Cascade Funny and futile to throttle forward and back. All the while chained to a macabre metronome. Beating steady but swift, I often forget. That the day's machinations are a pixel in a cascade of color. Haiku suspension rocked by speeding souls drowsy with anonymity. Dovetailing Pausing for photos either framed by me or by strangers blocking the path. Snap-snapping. Enriching? --- Technically. But so is tap-tapping a salt shaker over a saline sea. Diversions in a dovetailed lattice. Spot Search (second stanza by C. Huber) Everywhere looks the same if you dig a hundred feet. Where will you find solace? Living flesh, beating within a brick house? Or as bones, intermingling with worms? Ladderball Tip Less whip. Try a straighter arm. Take it back further. Advice that's flipped forward and counter-revolved end over end. Rare to be in line. Even when it hits the mark, capriciously accepted. Northwest Passage Forthrightness bottled and packed with dry-ice. A subliming incendiary. That unnavigable spontaneity. A Northwest passage --- two oceans --- unlinked. Fillet Impromptu errands are charming. At least I hope so. Otherwise, I might be routine. And scalped tickets have a luster of forgery. Possibly without any redeeming quality. But maybe, more than bargained for. Fillet that routinized life! Run red lights. Get out the wrong door. Bump, graze and swipe at strings yet attached. New York Departure | Riding four-wide, shoulders fused. An awkwardness Lost on small children. But not to adult Sensibility. "The ocean isn't far." "Just an hour." Quickly Turned like a rattled cart. What was an hour twenty years ago? A pinprick in grown up hands. Arrival | Old hurricane-soaked wood dried to season. Chipped white paint -- An enamel battle lost. Beach | footfalls peppered onto hot sand, Tread With A steadier cadence, then the stuttered dashes of growing-pain legs. Searing memories. awash On an Atlantic dune. Saturated. salt and sand. Scooped up, chilled, by Once frozen Arms. Afterwards, a garden hose Shower hisses at the lawn. Settlement | Small differences cause A fundamental shift. Brownstone Facades. Quick glances and forceful strides across One way streets. You have until the hand is solid red. Or maybe until just a little after. Buses are underground. Cars for the rich. Bikes missing seats and missing decades. Cantor dust! Like deleting the infinitesimal links of Antoine's necklace. From vanishing twists and knots -- a new space. Airports I like airports. All different sorts pass through. Luggage in stride. This is all anyone will have, for awhile. Folded shirts and 4 oz Beauty products. A necessary minimalism for Reminders of old friends, Business deals, Family trips. Those things Jettisoned from home. Monuments A heat sink. A vapor cloud. Simmer on my brow. Stewing my Faculties. God this heat! And it isn't even the hot time of year. Monoliths larger than My life's ambition. God this immensity! More stifling than the heat. Me, a canoe, thrashed by an oceanic history. White graves grayish on the shade. Stonewalled by stone walls. I don't feel the gravity. Everyone is dead. Do thousands of graves Ring thunderous like the billions before them? To my ears they squeak Like metro rats. What do others feel when Visiting? Besides heat? Right Hand Will this be a right hand? Throwing news on my porch. Or will it be a left jab? Catching me unaware. The sum of my ambition a sailboat on the open ocean. Will it be a right hand? Or it will it be the wrong one? Fishing for my glasses. Walking to a park bench. Writing a traveling song. Faking like I know something. The sum of my ambition an actor at a full audition. Will it be a right hand? Or it will it be the wrong one? Ducking under headlights laying down still and quiet. All that’s missing. Is not what I’m missing. The sum of my ambition one big long transition. Will it be a right hand? Or it will it be the wrong one? The 4th Horns bleating with parallax. Floating fortunes slam air on air. Silence doused by M-80 blasts and canon-shot cracks. Wakes in no wake zones. Smoke wafts from packed gunpowder. Meanwhile, pumped into ribs and half salmons. My job: enjoy myself. Do paddleboard splits, frigid water dives against snorkels stove dips, talk to twice removed strangers. This frantic holiday. Sailing Gliding the sound. Like many times before. But it's different. Usually most of me enjoys it, but part doesn't let go. A slow and tense filibuster. This time a ceaseless thread. Woven surely, without hurry. With no destination and no tide to beat. No rush to shore and no errands. Just moorage set against Amphitheater bluffs. On which, stalwart trees strain their necks. Vertically. Silent spectators of this unerring expanse. Barista He's not exactly missing a neck. A bulbous chin piked on a Swelled up trachea. Plesiosaured from years of Stooping. There's gruffness in there. But it's excused. Even encouraged, maybe. Smoke breaks warranted. Dragonfly The body fits, but not the rest. Desperate. When matchstrike wings don’t catch and zig-zag grates are a green mile walk. Brinksmanship I'm laying in this van, It creaks as the sun hits it. Knots of steel groaning as they unwind. Uneasily. I'm uneasy too, Baked by heat shards and irked by gravel-crunch footfalls. Laying still but not sleeping. My fuse shimmering flash-pan white. I mean perfectly still. A front load head On spin-cycle. Sudsy with prattle. Companionless brinksmanship? Maybe. Either way, tripping on painted lines. One ransacked wall apart. |
