Strange Eternity

I sit resting between a silver Pacific
The buzzing of cyberspace, blaring
Wedding music and Mythbusters

 Heaven could be like that I suppose
A place where temporary silence
Touches against noisy eternity

This space has no ticking red shift
Nor dry whispers of tidy angels
Only a marshaling of quiet motion

Thursday Night Safeway Parking Lot

Thursday night Safeway parking lot
Empty excepting a few cars randomly
Waiting for their owner shoppers, clerks
And zombie-looking all night stockers

After a meander along empty aisles
Frozen food boxes stacked liked coffins
Vegetables stacked like bright corpses
Show my nagging hunger the door

Trading small bits of metal and paper
For small bits of metal, paper, plastic,
A small amount of strange green juice
Jill the clerk says something polite

I smile and say something polite too
And drift toward the automatic door
This side of Out is lit for a party
That side of In is lit for a funeral

From in I pass to Out leaving thoughts
Scattered among Hollywood magazines
Of faces everyone wants to know
Living the lives everyone wants to live

In the out emptiness reigns silent
Women vanish with their dome light
A young man scurries to hide
In the darkness of a battered car

Blacktop splattered with food, soda,
Coffee, water, oil, coolant, and some
Of my automatic steering fluid that
Escaped from its warm engine box

I grasp a plastic bag with C-batteries
Naked Green Engine drink with right
A key bundle and receipt with left hand
Smelling warmed liquids on asphalt

Pieces of torn cardboard and an orphaned
Receipt from Safeway’s companion stores
Maul my ankles briefly in a slight breeze
Then flit away toward shadowed night

My sore feet slog macadam smells
Mysterious floating streetlights push
My shadow against curbs blurring its line
Multiplying my name in rhythmic time

Memory Under Snow

I never care for the breezes of winter’s cold
I’ve always wanted to spread my non-existent wings
Migrating to some warm place near your heart

The surprise of a silent morning glazed in snow
Colored like Christmas lights and awaiting fresh tracks
Chill even my warmest memory of your smile

The freeze will end, out there over that white horizon
Where a mirage of rapture rises slowly on the wind
Summer borne by your burgeoning blossoms

The Work of Angels

Angels in many guises and disguises
Wander hidden among the dying
Offering some a gentle prompting
Some a most fearsome brand

Angelic entities not confused
By remembrance of past deeds
Guide with a silent presence
Away from clamorous memorial

These graces terrorize the disinclined
To achievements beyond frail passing
Until these same reluctants gladly
Release death to mortal silence

... a kind of quiet resting

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2011

... a kind of quiet resting
keeping pace with thoughts
rolls along wave tops

Pacific is thinking today
gray matter drifts past
with fishermen

how is it so simple
and yet complicated …

now my thoughts and waves
compete for magnificence

Accident

Flickering green light stampeding through my eyes
Traveling vague dream roads with fleeting people
Whose luminescence stretches night shadow longings

Wearied ruinous sleep discomfits future meditations
Hammered by fluttering black walnut leaf breezes
Solitude creeps across the day like a missing jigsaw piece

Flickering like the light my thoughts struggle for solidity
Yesterday is gone again today has happened relentlessly
Tomorrow might see me speaking a new language

I am seeking new words to throw at my computer screen
To break my head into tiny pieces of immaculate sound
But the banging of leaves is asking foolish questions

Who delights in my walk at youthful tempo?
In what cupboard is my old face hidden?
What blood type is required to speak in prepositions?

Gathering my toys I drove west toward respite
In a vehicle too fast and too slow for thought
Once again reality interbred with my fading dreams

For greeting a bend in my road waving men
Thickened thought progress with semaphore arms
Circling their hands in downward spirals

Begging my senses to consider some new event
Directing my thinking into lower gear to observe
Single file traffic around an accident scene

This quiet rural highroad sun dappled
Wounded now like a broken blood vessel
An automobile rests turtle-like on its roof

Flipped to prevent escape from fate
One side imploded from sudden impact
Its armor of steel and glass shattered

Here and there other turtle like creatures
Strained necks or hove to along my road
Watching a dying creature pass on

Holding cellular devices aloft with concern
Waiting the arrival of emergency hands
Excited in the act of participation

One pacing pretty, a one-armed tigress
Charged a passing ad covered van reading
“Website development and maintenance”

Announcing to the driver her friend
A broad smile out of sync with events
That she was the messenger to 911

Our passing motorcade shook its heads
While someone on their knees spoke
To a life still inside its broken shell

Brilliant sunlight broke like a mirage
On the silver carapace with fat bloodied limbs
Waving slowly trying to achieve rightness

Gathering thought from the mottled light
And speed from a spinning earth
I pulled my head into the afternoon

Moment on moment dragged my road along
Under wheel memory purging memory
Rising gorge to crown despair

Jodorovsky's Principles

Using Jodorovsky’s principles
I might raise the Titanic just to sink it again
Or maybe I could reanimate Walt Disney
So he could see what’s happened in Tomorrowland

Wouldn’t I need to kill my father and fuck my mother
Like Pasolini’s Oedipus in an artistic tour de force?
I’d have to surface my unconscious longings
In boxing matches with Marcel Cerdan.

But really, really, couldn’t I just murder
CEOs of fortune’s five hundred plunderers?
I know a slaughter wouldn’t be surreal or sublimation
But it might just be murder fun in the first.

Using Jodorovsky’s principles
If I move my fingers into magic mudras
I conquer my primitive and murderous lustings
By simply steepling my fingers into a cathedral.