Somebody Get Me

Somebody tell me this has to be real.

Her sunlight on Saturn smile
and her star of midnight eyes,
just let me slip into her deep
with these visions of heaven
intact for the big kiss and tell.

Somebody pull the horror
the cold blood-shot dread
away from my past lives
like a sheet from a revenant
slowly stalking innocent night.

Somebody get me a doctor--

or a big fat twelve mile high
monsoon-wet goodnight kiss.

And one more Marlboro.

As the tic-toc whiles away
the precious gem of hours
with her, rolling into night;
before the molten-gold fire
burns on the ocean of glass,
just tell me this is for real
so I can be born once again
by a siren singing the blues

Somebody get me one more day to live.

I'll take the long odds and run for the hills;
just as long as the dream girl is with me.



















Top: European Space Agency artist's rendering of a view from the surface of Titan. With a view like this, real estate is bound to be on the expensive side.

Bottom: Titan is Saturn's largest moon, a little bigger than our own Luna. It's the only moon in the solar system with an appreciable atmosphere. Average temperatures range around the 300 below zero mark, Fahrenheit. This atmosphere is about twice as dense as the Earth's, and is composed of well over two-thirds Nitrogen, making it awfully similar to our own here on this rock. So if the day comes (five billion years from now) that the Earth's orbit is engulfed by the expanding sun, we might have a place to do something with. And it'll have one heck of a view, what with some forty or fifty other moons floating through the night sky, even though Saturn's glorious rings will probably be long gone.

I'll be gone again for a while. My aunt is in the hospital with worse news than before, more tumors and less time left. You all have been some great supporters. Bless your every endeavor, no matter what it might be.

"Freedom is Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose"

Freedom to climb that mountain,
until the mountain is no more,
Freedom to ride the bluest tides
until the blue tides are no more
Freedom to make love to beauty,
until beauty itself is no more
Freedom to do all these things,
until freedom itself is no more

And I am just a cloudy dream
blink and I'm gone forever;
you are just a wisp of smoke
breathe deep and you are gone;
again, forever...

So I breathe you in deep, deeper
as you keep your eyes wide open
you fill my lungs with your magic
my heart with passion and drama
I'll fill you with dreams and soul

We blend in wide spirals together,
hazy panorama on a blank page
chasing each other's naked souls
around a bonfire of burning idols
from dark times before their fall

Freedom is a whisper in the dark
hidden from its would be captors
we're free; take it's hand and run
we, the only free souls left alive

free under the false blue moon
free to run from a big yellow sun
free until tomorrow or the next
until there's nowhere left to run

*********************************************

Above: Must be a Saturnian butterfly, because that isn't our moon. It looks like Enceladus, though it isn't labeled as such. One of the forty or fifty plus moons of Saturn, Enceladus is yet another geologically active body in the solar system. Note the tectonic actions in its crust by the folded ridges on the left side of its face. It belches gases that are heated by friction created by tidal forces emanating from the large body that it orbits, like Roseanne Arnold at a pepper bar. Its "volcanoes" would actually freeze you to death, as opposed to burn you to crispy critterdom.

Nice.

Bayou

Let’s keep going/the tank's half full.

N'Orleans is just past the horizon,
through the delta, a midnight's spell;
you hear it, smell it before you see
it's glow fading the stars of heaven.

Do you feel it? God is closest here.

Tomorrow we will walk beside her.

But tonight we will have each other.

The tank is half full, and anywhere
is only one deep, sultry breath away.

Let's keep going through the night
and the dawn will meet us halfway.

Top: Sunset over the Big Easy, from across lake Pontchartrain. Skylines can talk, and this one says to enjoy this place while we still have it. Coastal cities that lie mostly below sea level are in one hell of a precarious place in this carbon crazy age.

Bottom: The Milky Way at sunrise. Obviously, this one was taken well away from any big city lights. Stars like grains of sand on the beach, a spiral arm of our galaxy about 30,000 light years in length, cutting diagonally down and to the right. Majestic. We are a speck of dust on the cog of a great wheel, but like any dust we will leave our mark before the final sunset.

Lies Between the Lines

The truth flutters on wings
that look like golden leaves,
tickle like excited fingers
like a blue joke's punchline--
long hair in the way of a kiss
as we pitch and roll and sigh
during these restless nights
the double storms of passion
in the air of this dark room
that we breathe together
on light satin damp sheets;
in and out the heart's tempo
the words, truths and lies
in our brown eyes begotten
by the light of morning desire.

The flutter of golden wings
means not a sigh of goodbye
but good morning, good night;
the truth has golden wings
like the leaves of autumn,
so pale lies between the lines
mean nothing more to us
than another gilded excuse
to spend a long summer night
over cover and incognito
as the bonfire only begins
to burn with its own light.

