’s not like there are tiny pinatas in my eyes that look for children with sticks.
It’s not I’m made of diplomas from schools that don’t exist.
It’s not that I’m all kite and no string
It’s not that I’m all string and no kite
It’s that I’m a ravaged hippopotamus caving in on himself.
And excuse for an ostrich to refuse to stick his head into the sand
I’m wet and cold on the beach
Cancer Christmas-lights my organs
I have measles on my easels
I’m a foot long horndog
I eat pieces of shit like you for brunch
If it wasn’t for my oversized sense of fair play, I would have beaten you fair and square a long time ago
I’m not a macho man
I’m a ring leader
I’m not a ring-tailed lemur
I’m a horse trader
The other night I made out with a lamp
Tomorrow I’m getting engaged to electricity
I’m underwater and I’m an electrician
I’m a shock to my own system
I self fibrillate
If it wasn’t for stormclouds and patents I’d have eaten my own pancreas
I don’t deserve a medal, I deserve an anchor
Colds catch me out of the corner of their eye
I click-clack on the porthole to the universe
Morse coding a crossword to the powers that are benign
I’m a rattling passive question, hoisting my own petards up and going pantless down the marriage trench
If it wasn’t for Star Wars, I wouldn’t know what mysticism and religion were
I’m a Christmas present wrapped in fur for a peta orphanage
I laugh in the face of spaghetti
You’re not a number. You’re a square root.
You’re a peg-legged bumblebee
You’re a windshield rushing at an idea before it caves it’s own asshole in through it’s own brain on impact against the clarity of the glass
You could no more avoid it that you could avoid a moose of destiny
At least it’s not fatal, you cry to your pillowing crash bag as it breaks your nose
At least it’s not a siren lulling you to the big sleep
You dance and you sway
You pull the door open
This is needing a taller desk.
This is needing a keyboard that’s more ergonomic
This is trying out new things.
I’m not the one the ocean sings for.
I just translate.
I take no responsibility for greatness
That is the mantra
That has to be the mantra
You need to force the steps until they come naturally
You need to horse doggle the flindars until they hump up the stairs on their own
You need to lullaby the snakes until they ties themselves around your wrists
Making planes stand at attention until the rap lyrics write themselves
You’re no Michaelangelo
You’re little more than a Jobs
I’m sold darkness to demons and pictures to photographers
I’m a book on how to find your way
Reading itself
The translations are pending and so are the patents
I’m not a parent but I play one on tv
I’m Troy McShure
I’m a happening cat but in actuality, all cats are happening
So I guess I’m not that special
But I am the common miracle that every person is
I mean if only statistically
I wish that my paper balloon animals wouldn’t origami popcorn
And that my home movies would stop being so filled with promise
I with that Oscar nominations weren’t a curse and that churches weren’t afraid to walk the street at night.
I wish that every lift ticket had a job to come home to
And that I didn’t want to be a porn star in night vision 3d VR films
I wish my green scales looked better on dragons
I wish my fish breath worked better as a spine
I wish that everyone’s struggle wasn’t such a struggle even though I recognize the gateway
Some doors don’t open and we beat ourselves bloody by knocking face first until the funeral wraps our impact in its graveyard catcher’s coffin mitt
Not to baseball death
There is no metaphor
There is no time
There is no friend in me
I left for another place a long time ago
And I can never come back
But I can parallel
I can go forward/outward
I can reach
I can shed fear
I can be impossible
I can help
I can answer the riddle
I can dance until the broken wheels of my legs become whole again
I can Chinese food the fortunes back to the stock market strength again
But first I have to realize that I was never strong
And I was never here
I don’t have to be the biggest or the best
I just have to last
And persevere.

tags

April 30/30

25/30

I’m not good at defusing bombs so I just wear thicker clothes. My heart’s been replaced with a growth of crystal and my hands tell the future now. It’s a pleasure map and ex marks the spot where the hole is. Her entire body was a violin. I am half barstool. My head is a television and my watch belongs to a child. I am the boring parts of the old west. You are an ornate shield. You squeaked when I hugged you like baby’s toy. The good thing about being the dark so long is that now I can see in the dark.

I’m not nocturnal. I’m just dayphobic. If I was a police officer, I’d be the kind that everyone likes but that no one calls in times of real trouble. I am a heating vent. You are a dentist appointment. I’m a retired taxidermist. You’re a rookie oncologist. My hopes and dreams float in a glass like dentures. My abilities sway in the wind like old branches. My entire life has become a bookmark.

For an anchor, I am maintaining a surprising altitude. Like even the Titanic can be a glider. Hell, the Hindenburg didn’t need much to stay in the air but I feel less flammable. And that’s the point. All super hero futures haven’t happened yet and all my first place ribbons are gathering dust in their frames. A live fully lived but less living now. I am a meatloaf. You are an astronaut.

The gulf is still crossable but it’s widening.

I am a movie from the eighties.

You are fingerless gloves.



tags

April 30/30

7/30

A three-shovel shitpile hangs heavy in the airship’s belly waiting for discovery’s anvil to come crashing through its entire meaning with a feather switch. I’m no angler but I know that means a business lunch in a bunny suit. “Wrangle this” my flock patterns will say. God damn. It’s too early on a weekday for this kind of century. I’ve got frog suits more weekended than this mess.

