Count On It

Hard to see when you believe in a ghost.
An invisible man who's afraid of getting hit by traffic.
He's never far, so try not to bump into him.
I've collided with air too many times.

Material objects fly through the air without provocation.
If you get in deep enough to know.
He's the man in the dandy hat.
Grows closer to you when you're alone.

It's only then he can see who you are with yourself.
Alone, no one to front for.
No one to impress with all your tricks.
And indecipherable bliss.

And once you've grown cold and silent.
He'll know you're close to the edge.
He'll come to claim you if he can.
His name is nothing and he's not even related to the man we call "death".

If death follows you around take it as a compliment.
He's only ensuring your passage through life.
Every death threat and every bomb dismantled creates a cloak.
It's only when they miss the mark and you're blown away that you can't stay for another day.

Say I had a gift called foresight and I used it every chance I got.
And pretend I could forecast someone else's fate.
Wouldn't that be a valuable commodity.
Useless when choosing a set of lottery numbers, cause that's not how it works.

In emergencies people have been known to exert superhuman strength.
I've heard the story of someone lifting a car, saving a person trapped.
The price we pay for saving someone's life isn't always stiff.
It's only high if we misjudge, never sacrifice yourself unless it's a final choice.

Put yourself in front of the bullet and you'll pay a price.
Especially if it was intended for family or friend.
I can defend myself better in a mental game of war.
If I see you coming in my mind's eye I might devise a plan.

This isn't a warning or an attempt to out myself.
It's just a dialogue about how we might work from time to time.
Send in an assassin and you've definitely crossed a line.
My grandfather John Donovan taught me nothing, I never met him, but I heard the stories.

He was OSS, his cover journalism.
My grandmother and my mother suffered some of the consequences.
Our men who work in intelligence always bring secrets that can't be explained or repeated, families broken and torn.
Black suits, black cars come to question the women and children and it's not against the law.

I Stopped By

I stopped by just to say hello.
You were gone.
So, I hung around your window.
Your sister said you'd be back around 12.

I went to the park and sat on a swing.
My ponytail brushed back in the wind.
I talked to the neighbor, tried to waste time.
Hungry for your face, hungry for your eyes.

You're always asleep.
And I'm always tied up.
By conspiracies and undiscovered mysteries.
Grow up please.

They tell me I'm the girl who's forever young.
And you're the man who's never done.
Find me if you dare.
I'm closer to here than there.

Wonder Over What's Gone.

After it has left you you're wondering what happened.
You tried to make sense of it all.
You wrote down some thoughts.
And you brought out the big guns.

Mindfucking is essential at any given time.
Pardon my french.
The poetry of a modern day Cinderella.
From the ashes to what?

There are no red carpets for me.
I'm a writer finding the time.
I might not mind.
You know I never mind.

Keep the sequences in order.
And perhaps you'll be of the same mind.
Or pare down the innocuous parts.
Stay the same and tame the art.

Hideaway

Silent in his dark room full of promises.
He waits, drinking interminably, thinking alone.
Growing colder inside, the passion fades like stars aging in the limelight.
Sitting and growing older, more set in his ways.

It's night after night of constant plays.
Running through corridors, striking fast, making tracks.
Sinister waterfront warehouses hiding secrets of past, present, and future.
Absolute bliss in the knowledge it's done.

What he came for has happened.
Where he's going is glum.
Depression sets in over love lost and gone.
The light that he was drawn to is hidden away.

A place he can't reach, by his doing and device.
The mechanism inside goes tick tock.
Extraneous noise vibrates in the most unpleasant way.
A baby's cry sounds like the devil at work.

And he's afraid on the bus of what he wants to do to the slut in the skin tight yellow dress.
He wants to cut her down, like an awkward antelope separated from the herd.
And do what he wants with nothing held back.
There in the courtyard, the yard filled with debris.

It's not him I see when I open my eyes.
But he's watching from a distance.
Finalizing his plans.
And the mayor is running, his face is deadpan.

The CIA thought they could swing it today.
But instead they found that there was no play.
In consequence we brought all the ammo we could.
And in the end, the ammo was wood.

Forget Me Not

Forget me not, she said to herself, as she looked in the mirror.

Narcissus at the pond, staring at his own reflection.

Name me a face and I'll name you a name.

Reminders of a lost tomorrow.

Sometimes sounds like forever after.

My emotions boil, covered.

Imagery of dinosaurs and tar pits.

Wherever you are, you are not far.

And when I'm alone I'm happy.

With others I am frequently happy too.

Sorry is another hereafter.

And final sale means final sale.

When I'm off on another planet dictating to the sun.

People dream of demon people.

We're off and on, like light switches.

Don't speak about another language unless you're prepared to stand behind it.

Don't further yourself from your goal.

Do find reasons to grow any day of the week.

Do create something inside yourself you can hold in your heart.

Do remember the moments that shaped you.

Heavenly Moment

This morning I washed my face in the bathroom and heard the crows outside the window.
I thought about how every time I leave the house there's a moment when I connect to the outside world.
I bought a book at an antique bookstore, something by Margaret Atwood, I think she's Canadian.
I wandered down the street and caught the sun.
Instant gratification parsed out to everyone.

