The Three O'Clock Sun

 

Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up

fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy

rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a

bit of squinting no one else can see, on the

far side of the softening horizon. You're on your own,

he seems to be saying. He's not even holding a

scribbled upon piece of broken off cardboard sign, but I can

 

imagine the sad loopy words any way. I just want

you to touch me with something more comforting than your

spare, unloved money. I just want to know, someone to

tell me, what ever happened to my own adventurous heart?

Have you seen it? We were going to see the

whole pageant of the ongoing world of field and streams.

We were going to be young, great praying dreamers forever.

 

When did we stop singing together? Here the sun is

lucky to have a pair of scissor open shoes to

freeze in. He's not wearing a local sports hat, like

the other winds. You're on your own, he seems to

be boasting again. His lean and faithful dog is waiting

to hear his master's voice saying, come on, come on

let's go. Here the sun is already stiffening into shade

 

and shadow. Awakening skeletons are beginning to climb out of

every tree, dropping their bones to the ground in the

sudden snap of the creaking process like slamming car doors.

The yellow beard points nowhere in particular, but nonetheless begs

for something less merciless in the world before dissolving into

a premature dark silence of its own whimpering. Here the

sun is only half awake as I turn my head around. 

Bonus poems:

Planet Earth

 

Why must you always jump in with your conclusion? You're so ready to define the situation that you forget to remember who we are together—that's always a new being, one that becomes us only as we connect. I didn't take that any further because it doesn't warrant it. Either that being is the absolute better of the two of us or not. One way we make love, one way we make war. One way we go to the

One-way moon, one way we invade Mars. One way we duck under the covers, one way we tear up the garden with our brutalizing machines until every flower lies dead upon the ground. One way is beautiful, one is not very pretty, no matter how you look at it. But if you're in outer space you alone know these things because they are written in the stars.  And here I am trying to get you to understand something

About the way we learn how to feel, even falling through a barren landscape of violence, a broken heart, even pushing through a thick, sticky forest of intertwined fingers at sickening prayer. The real prayer is in how you live to love, not in how you love to live. I only brought you here because you mean that much to me. It's our world. It does not belong to anyone else. They've hijacked it, but it always

Disappears right before their very eyes. Look for the pattern. The pattern is the message. The pattern is a key. I'm not just doing this for my health. My number already came up. That leaves you. You know the drill. There's music to be made. There's magic to be spoken. There's balances to be restored. You can enjoy the process you know. You are allowed to experience joy, but sorrow will want her fair share.

 

 

Animal Hospital

 

We care about you. We care if you live or die. We

Want you to be happy. But that's not all.  We would like

You to sing along. We'd like you to jump through the hole

In the fence with us. We're going to free the moon tonight.

We are never coming back here again, except to rescue any poor

Soul who got left behind. It's a done deal. We are going

To tell the best jokes in the world just to hear you

Belly laugh. We are the healing that needs to take place. We

Are the mysterious force. It's always been us. We want you to

Continue to be you for as long as you can be. We

Carry our internal poets with us at all times. We are tough

Enough for eternity. We are freedom fighters. And we love to dance.

 

 

 

A Fucking Break

 

The killers are eating their chili out of bowls

made of bone. Everything in their careless hands is

a hidden weapon. Everything in their smiles is

a sudden weapon. Everything in their sweaty

dreams. Everything in their wretched lives. Love is a

weapon in their hands. Nothing is seen for what it

is, only for what it can give to the juicer.

 

The killers are sleeping with their guns wrapped around

themselves. They grind their missing teeth hard instead of

brushing because only rotten pain matters. The

sad , reckless killers all live together in a

nasty mess of piss and rice, a nest made of four

sticky walls and some long forgotten ceilings. They

talk only within shadows to each other. They

 

walk clumsily forward with writhing shadows hung

around their own necks like strangling snakes. They are so

much afraid. They want to die. The killers are now

flushing their toilets with sandpaper eyes. The sick

killers are starting their cars with nowhere to go

but down. So afraid. So very afraid. With each

passing moment closer and closer to the truth.