It’s the kind of book burning that your grandfather remembers with a smile. The sort of down home hoedown howdy that reminds you why rhinos have horns. I’ll take that magic marker and go own some Frisbees with it. You keep your spiders in jars, I’ll let mine parachute into Paraguay with nothing but topless eight-armed dancers on their mind. India forgive me because it’s going to get hot on this train in the horse car.

I like my burritos like I like my American toques. That means I like them beanie. You talk to my truth-taker like you’re confessing to a college prank. You killed people and now I’m the mop that has to clean it up. You can use that load of bread to dab up regrets on what’s left of your dinner plate. I’m going back for another tour of duty. I’ve hated your kind ever since I set foot here.

Too bad you’re inside me. I can’t be good to you but if I’m bad to you then I’m bad to myself.

I hope you choke on a crab. I hope I can high-road you to death. I really doubt it. I don’t know if that’s the you talking or my own amazing hold on reality’s greasy barber pole. I’m a fireman with oily hands and weak legs but I’m leaving the station to fight fire with sarcasm.

I have your best intersections at heart.



tags

The broom of midnight sweeps 2008 away with the rest of the garbage. 2009 is a clean room that already looks untidy to me. There’s a whole carton of milk available to cats who want it. My words are clipped, unable to fly.

It’s hard to shout into the phone what this year is supposed to be. I have four bars of reception and they’re all on special. A time for standing stones. Let’s call on the priests for blessings. If they don’t answer, let’s call on ourselves.

The bears are wrestling again. A fur coat of a month that demands that I stay home while work changes. I’m at the wrong end of the telescope but I can see myself waving. I’ve plugged in the speakers and set up the stereo. Now all I have to do is press record.

Competition is over. The ballots are in. This is a whole other kind of race. The long snout of a dog, the arching back of an old horse, claw marks in the snow. I’m painting a self-portrait morality in shades of Dorian Gray, allusions to youth but I feel the ribbon at the end of the race breaking like a spine.

I stole home base years ago but I’m still running.




tags

Chalk washes away with the rain.

One would hope that tears could erase the past so easily.

Fingertip to palm base pressed against the spine of an amazing woman. A thumbprint on a power source so valuable to your own heart that it seems a shame to even risk the ticket. There is no flight plan.

I’m a doorway that I have to coax myself through, a living threshold. The duality of the person I want to be and the person I’m afraid of becoming straddle the present to make me see double.

As sure as language is wind and our throats are instruments, some are left staggering and unremembered in the haze of today. If misery were fire, people I know would be burning, going up like the torches they’re carrying.

I’m no expert on how to manufacture nights. I’m a horrible counterfeiter. Radar sings within me, pinging the old growth. The days are dreams.

There are times in the garden when a person has to choose between the ring of truth or last night’s leftovers, between betting it all on black or laughing at the penny slots. The balance beam offers no answers, only a way forward.

Consequence is a sneaky little villain with cold, patient hands. If I had a dinner table, he wouldn’t be welcome there any more. I’m a kite-flying cartographer looking for a lightning storm.

These are waves crashing.



tags

My drunken ramblings need a rambulance. I need some iambic pentamedics to change the feet in my mouth and inches I wish I was doing more with into poetic meters. I need a metric revolution and a rhyme pattern that’s more than a scheme. My life has become ad-verse. Lines of predictable rhythm with a lot of A-B but no Z. I’m a funny guy and no mistake but I’m also here to tell you that the shortest distance between two points is not a punchline. I am a series of George Co-stanzas building up to a coarse chorus to take it to the rope bridge. For this, I entreat the muses;

Hear my cry. Turn my tongue to silver. Let the metal give me mettle. Let words of pure meaning slip with effortless manufacture into diligent, pliant ears. Let my quest for perfection in any area be smothered under attention, activity and fun. Let my endless sprint away from myself become a marathon that I run side by side with my newly smiling soul born of smooth delivery.

I want to drool honey all over the senses of women I respect while I’m looking up to them. I want my speech to be eager music, inciting a riot of bondage-breaking passion from every target. I want to weave spells that restore youth and agility to all.

I want to create and give it life.


tags

Colloquial expressions of comfort and commiseration flow into me like cold water through bullet holes. I feel anger and I feel happiness. Shreds of someone else’s throat floss my bloody mouth when I try to talk. I have six kites tied to the rings hooped through the flesh of my shoulder blades. They kick like scissors. They pull me up but fail to lift me. They hold me back. My eyes are cobalt 64. My mouth is ignited liquid nitrogen. I lift my arms up and branch the sky. I’m hungry for donuts. I’m more awake than I thought possible. I hit my favourite stations on the radio of my mind but they’re all on commercial breaks. I spin the dial to random air and get a tango from ten years ago. I have no more reasons. I came with directions. A moonsliver of eelskin minnows through my heart and I shudder to remember a cold room with a hospital floor. My shell tacks time with a wolfish snarl. Blood circles fleck my warm wet cheeks like freckles of wet paint. There are clots of someone else's blood in my long hair. I lick my fingers and bend down to get back to work. I am underwater and praying. I am images trapped in glass. I live as memories in other people’s minds.