Cattle

Where do you go?

To a wolf's apartment or a sheep's department store?

where is the more hiding in you?

as I aim to push on through

riding rails, unfurling sails to let the wind get to you.

any shiver from a frozen wind, any quiver with an arrow's kin. You're the one who sees with eyes and feels without heart

isn't that a start?

with a locked heart and tied laces.

Covered in soot from climbing down chimneys and drowned in proposals of squeezing through garbage disposals to sneak a glimpse of the fire I let to give away.

Now I just get the spins to forget the grins and regrets of not dancing with the pine. This love like wine needs time to breathe out.

Yet the danger of seeing you turn to a stranger

is worth a hundred goodbyes.

Find me

In the sounds of your fingers rubbing together, I am there.

In the heat of a heart's introduction, I am the stare.

In the first bite of buttered toast, I am the crunch.
In the angst of a first love's kiss, I am the after climax bliss in the drunkenness of breath at the top of a mountain look
for me

In the last eagle's caw, in the lion's gaping maw, if you've eyes to see.

See me.

In the dregs of last night's beer
in the first breath of the morning clear I am there.
stretching in the first light of the sun.

In the eyes of your unrequited love, I am the tear
in the space between the notes of a symphony.

Look for me.

In the dots between the elevens on the clock, in between the heavens and the flock I reside.
nonexistent, yet pulling the tide, I reside.
Between up and down standing still and spinning round in the air and on the ground
I reside.

Find me.

Preydator

I can see through the predators eyes quite easily, though I work to keep this sheep's clothing as tight as possible.

I walk upright, I keep my hair from standing on end. I force these fangs behind my lips and swallow my saliva as a a scent from faraway sent hits me.

I don't let my pupils dilate. I still my heart, put ice in my veins, slow this ever-quickening gait.

I wrap my tail around my waist and keep my growl to a whisper.

I haven't tasted blood in a decade.

I even stopped digging holes and started keeping the fleas at bay.

But alone? I tear my clothes, let loose my fur, stretch my toes, give a gaping yawn. My nails click on the tile, my growl fills the hall.

Sometimes I'll wait until dark, clamber up the stairs and risk a howl at the moon.

Never a response.

Slow fears

Every beard i ever grew to hind behind was just a showy way to let my mind stay childish.
I'd shave them all again to leave myself exposed to no one who is paying attention.
The story of my life will be left on read,

and why wouldn't it?

I've done so little with it that who is to blame? Just another face to be forgotten.
Yet is somehow the biggest fear. That i will become insignificant.
Forgotten.

and why wouldn't i?

Left Right Left

When you're young, and someone wants to "get" you, they come up from behind, tap you on the right shoulder, and hide behind the left one....you turn right. Got you. After so many repetitions of this game, what happens? 

You learn to expect it.

 Someone taps you and you look to the opposite shoulder. Not this time, pal., I know your game. 

So when a socially controversial topic comes up in the forefront of our collective consciousness, a bell is rung in my brain. "Look to the opposite shoulder- is this more of the same?

More of the divide and conquer paradigm, seeking another way to calculate, quantify, and quarantine our minds?

Were we too close to the edge of unity? Maybe we saw the forest from the trees, maybe our toes tasted the water in the breeze, maybe our eyes saw through the disguise of our slice of the pie for a split second too long.

Maybe the ratings were gone, maybe the bottom line bottomed out, maybe the margins for profit were marginalized in our brains, maybe we cared less for more of the same.

Maybe the t.v. was off for too long, maybe the drive thru line was too short, maybe we even talked a little too little about sports. Tomorrow was coming too slow, yesterday was forgotten too fast.

Maybe we were too rapidly inching towards the very presently passed.

Maybe we were too sober, so we legalized being stoned. Or maybe we saw safety in numbers, so it's a shame  to be alone, we want to stay young forever so we criminalize  full grown and mind blown and all known as a sign of weakness.

Meekless features of the preachers facin bleachers teachin teachers how to teach us about jeezus when all you wanna hold is deez nutz and watch D's bust on T's and trust that's a sign of the times, when your taught more how to feel guilty than who taught you that crime, like a pre-teen with a rolex, who bought you that time? If i put a ladder under you who taught you to climb?

 I'm not tryin to drop dimes but you dont squeeze limes if you want lemonade, ice aint water at 100 centigrade and you dont ask questions until all your dues are paid, you keep em guessin until they cant see the masquerade, and you dissuade the renegade by handing him a hand grenade, pull the pin and watch him fade away.

Make your crime bright as day and then keep saying that bad things are done in the dark.

No one notices a lightbulb when their searchin for sparks, or sees electrons when their lookin for quarks, the only dog noticed is the one who barks at the wind for howlin first, so the man who stands proudest is cut short as conceded. Little do we see that confidence is so needed that our fields, if left unseeded, will yield only the idea that we can be defeated and deleted should we dare stand together, and arm in arm decide whether the charms of harming brothers has lost it's shimmer. Like a chain of sparks that would make lightning shiver, in reality, we are no dimmer.

So when it calls you by name, separate and criticized and more of the same. Look to the opposite shoulder.  "not this time, pal I know your game"

10 PST

A call, unanswered. 

15 again. Not the starry eyed lightness, but the pit falling

why?

 never wondered I’d be back here

why?

The same pattern, she is.

And I so hard to make myself stand in place of the mask I used to wear. Here, after all my hairs have grown, she, the same.   

Pathetic, my expectations.

And yet in a way I should have expected more.

Her crawling back to find just another reason to stay subdued. Under his sheets to feel loved.

It reminds me of everything I don’t want to see.

it reminds me of me.

Watching messages left on read. Watching calls never answered and words never said.

I’ll be done. For five minutes.

Until she picks up again with some lame excuse. How it wasn’t him with a noose around her neck it was just lack of sleep, it was just some reason to forget.

A fish who has known only muddy water would choke in the sea. 

#68

  Through the rising steam of her porcelain order, ticket #68 turns away from my wagging tail. Amidst a hail of dank air and dusty wine bottles which line the counter's lonely rack, I scan her scent, huff her impurities,  critical pupils contracting at every uncertainty. Though I read her name as she handed me that plastic-thin idea of self worth, "68" is a much easier concept to grasp. Her fickle eyes darting between gazes; startled at the sound of a distant howl; fluttering at the concept of human interaction, would fit better the impermanence of an order taken during a lunch rush over the stale normality implied by the 6 characters which made up her identity.

  Oh, 68, her frightened lip squirming at the heat of her barbecued sandwich. She shifts in her seat, adding more steam to the white cup of safety and sophistication before her. Somewhere in the bustling distance, her scent lingers for the rest of the bloodhounds, which in her mind surround her, chase her endlessly around every corner, peer from ever parked car, breathe from every window. the unrelenting feeling of almost. Their wet noses sniffing in her unscathed ear. She struggles against her own skin's effort to meet those hunting eyes. To be taken captive.

   Oh, 68, her shaking will erupts in one last stand, erect, holding herself by the hand, she lurches for the door. They'll be on to her by now. bon chance, 68. May you grow old in your bed. May the itch of your skin cease long enough for your resting head to carry you to sterile dreams. May the only howl which shakes your bones be the wind upon your lonely window. May you show with your life that the way to never widow is to never be a wife. May the thoughts of your unknown love never wake you from your slumber. To be sure of this, sweet 68, never give another your number.