Drive-In Blues

The rabbit in the moon

watches over a field of cars

crunching over telltale gravel,

lit up by blockbusting cinema,

splitting our minds, tearing our hearts,

drying our eyes while the sky

shakes its noble head black,

and the cars rattle with anxiety

and throttle with pleasure and distaste;

plows of smoke fill every makeshift bed,

innumerous with wide-eyed faces

and thick-veined excitement!

The bright lights are in my face.

How I wish that you tonight

could take their place.

Obvious

This used to be the title

but it has become less true:

Everything you have heard

about me is absolutely true.

How could you think otherwise,

when you personally have seen

the stained glass tomb

of my reckless conscience.

(My secret is one of pain-

staking obviousness,

like the moon disguised

as a smooth, curved star.)

(My secret is one of love-

dreams faltering in

spite of boundless faith

in our mint condition.)

Resurgance of the Detested

I won't lie, your words put me to sleep,
left to dream about stuff I never cared for,
like broken stairs and the ocean floor deep,
until my soul melts to the ocean floor,

where it's dark and icy and I so very miss
everything past that just isn't now.
So I escaped my catacomb, I can love sleepless,
even if I fall into the mud, somehow.

There's nothing I can know for myself,

since every secret has a hidden risk.
I opened every case on my faithful shelf,
and flooded my night with an unknown disc.

In that instant I felt as open as my window.
And if there were anyone with me to bet
(I see no reason for them to ever go),
There may be magic in me yet.

Canyon

The great defender

of childhood freedom

stretches wrinkled paws over cliff-sides;

his pink nose gently

waking everything

long forgotten.

The troubled fawn

he once courted

now long deserted, he jumps

into the arms of restless birds;

taking him swiftly

back to his rocky enclave.

The poor lonesome lion;

how difficult it must be

for him to overlook

the snowy peaks

in the arms of a golden swan,

the one I gave him to

because no one likes flying alone.

The Ballad of Forever

I once knew a girl, my would-be wife,

Who did all she could but still changed my life

Till Europe did come, pregnant with strife

And gave birth to the murder of our children

She once moved my hand a little bit South,

And whispered “If you want, you can just take it off,”

Her endangered skin had never been so soft

I wish I’d died in the arms of February

Her absence had pushed me against the wall

Higher and farther so’d I soon fall

I expected the rest, since once you have it all

There’s nothing to do but to lose it

The blanket unraveled as we sat in the sand

Our voices so serious, the night turned so bland

I remember her lips as they touched my hand

Eternally gracious and loyal

The stutters grew loud as my face shattered wide

In the middle of heaven there was no place to hide

Then the clouds disappeared and thus I was denied

The chance to ever meet my one Savior

Not once, twice, but Infinity got hurt

I bled on the bed-sheets, my notebooks, her skirt

So I buried my letters in Oregonian dirt

And felt the future slipping

Then she dressed me up like a memory doll

Till I looked like her lover, glasses and all

But I'm aware of it now, it was only to stall

My elusive transformation into gone-ness

We salvaged whatever we could from the mud

But too many evenings had reeked of our blood

So Fate saw it fit to unleash the Flood

Which froze up all of our visions

It’s over, it’s empty, there’s nothing to see

The only thing left is her chastity

I suppose that now I can finally breathe

The thick summer air of desolation

Now the battles are over: the end has begun

She won them all; I was the younger one

I promise one day to tell my first-born son

About the Great Civil War of Forever

The Sky Ends In Reality

The clouds in the mirror looked fake,

pixellated to the point of near smog,

thick unrelenting blankets of tear gas

that choked the endorphins of the sky,

and lonesome rain did make.

I couldn't help but notice her nighttime tan,

which stuck out like poets on driveways,

dizzying the loose inspired mind until

sticky eyes closed until the next day,

waking up an attached sort of man.

Nothing seems to ever work out.

All my doors have been long shut,

all my poor dreams end in reality,

my keys have all been dulled to null.

The sky is rank with clouds of doubt.

When Doldrums Become Delights

When soon you are away,

take a picture for me

of the mountains paper-mâché,

wherever they may be;

we'll be them, someday.

Mt. Olympus

Today a rare event took hold of me,

and a nameless girl turned my head.

She glided on the pavement, while my

heart slowly filled with crimson lead.

With her Daisy Dukes, pixie nose,

and raspberry lips I'll recall for days,

she set the trap I so often avoid.

And now I want to write her plays!

I wandered around to see her again,

to see if maybe I could light up her skies.

But I had left my glasses in the past,

and I could not see into her soft, colorless eyes.

A Strange Kind of Weakness

The girls on my flooded dream streets
twirl their hair and flaunt their feet,
asking me to touch them in inappropriate places,
when I only want to touch their faces.

Moth Complex

Lost tonight in the tangled identities of wispy souls
encircling neon orange street lamps,
as if they were the great Sun itself-
Somewhere in the drizzly darkness,

they all struggle with their Moth Complex.

And with their minds reeling from my historical fiction fables,
they accuse me of having a Butterfly Complex.

(Oh familiar Wisconsin night,
pregnant with low-pitched sighs...)

Yes it's true, crucify my pale emerald coccoon,
before my enchanting wings shadow the sun.

My wings do not rest lame on my thorax,
they stretch beyond shower petals and

glint merry in dew-drops;

Only I know the one secret that truly

seperates us (as if by nature's fate):

The flowers, those rainbow adobes of joy,

are much much easier to find by light of day-

(In the fog of the rabbit moon, they are lost
to the riverweeds [much like you, dear] )

So yes, I am a butterfly, pluck off my eager prolific
wings, before they eclipse your streetside sun.

(and, on some other day,
disintegrate into weary mothballs)