The Kitten in the Mitten

                                                  The Kitten
                                     in the Mitten introduced the
                                               Kat to the Hat.
                                                 That bunch
                             coulda steamrolled me gently but didn't.
                                        They steamrolled me flat.


                                            as if you never been..

                                    Yeah, i'm admittin' i got bitten.
                                            It was my weakness.
                                              My crime de jour.
                     The Kitten in the Mitten or that damned Hatted Kat.
                                                  It's all a blur..

music made life on Earth

In those early
early
hours before
your brain begins
hammering
your hopes
and you're finger-tapping Muddy Water blues
with your back against the ropes.
Long before you look in the mirror
and cringe
or step outside
naked
and imagine
yourself.

You'll sing along..

any worn photograph

Maybe it didn't matter if her
hair was up
or down
on that particular morning
or if a sky filled with
big white cotton-ball  clouds would have
made her
face the afternoon glare
without those over-sized sunglasses on
and her smile
would have
hurt him less
or maybe there was another reason
for a first kiss
and a last dance happening on the
same night
or for why she named her cat  Sal Mineo
and didn't give him
 a fighting
chance
to say goodbye heroically.

moods that matter

So he felt kinda incomplete
without a woman
next to him
One not sitting thisclose to him or
lying down on/top of
him
Yes he did.
And it took a while to
forget a life
or two
or three
and begin again at 60
Uh-huh.
So he avoided the heat
and paid more
attention
to moods that matter
Still  he felt incomplete
without a woman
across the table
from him
One not holding out her hand
for his hand
everywhere
and it took a
long time
a long time
Uh-huh

The Angel from Ohio

There were flames as intense as
those rising
from a gas station fire
that had to be
extinguished.
Nobody wanted it to end like that.
Burned down to the heat-cracked cement.
There had to be something that was
worth saving.
Something.
Repair work would  take
hundreds of thousands of years
to complete
strangers clanging away
with the sorry-ass tools available them now.
There were ashes as sober
as Satan
and as deep as Dionysus
piled up everywhere
and Common Sense was
sniffing around, too, asking a lot
of unanswerable questions,  like
   "  Who's sorry now?  "
but the Angel from Ohio never
wavered
never faltered
never sighed.


  

Janine

She looked like she had
something
on her mind,  but
she wasn't gonna talk
about it freely..
Her eyes whispered it.
Her smile
hinted at it.
So he painted what she may be thinking with
imaginary colors
and hoped
that some of them
were
her favorites.

The Next Level

I didn't begin counting the steps
until i was more than
halfway up
and by then it was
too late to head back
down this floating
staircase
all the while
lamenting
the weight of my shoes
and the
labor of my breathing.

The Rock in my Throat

I can't tell you anything
that you don't
already know....you just don't know it yet.
But,  i'll  say this
i was there for a time,
i saw things,
i held hands with the devil,
i talked with God,
i cradled the innocence of a newborn baby,
i saw the Grand Canyon,
i spit on the Capitol steps,
i hugged my mother for the last time and
didn't realize it was the
 last time,
i swore to tell the truth
 the whole truth
and , godammit
i left a note.

A Most Beautiful Love Story

What if you've been told,
    all your life,
something that wasn't true
by people
that you really
really love
and it didn't matter

Her Only Poet

She fell for her only poet.
Words wrapped in words
 like a chain around
 her heart
from a distant land
and she never felt nothing like
 that before.
Not from nobody.
Especially not a
nobody
that she couldn't touch,
hold,
kiss
or slap.
But, she did it anyway.
She fell for her only poet.

it's a little bit higher up than i can reach, maybe just...

it's a little bit higher up than
i can reach
maybe just too abstract
for me to
 comprehend.
So while some go and flex their inflexibilities
 and others shame the gospel truth
   goddamn shamelessly
i look up
to you
to reach down
to me.

" you've got company "

That's the announcement that a creaky old
wooden house door
makes at night
especially at night
   because it hears footsteps
coming
and waits
very patiently... until
the time is right.... to herald
      " you've got company "