Top: A flower called Ascension by Fire. Like purify by fire, but with a slightly more tangible intangible reward at the end of the line.

Bottom: Jupiter's moon Europa, one of four large moons called the Galilean satellites, each one comparable in the size to our own moon. Fans of the movie 2010 (are there such people anymore?) will remember this one as the forbidden moon, the home of an intelligence far beyond anything quantifiable by our earthly senses. Beneath the cracked lines of its icy surface lies an ocean of cold water a hundred or more kilometers deep. Where there is water, many speculate life to possibly exist. And even children know that wherever life exists, a McDonald's franchise must surely follow.

Vertigo Delirium

Her lips are ravishing drugs--
my soul is a slave on her wing.

I love every intoxicating detail:

Every word waiting to be said,
waiting for no reason, really,
just to catch a breath--
just to play a game.

Waiting to be blown away
toward the only ear
they'd ever want to hear
their precious sighs
of vertigo delirium.

Waiting for the lights to go out
and the music to fall down low
so its earthbound fog rolls
gently around us as she lands.

Waiting
until the words have company,
and after that, when company
no longer desires a voice
to be heard--

Only

Felt.


Top: A smoke angel? I've never seen anything like it--so I knew it definitely belonged right here in this menagerie of beautiful oddities that I've gathered from across time and space. Bottom: Saturn? I've been to Saturn! It's good old Saturn in infrared false imaging. Pretty picture day around here, as always.

My aunt was discharged from the hospital yesterday, but she'll be back for more treatment in two weeks. I thank you all for your kind words and well-wishes. As I said before, each and every one of you are bad-asses in your own right.

Words, Alone

Listen: invent a new word for this
cloak of love drawn skin tight
against the hungry north wind--
against the thousand-eyed stare
of today, tonight, tomorrow...

Forge your every new phrase
as if they where cast in bronze
or purple rows of sunset clouds--
the foam edge of a rolling blue sea
in and out and in with the moon.

Words that crash on the rocks
words that sway oak trees
words that soothe our souls
words that make hearts whole
or split them like rocks shattering
in the fathomless cold desert night.

Weave your words into a blanket
and wrap them around our bodies.

Let me hear
see
feel
kiss
hold these words on my tongue--
let me inside their warm embrace.

Invent a new word for the way
your lips caress me in the dark.
I'll write a holy book using only it
because there is nothing so divine
as the sounds your mouth evokes;
there is nothing so like god as the
way I feel when you look at me
before night burns into a new day.

Invent for me one new word--
because these you see on this page
are tired, dying, and without hope.

Invent for me one new word--
and the whole world will be yours;
my heart is already in your hands.

One new word and immortality
is ours.

********************************************************

Drips of Paint has seen fit to ensure that I do yet another awards post. Not that I mind. He's a great artist in his own right, and I'm glad to be recognized for anything, or by anyone. My thanks.

Great writing has no formula. If it does have one, I don't know it. I kind of just spew words out like a shaken can of beer and pray that they make sense. But there are some guidelines that help...

Open your heart and see what it says to you.

Open your eyes and look for a grain of truth.

Open the floodgates and let the words have their way with you. Even if you don't have a plan, the words usually do, and they'll let you in on it if you keep throwing them out there.

In turn, I award this one to the following blogs who have ways of digging deep and writing strong works that I remember often:

Pythia3, Cave of Pythia

Cheri, Open, Remove, Swallow Dry

Enemy of the Republic, Cruel Virgin

Ann Raven, formerly of London Love Verse, now at At Home With Ann

and Oceanshaman at... Oceanshaman, of course...

I hope everyone will give these fine bloggers a shout, as they deserve it for their fine and often emotional efforts. There are more of you who deserve to be recognized, but I will keep this list at this, so as to not award everyone in blogylonia--even if a lot of you deserve it. And of course, you five may choose however many people you want to give this award to. It's all good, no matter what.

And this pic is of the Thor Nebula, named for the Norse god of thunder. I assume it's because it resembles a helmet with wings. No matter, it's a beauty. And I'll have to keep my eye open for the elusive Loki nebula. Ragnarök will happen right here on this blogspot.

Thank you for the tremendous outpouring of support for my aunt Theresa on my last post. She underwent her first surgery yesterday, but a few more are still scheduled. Other treatments will also begin soon. Each one of you totally rules in your own right. Give yourself a pat on the back, or take an extra smoke/coffee break, or have another drink at your power lunch. You deserve it.

They Call Her Old Painless

Something about a fire--
when it falls sprawling and low
and the heat rolls across in waves
pulling people in by their eyes,
smoldering in the black-blue night;
nothing ever dies before its time.

Something about a fire--
how it lives and breathes in the dark
long after everyone has gone home.
It won't die as long as embers glow,
and somehow this lets me know
that I will live on far beyond the day
my paper heart is fed to the flames.

