Spilt

This pen I hold is awful sore
At all the things I use it for
It wants, of course, to be a part
Of some fantastic work of art
Intently, exactly, dutifully made
To dance across a virgin page
Laying down its lines and arcs
To illuminate the light with dark

But, alas, I’m sad to say
It saw no purpose in today
In making lists and signing checks
This instrument was never flexed
The ink it spilled was martyred, thus
Without a cause, with no purpose
This human realm sure takes its toll
On me
My pen
Its liquid soul

~r

Midnight Reflections

Last call sends me home.

Hazy eyes that see my life

reflected at night.

Stumbling back through a miserable February frost, steam rises from the interstate overpass and permeates into my stinging lungs. The bridge’s unforgiving concrete ceiling serves as a home to the dregs, the junkies, and the discarded human waste lost in the bowels of an insatiable society. Walking past like faded ghosts in the fog, their faces reflect the horrors of being left behind. Scars scream the pain of being jumped in the park for a pair of shoes. Teeth cocaine-cracked and jagged from one too many run-ins with the cops. Their earthen shells creak rickety and unstable as they hobble on blistered feet and social paranoia. Hungry, anything helps, his cardboard sign suggests.

“Spare some change?” He asks through mumbled gums.

Parents, principals, and politicians insist he’ll only use it to score a fix or drink himself into a coma. Yet my cold, numb hands finger their way into the deepest corners of barren pockets.

What’s a few quarters

if it helps you through the night?

Who am I to judge?

— Jeff Englehart

Imagine Nation

15 billion years young,
15 billion light years wide,
I try to wrap my mind around…
…everything inside.

What was before?
What is outside?
Is this universe part of me?
Or simply part of my mind?

Metaphysical maybe?
Oscillating perhaps?
Do parrellel worlds?
Require detailed maps… ?

Pueblo

other cities in the world seem to age with a sense of grace

but American cities grow into a state of forlornness.

a film of rust and mold plague the surfaces

of neighborhoods once booming in their adolescence,

like the raspy hungover stubble on a drunkard’s face.

smokestacks erected as proud monuments

for winning the west

now stand in sunbaked isolation, a mocking vulgarity,

epitaphs to a hope quickly ignored and forgotten.

graffiti tattoos the train cars and drainages,

flashes of color sprawled across a hardened skin,

providing the only real signs of life in this desolation,

but even they are bleached and faded now,

chipped and lost to the deep wrinkles of the city.

this is the premature aging of American cities

that makes us long for a prairie fire,

a quick end to life turned decrepit.

–

to feel lonely in another country is expected.

to feel lonely in a new town is understandable.

but loneliness in the place you grow and have grown

can be unbearable, unrelenting,

only truly known in cities that should have never existed,

in cities that no longer want you.

– jordan

Solitary Pilgrim

Honed for discrimination,
empowered and passionate.
The spoiled monarch roams,
the heart’s kingdom hungers.

Thirsting for distant waters,
calloused feet resent the earth.
Rivers stand still in grails,
beloved denatured by conquest.

Clinging to beauty found,
the heart weds and guards.
Plucked flowers in gold vases,
wilt behind palace walls.

~r

News Review Haiku

“Dream Act Vote Fails in Senate”

Shot dead in Iraq,

But body tag read: Please Ship

Back To Mexico

___
“Obama to Meet With President Hu Jintao of China”

Communism wants

Ass tons of money, just like

Capitalism!

___


“Consensus on Climate Change Not Reached”

Bury head in sand,

Tell self climate will not change,

Soon find head in mud

– jordan

Sundance

sundance, #1

Broken, cracked lips
Blood stained cigarettes,
Wind so strong
It moves right through me,
No longer here
No longer solid,
This is how we return
To the ether of beginning,
The clouds move with the rhythm
I hear in my sleep,
The stars reside
Behind closed eyes,
We are hardened by the land
And thus become part of it,
We are broken down together
And together become one

sundance, #2

You can smell the moisture in the air
as the thunderstorm approaches,
The practiced indifference of the desert
is momentarily cracked,
All things become suddenly silent.

The Earth craves this respite
as much as I do,
And together we look to the sky
lost in our thoughts of what gifts might follow.

– jordan

TAKE

They came in the early morning. They always did. Inhabitants would keep their distance, watching nervously as the strange figures, hooded with faces obscured, made their way silently through the streets. Mounted atop dark, breathless horses, each pulled a tremendous wagon piled high with objects never to be seen again.

The sight was a familiar one, but lately the Takers were becoming far more brazen. Like starving dogs, they came closer with each pass, gnawing away at the unspoken perimeter that had stood for generations. The Inhabitants knew the day was not long before their own meek possessions would be sought to stave the collapse of the few cities still scattered across the scorching deserts of North America.

The Takers paused amid the blistered ruins of the desolate suburb, sand drifting high through the endless expanse of skeletal houses, picked clean through centuries of systematic looting. Nothing of value remained. As I sat in the dirt before my tent, the Takers turned their gaze on me.

~r