urbansonnets

Free floating ways of living and dying:
1) on a boat, or on the run from God;
2) in exile, after too much prying
on the darkest thoughts of others; 3) Caught
on the whiff of life breathed by substances;
4) trying a little too hard to rap
when you got bills to pay; 5) Romances;
6) playing the guitar with a frail strap:
7) chasing a dream until the sky falls
8) chasing a dream until you wake up
hungover and broke; 9) hangover squalls
and fierce breezes quickly pull your stake up,
which you had driven into fertile earth:
10) every memory of life after birth.

A host of dead computers spilled open
on the dusty carpet's nude battleground;
sinews and bones of steel, and I'm hoping
to resuscitate  them to sight and sound:
I wish to trace the wounds of memory,
the sights and sounds of past incarnations,
when I was bolder, colder, simmering
like a brew of devilish machinations:
There are pictures of hairs flowing at ease
(not mine) in autumnal lighting – so free;
and music made over(-inspired-)seas,
a template for how my vision should see:
Yeah. The medic at work is a sick sight;
playing God upon rugs – That just ain't right.

Untag the toes on the wall of placements
either gained through fraud or won with dread fear
of losing one's head in musty basements
with mold and death imperceptibly near:
Five figures, five times, down the same swift chute,
a glistening slide, warm from the slick sun;
a backside burn, and the brain doesn't pute;
it just falls inside itself, like a battle-stained pun:
Friction is fictive; the backslide falls flat
on the sandy pit of youth, first face down;
then the moment of meaning: sandy tears
blocking sun from those eyes that scrape the ground:
Pushing fifty in a vision of hope?
Just clip five toes and laugh at the joke. Dope.

The fire roars inside the breasts of men
as vagueness churns the loins into butter;
the heart, it beats with wisdom and regret
as faces blur and names start to stutter:
A purposeful ascent into this life
was all we asked of those who grant us time;
Intelligences spinning in pure bliss,
as faces blur and bodies turn to slime:
We've earned the truth – we think, we claim, we swear;
our daily bread is salt like forced exile;
intelligence is earned from sweat and tears,
as faces blur and hide and lie and smile;
The knife is warm; please slide it through my chest;
I'll die a crumb, since life consumed the rest.

His triceps stretch as he lifts the keen knife,
its blade is white in the flash of the air,
in that moment before he takes your life,
you see the beast of life in death so fair:
There's a geometry to light on knife,
a spectrum of colors across the blade;
his arm is taut – every tendon in strife
with the death that is time, the fact of age:
You will have no children, you have no wife;
you make peace with yourself: you had no one
who called you father, but under the knife,
each fragment of time is your creation:
The knife is perfect in its downward thrust;
its beauty soothes you as your life is crushed.

I am angrier than I look. Know that
my smile is a wincing nod to the deep
heat that churns in my breast; If I show that,
I lose my place in my races' great leap:
The great leap into the society
that runs from me under welcome welkin;
on beautiful days, the hate is thirsty,
and it drinks up the blood of scared women:
Their legs run for them, from my blissful face,
styling and smiling, profiling up close;
they run in jeans, in dreams, in sweats – in ways
imperceptible – they scamper in droves:
Like a roach-full floor under the struck light,
they run for their safety, and they are right.

If you walk straight through those open markets,
it's like a gradient of dreamy smells;
Start with the veggies – crisp chard, and carrot's
slight sweetness when uncooked, as the air swells:
Potatoes are scentless, but sniff the breeze
as nearby mints prick your nose with coolness,
effecting a segue, over fresh peas
in the pod to God in the fruits' caress:
In your eyes and your nose – swirls of color
and smells of heaven that tempt old ladies
to have a go at one grape, another
without buying, giggling like babies:
Like the very first taste man had of fruit,
the sweetness takes hold as passion takes root.

On the descent deeper into madness,
somewhere between the pencil and the page,
I stumbled into a font of gladness,
and I splashed my feet in the flowing stage:
There were mountains on high, and a gully,
its ice resembled crystal chandeliers,
shining forth with a bright solar folly,
maintaining intact all our frozen fears:
But that was the past. I am now nearer
to the source of all flow, the fluid stream.
Un-dammed by all time, undaunted river,
how you clear out my thought and make it dream!
I must dive down deep, towards the rippling sound,
down where ice is unhinged and doubts are drowned.

I can’t say it enough: I love to flow,
like an even-keeled stream over smooth stones
glittering in grey under melting snow
from the mountains upstream where the wind drones:
An echo is heard. A voice does resound,
jauntily issuing forth with bold life,
claiming a space in the skies where heroes are crowned
and villains are wailed, torn apart from strife:
“Clear water turns silver above smooth stones,
and the flow is quickened at the bank’s edge;
so too do the heavens’ crystal grey tones
make men and space itch and twist for knowledge.
If you choose to scratch, well then you may reap.”
I nodded and sighed, and I fell asleep.

With a scratch the veil comes tumbling down,
and the sky is blue, the horizon drowned;
there is no limit, no sights and no sound,
no house, no job, no life, and no small town:
All that matters is a moment; it feels
incredible until that moment flees
and the next one stumbles its weight and spills
its liquid flames onto your swollen knees:
Bright insight flashed as a pursuit of sense,
not the blind chase for purpose that foiled you;
each breath is to be delightfully dense,
and then exhale the void that has coiled you:
This is living. Do it well or make due;
No ends to the means means you gotta do you.