Something about a fire--
the moth whispering to sister flame
each and every definition of love,
as it spirals faster into the inferno
willingly--lovingly--knowing
it will never again have a chance to
feel the unrelenting bite of the heat.


Thank you so much for all the concern about my absence--you know who you are. My Aunt Theresa is about to undergo surgery for a tumor behind her eye. She just found out about it. She's like a third parent for me as I grew up. I have no idea why that translates to a stoppage in my writing, but it did. Until this one. Hope you like it. I'll try to be back soon.

The Night Is A Thousand Whispered Lines

Listen to our common pulse
music filling the air
an electric canary singing our blues.

Dance until everything
is the same look and same color,
touch and smell and taste.

The night smells of sweet blue candle light,
tastes like a sudden loss of cabin pressure
feels like sweet buttercream

and a new dose of religion.

The night tastes like
a lover of worldly flesh.

The night is a thousand whispered lines
crawling all over our bodies.

One more chance
until the lights after last call--
until the bar-stool delusions of grandeur
turn to pumpkins and mice
with the last drops of their beer.

Like the last time,
like the time before that...

Every morning after the ball
we blame the drinks
the smoke
the lights...

We blame anything but we.

Blame anything--
using up the rest of this
after midnight black magic.

Anything except
the electric canary singing our song,
or day old sangria drunk from a glass shoe.

Light of November

It creeps in like a cold sniper
across the linen bed spread
until I realize I'm not alone.

Long shadows run to dark corners
away from it's piercing warmth--
later they will come back to play,
but for now they are content to sit
and wait for the long night ahead.

Each shaft of light is a spear
aimed at our eyes and hearts,
like the shadows, we will wait.

But only when I hear your voice
I know for certain I'm not alone
in the cold light of November--
and we both know it's time to go
undercover, to the dark corners.

Wind moans like a forgotten ghost
snow swirls in its whirling arms
the light grows weaker by the day.

Everything tells us to stay here
in this warm bed, with these arms
and hands and half open eyes.

But the best dreams are those
hidden in the blinding light of day.

This is no season to hibernate;
no time to lie in open territory.

Threads

The thread was there before the beginning,
before the the first light, before the big bang
before chaos beget order, or some such vagary.

The thread will sew it all up
when everything falls back together
in the last second of the last day.

Chaos will once more be the colors
of evermore flying in the breeze
the words will mean all and nothing.

So let's paint not a sunset
but a mural of every day
that ever was and ever will be.

The thread tying each day together,
at once they are snowflakes and
paper dolls hand to hand to hand...

The perpetuation of sunrises and falls
tell us that time creeps ever forward--

Stories of the ghost boys and girls
from ten evermores past tell us this much:

The final stitch will be in trembling hands.

You go first, my love.

Top: The Eagle nebula, this region is specifically known as the Pillars of Creation. Enough matter for thousands of Solar Systems to be formed. Insignificant does not even begin to describe our tiny little pin-point asses on a cosmic scale such as this. Below: "Remembering games, and daisy chains and laughs--got to keep the loonies on the path." Pink Floyd, Brain Damage, Dark Side of the Moon.

Birds

We were perched up near the ceiling
on top of the big bad 'do not touch',
her daddy's ebony liquor cabinet,
perched like two little birds on a wire,
wanting to take our chances and fly.

Her mom was banging away upstairs;
her daddy was gone to the corner store,
back to Mars, back to the sweaty arms
of "the other one", but he'd be back,
one day, she said, he'd see the marks
our damning hand prints in the dust
so thick it was like cloth of dead skin,
filth that polluted her many cat-lives--
the ones unspent up until that point.

He'd be mad,
but she didn't care--
so I didn't care.

Birds on a wire
that's all we were
sitting on a shelf
together in a pair.

Her mom ran a bath after another
marathon day of beds, empty bottles
and strangers, one after another
thick smoke drifting downstairs
like the odor of a burning skunk,
we hear water splash, mean laughs,
some crying, the banging of the walls.
"Don't make me come down stairs,"
her mom yelled when we would be loud
or maybe too quiet, but she never did.

We sat up there, higher than hell
and she quietly stared holes through
the yellow ceiling, cobwebs waving
like a black flag of pirates and children,
living doom in the living room
out there, just beyond the horizon.

She told me she didn't care
that she didn't care--not one thought,
not one worry.

And I believed her then.

But now I think she did.

Why else
were we on that locked-up cabinet
wondering the if's, the how's and why's
of small grounded things yearning to fly.

Top: Some beautiful symbolism. I know who would love that. Bottom: The Moon and Venus, both in final crescent, almost at the point of eclipse. And in broad daylight, no less. Again, there's some gorgeous symbolism here.