the tempo of rain

this air tastes like plastic & pain
& i'm so scared to leave here again
i won't go out 'til there's the tempo of rain

it's safe in the familiar pit-pattering rain
it's safer in the bleary dark-where
faces are shadows on a fast-fading train
i can hide away here where i'm bleeding & bare

here in the subtle, silent state of watching a life pass by
i contemplate the masters of the puppet-passers-by
strangers striving to toe twisted, straight lines
breathing & bowing to sentient strings on particular cues

from behind so many hoods & dark shades
i spy on a world i don't know that's made of charades

the feeling won't fade, it won't blow away —
not 'til the tempo of rain is steady like my dismay
i'm growing a dirt-festering fear of a place i don't know
it's a gangrenous root hiding under white snow
& the fear & the feeling won't fall away 'til i'm laid very low

where & how far?

you with those sable, sad eyes

eyes that challenge my slippery lies

please put away those eyes

i can't bare their gaze on my face

i can't bare the dismay in those eyes

where can i hide from that melting gaze?

where can i hide the shame on my face?

where can i run to that's far enough

to cloak my failure in a bluff?

why do you see inside of me?

why can't you let go of me?

why can't you let me fall

& shatter into nothing at all?

why can't i fade & fall far away?

why can't i crumble in the force of a fierce sway?

i want to go away

i want to grow old & grey

& be nothing that anyone knows

i want to hide all the truth that still shows

won't you let me slip into the never & forever?

can't i embrace a fabled nether?

louder & laboured

which part of a man is calling today?
which flavor of a boy is parading today?

a little boy who's standing so tall
a standing-tall man who's only a boy
he knows a price is paid for his joy
& only the ground will catch what will fall

what is he made of yesterday or now?
when was it said that he wasn't so much—
just some bones with lurid eyes & who knows how?

he's praying & begging to make them all pay—
for the strings that they pull on to make him this way
& he knows, oh he knows, that he won't wear his face to sunday

tomorrow, they're swearing he's less than this much,
but another stranger someone is preaching behind his tongue
& his legs are dancing & breaking & bending & such

will you do this much—
will you sell him before he's so young?

is the breathing getting louder & laboured?
is the charade ever worn out like a heart or time out-worn?
have you done with him now?
have you planted enough with his strong back to a plow?

plowmen

a plow, they say, to plow the snow.
they cannot mean to plant it, no--

unless in bitterness to mock
at having cultivated rock.

robert frost 

guise

a great, wide, wasting worldwide

full of sluts & saviors — strangers

painted & made-up, jaded & haze-eyed

we're pretenders & preachers playing with dangers

we're a techno-rapt culture — a collective & banal bride

a powered-down populace of bored, idle bootleggers

our eyes are tight-shut as we clamber across a coaxing divide

a pain-painted straddler falls away from our averted eyes & ears

his screaming fades far away while we pretend that no one hears

we'll pass the gutter where he lies

& assume a cavalier & blameless guise,

but behind a barred, dark door

is where the soul decays some more

the road not taken

two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

& sorry i could not travel both
& be one traveler, long i stood
& looked down one as far as i could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

then took the other, as just as fair
& having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy & wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

& both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
oh, i kept the first for another day!
yet knowing how way leads on to way,

i doubted if i should ever come back.

i shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, & i --

i took the one less traveled by,
& that has made all the difference.

robert frost

always never

over by the rabbit hole decays my sober sense of loss
i leave it lying there baking under a big & brutal sun

in the limbo of a crucial choice & this boat rocking all the way across
i swear i won't feel, screaming loud & out loud waving this heavy, hollow gun

no, i swear that i won't stop, not until a heart is deaf & blind —
not until the sky is braille & the stars are all motley & maligned

sincere? am i sincere? who can tell with all this noise?
& who can say if we don't have a voice?

people always leave & i've always run away
people always grieve & i'll never ever say:
the things i feel inside, the neon coloured grey

the colour of another

the semblance of square, still waters

conceals the tantrum of a flood

behind these many steps & falters

walking a shaky, yellow line

can't find any straighter, wholsome road

can't find anyone that's fine

i steal inside a stranger's soul

to see the colour of another's blood —

to see if strangers are whole

broken, are you also broken?

or are you whole, not itching to implode

or fade away before you're broken?