And another day is done and I'm glancing back over the fragments.
I wrote something I can't possibly post.
It's too factual and easy to pin down.
I like to squirm under the microscope.
Make it harder to know why I write.

In blatant rejection of the simple terms I find myself drawn back to.
The history of me or you, or me and you.
And in my silence there is always noise.
Like static to electricity.
I wear my letter, capital A.

Faded jeans even you are gone now.
I have nothing but patches in my quilt.
Patches make a quilt.
And beyond the comfort grows my coffee tree.
Doling out caffeine, giving me energy.

Forgotten ones are you afraid?
Are you afraid of the bed you made?
I'm not lost, but my tracks are bare.
I left behind a trail in the heather and sage.
Broken branches twisted and snapped twigs.

Heavenly dystopia grant me one wish.
I have a suggestion: make it number two on the list.
The worker bee who listens to Queen all the time.
Finds himself constantly serving her wealth.
On the outer edges of hive bureaucracy there's less about her and more about me.

In Hindsight I Cease to Fight

The great expanse you left between us is nothing but your love.
And between the rocky outcrops where men lie in wait to defend the mountaintop fortress high above the city.
Turrets where radical elements spin winter tales about how the men stood tall and went out to fight for their families and for themselves, in plunder.
Wives and children silently, soberly, sit awake missing young men not as young anymore but spent: their integrity sound despite anger brewed by misapprehension and fear.
Power is nothing but lust incarnate and these are husbands not lovers who have no word for sin.
Children rise with bleary eyes...for they couldn't outrun the sandman on such a strict bedtime schedule.

Faked you out, compromised my name, while you bluffed to yourself while I stood and watched.
I showed you what I intended, logic told you no, until you got the courage to try my creation for yourself and the entanglement is true.
We ducked and feinted, nevertheless in time, mercurial lakes can shatter and/or split.
If you tread thin ice either steel yourself for a watery descent or move faster than the faults.
Rush as fast as you can, sliding into position, like a runner going for the base.
In Odysseus' story he could never find peace, since his nemeses derailed him from his home, never left in peace to reside.

Ego-driven Western world, the east is built on traditional expectations and what's inside of us.
In contempt for all blind, dumb, pariahs who sing for shekels, disabled partners, deaf, and lovesick kindred we're ignoring lessons.
Simply put he taught me to be the victim of myself, so God could come knocking and teach me in case.
Hopeless lost child I went down the wrong path, but came back armed for any impasse.
The skeleton writer clacks at his keys looking for signs of the girl and the path that she took, trying to follow, to know, or to grasp her design, which she wove from disappointments sudden but fair at the time.

A story's mighty character is bound by truth visualized.
By my maker in a copse of hard wood encircled by colorful thread.
He glanced at us in good humor, despite all the fuss, because his agenda is senior to both of our attended to plans: endings to endings we lived our dark sides out.
I traded useless foam and formica for a better raft minus the patch.
When I searched the glittering shore I found many weapons and saw dead burial ground.
But sand is like salt as ale is to brine complete reversal in time.

And in the space I made for myself I intoned to Libra "balance the scales."
Read smoke signals made from tinder and flint, I absquatulate the island reserved for no one, quick I run the sails, yet sorry I lost the current, found myself one of nine ships tasked to conceal our direction by separate courses at random.
I asked Homer to give me a clue and he stated the obvious.
Give your audience what they want when they want it and never when they do not.
Minerva listened to Telemachus since what he said made sense despite his uncertain position as a potential heir to Odysseus, which raises legitimate paternal question marks in many places.

Last night I opted out, while you primed yourself to lose ground, I asked and now I'm given--double entendre micromanaged, silent and impatient for the spikes interrelated, piquing high stakes security surveillance, the cameras run on blood.
Reptiles are cold, not patient, sluggish and slow they rely on outside sources of heat for pleasure.
Jagged shooting light syncopated to the rhythm of some other aspect I relied on, a quivering in my chest as I watch the death rattle suggest an that an octopoly is eight parts, for polyamorous hearts.
I took a headcount and we're unequivocally missing one persona non grata I could guess it'd be due to obstacle courses where you can't afford to trip unless it's to fall below the bullet raking the air, impunity by seconds faster than you could devise a worthy thought.
And the sum isn't equal, total only in part, the listing ship weathers vibrant hurricane.
Stowaway caught by a live rope on the ship, heaved her overboard, but the crew gave no notice and resounding facts without invitation or indentured servitude nothing saves uselessness and despondency embraced.

Luck gave her chase and though lost in unfamiliar place out of reach, she crested the waves, and breached to lungs burning in relief.
Finding her body stricken with ghastly morbidity without the usual helping hands, lost at nature's devilish foil, her approach to dignify a structure that binds her like a crutch standing you up beyond your clout.
Some stranger in a dinghy comes close to hear sodden cries, lacerations made by fibrous rope, initially meant to tie to lifesaving device impaired her judgement and brought her in with another crew.
These tactics don't teach us more than we already know.
For useful beginnings garner a place earned in history by lessons entirely free for the giver and without a tangible key.
Despite all the racket over mistaken bread, I am charging the lines provincial matter like thought cerebellum instead.