urbansonnets

I lie still at night and stare into space,

Pardon me for conflating holidays,
but all I want for the new year is voice;
my voice, that which I've refined through the maze
of three decades of life; it's been my choice:
to remain silent, though the voice was there,
or to speak too sudden when it was not –
but I've learned the depth of the platform where
I stand to speak, where I'll die to emplot:
coordinates from the chorus, I mean, the void,
where truth rests in echoes and puddles shine
with the brown silt that the first men employed
to siphon a meaning from the mind's mine:
This new year is truly a new decade,
and old voice will savor new meanings made.

You asked me to tell you what I don’t like,
and my answer can be long or be short;
the short answer is: I don’t like to “psych
out” people with pretense–I’m a good sport:
Or a bad one, depending on one’s taste,
but I don’t like injustice, or hatred,
of any kind if it’s based on sacred
notions of faith, of gender, or of race:
Simple, yes, but it comes down to the truth,
beyond which my mind is truly open,
and you seem a good spirit; that is sooth,
so let’s see where this goes, do some scopin’:
Out of the future from our past present–
A pushy prize might be the best present.

The cat is here to stay today, yessir;
that day has come when we will rise against;
this dawn is full of mindful hearts that purr
into the void of skies and dreams unfenced:
Now that the exercise is complete I'll
wind around the bends and contours of this
form and see where it takes me, all the while,
boppin' to the vibrant beat of this kiss:
What are the rules here? I ask myself, cold
in this solsticed evening, intersticial,
among, between worlds gashed at, bought and sold,
wherein the border is wide like the chill:
Since, you know, weather is always a sign
of the world's wanderings and dreams divine.

It's like being underwater alone –
no fish, no waves, no mermaids, no urchins,
no salty bubbles, no vision of bone,
just exoskeletons and cartilage fins:
There's low audibility here; I hear
in gyroscope, rotating like one-armed men
that synchronize swim off the yacht club pier,
menacingly manly – Old Speckled Hen
Aftertaste, aftermath of the carnage –
my mermen ballerwinos punch too hard,
and their lefthand uppercuts from that age
when men fought like men and ate bread with lard:
Fuck these margarine fairies of today;
If I could hear this vibe, I'd turn away.

I must continue to flow while IT's here,
that ole braintap magic that spills like beer,
when your rightside is tapped and your left ear
is all you have to peer out of: sincere
words can get floated then like dreams on dro
in da wind, on da air, frankly any-
where, as the snow flakes in a fury, so
do these thoughts around my frigid many
minds and destinies, like pages untorn
from the book of what should, nay- what may be
no: what is and will be, what's been long born
and has adolesced about blind, daily:
Until one day its neck cracks, eyes open
and they roll off the tongue as words, golden.

The best minds of my time are racked by fear,
by the blinding cut of release in light,
by the flailing emptiness that is near,
where passage is clear, but the time ain't right:
And it's never right, right? But it keeps on
calling, beckoning in its ritual
immanence; Oh wait – just maybe it's gone –
You happy now? Speciously spiritual?
No, it never goes, silly, just keeps on
throbbing and wailing like gilt popcorn seeds
waiting ecstatic to be tossed at dawn
into the oil pigments of our deeds:
I guarantee you this: that paint and blood
will splatter: a guilt grain – a fruitful flood.

“We need a resolution” was the jam,
and I think we’ve come to one – but in dream,
where she said hi and I thought it a scam,
till we talked it out, no lies, not a scream:
She came up to me, and with a hip-check
said hi, and I thought it was some flimflam,
until she delicately hipped my neck
and sat at the table with a known lam-
artist, fleeing at first sight, smell of blood,
and then creating, in dreams, the whole peace –
it’s all about crossing that line; I flood,
I mean, fled through the waves of many seas:
But I’m still awake, and I’m still alive;
I’m gone before hate and death can arrive.

Deep sigh. Earache. Heartbeat. Almost. Finish.
In a sea of emotion I'm sharkin'
around, biting off heads to admonish
these electric blues, as hues darken:
Trippin' off the beat kinda…meat grinder,
driftin' on the currents of my own depth,
which means you ain't seen much yet: street kinder
than halls, swanrad junction where we don't snitch:
We find rhymes to plunge down into the truth
Veritas if I don't; and drowned if I do,
but I have to bring you down to the booth,
where we flow like coral, that is, hard, true:
Life is more vibrant down where depth defies,
just as bone shines white where it ossifies.

Gentle pitter patter of light and wave
push me back towards home on the concrete blocks,
the rhythm like worksongs- I was a slave;
At least in spirit, or essence, that “rocks”:
Like a lullabye winds down the spirit
of an infantile complex with selfhood,
so I do shake and shudder to hear it,
that voice from the depths of our personhood:
Hard rhyme, cold blues, they all sit together
at the table to break bread into chunks
of scattered pieces and shattered tethers,
between this world and yours, where “fact” debunks:
But who am I really addressing here?
I woke up with a start – there was no fear.