Love Poem / for Calum and Jordan E.

You, Brother Lover
and you, Sister Strong

siphon wailings from my lungs, screams

and words that expand every wall

into it’s other side,

and dance and wheat and salt

our love upon the earth

to taste of scab and

stain like rain.

Even over ocean and plain,

yours is my pain.

My gut and breast are sick

for your children.

My eyes raw with what

you cannot un-see.

With each prayer breathed,

you bend my knee.

You run deep in me.

We let riversong rush the world out.

We let stillness swamp echo the world in, slow.

All of it, waves

urging us onward and

deeper, onward and deeper.

Talking to us from Ireland

or underwater,

or straight from our fathers' mouths,

or warbly

through some tape recorder that missed us

under the bridge of holy rage.

The King and the Hummingbird,

Russian Olive and Cypress Tree,

you run deep in me.

And in the streets, We:

chanting and preaching.

Shouting maniac, play mask, play prophet.

Harass the neighbors!

Harass the angels!

Shake the mother from her sleeping trunk

and die a little,

just for fun.

And in the streets, We:

dancing and squealing,

spinning entire shorelines on our skirt tips,

stomp waltz steps in rosewater puddles, clasp

hands and beat dirt with

One fist,

for those whose blood has curdled.

This love.

A love, inevitable, as it may be;

A love that found God,

           killed him, feasted,

           and bore sacred poetry;

A love of reinforcements and returning;

Oh, my Pharoah,

Oh, my Queen,

You run deep in me.

CULTURE POP

I live my life like a pinball game:

     Radical!

     over a sheet of glass, and

     for the token

         loophole in the corner,

         which may or may not

           be a fat kid.

I utilize foraged goods to make change.

I purchase time in dimebags

use the backstock for reservation

bend the framework of waiting in line

so I’m prepped to slam the pegs from any angle.

But I pay to watch a ball fall through.

      Because “any” isn’t “all”

         it’s “ONE”

      to finesse that connection

      within rigid walls

      of mechanical obsession.

Like catching your reflection

   in a bubble,

     iridescent

and it busts on your form,

too strict for floating bonds to withstand.

                       pop.

when strawberries broke

              out in hivemind

              vaccinations and glitterbombs

   could heal the world,

       momentarily.

Quickest way to shift perspective?

Throw some glitter on it.

Seems to be more effective

   than facepunch

   or thigh slice.

Will run more tests.

Cynicism levels have spiked

    in humorous spite.

Still plateaued over at

     yonder puzzle

           though . . .

You are            searching

raising my bottom lip over

back of head and come

up with “umbrella”?

fuck it, I’ll ride the rain.

waste not, wanting you.

Baby, our love is a pizza magnet!

     configured of two lukewarm calzones

     and a throne, upon which

     it appears neither

    Thug Queen nor

    King Jesus could

           rule alone.

Played and puffed, Sun

ups the ante, but

         broke the bluff

somewhere between bums in the night,

between asphalt, wall and dumpster

between the city itself

and within every wadded napkin

     reverberates sidewalk music lost

somewhere in translation

from bricks to mortar.

           Should I be worried about you?

Not in Boulder, nope.

89% bleached of even a glance at the world’s pain.

And yet here we are.

There is a ringing in everything,

maddening rot

poking out every chord

lopsides, and every child

leaves bemused,

fingering in pockets

torn receipts.

But I only shiver among

    constellations, under

Only freeze for a word,

and even then

           only for the

              portion of a

                  pivot.

Because when Michael Jackson turns

the world in a remix,

   Be-bop-o-phobia

   will finally comprehend

    the spiritual significance

     of porridge           and

                           peas.

and too hot will be the new just right.

and the outliers will be

  more like valence electrons

  and less like dryer lint.

              Right now,

we are the extra bits

picked up and

plucked off,      lumped

    together,   called

somethingcutelikeabunny

                       and tossed out.

But we are the accidental

  organizers of chaos.

We loop around,

          trade places,

              bargain spots in line

                 and burn through inspiration

                     like foodstamps

                        and

                            ganja.

We form functional bonds

     in patterns of

     figure eights and hopscotch

       through scatter and scram,

     self-editing stacks up

     and over like

     cheap liquor

        tossed back

        behind tongue and throat.

                           extra coat

                      to pretend we’ve

                         escaped the

                                cold.

The wretched wind

slams debris

into air blocks

at such high velocities that

they never leave.

As long as we keep

  smashing our direction into one another

  bridging purpose

                     will

  keep us together.

          Only no one goes anywhere.

Overheard a longshot laughing

turned out to be a close call.

Still, I don’t move.

I stand as witness

to Andrew’s Ether evaporating

and following fall.

I am the genius on the wall.