shoebox scraps #1

you’re marching in with fierce embraces
invading all my private places.
__

down in the dirt
dreaming hard
waiting for the sun to kiss these old bones again

——

I’m not a butcher and I’m not a baker.
I’m just a simple rivet maker.

Answering machine, you’re in my dream.
Your single red eye,
Flashing her reply.

—-

I dreamt and traveled again far from the golden strip of soulless skyrise,
and far from myself aswell.
i stood by an old stone hearth set in a stone wall,
all that remained of a ruined cottage,
and with the breath of brick and glass and stone, i brought it back to life,
and old dwelling place brought willingly to present.
i strolled down a path in a field overgrown by weeds and wild grasses i didn’t recognise until i came to a quiet beach. waves crashed on boulders a half mile off the headland. behind me, on the hill, a burned out villa watched with unblinking windows, its eyes permanently open to a salvation not coming. not coming. not coming. for it.
i cast aside my shirt and stepped into the water, suddenly glassy, not afraid to be alone, knowing i did not need to be, but was, and had chosen to be so.
i can be anything i want here.
here i am a painter. i draw lines on canvas and fill them with heavy swathes of paint, all clowns and demons and angels exorcised in colour and shape and muted shadow, and sold for strangers to hang on walls i will never see, far away.
sometime people visit me here. friends who greet me with wide arms, people i’m not sure i know, but wish i did. they stay a while and move on, and sometimes i move on too, leaving my little hideaway for another to mind as i disappear for a season to write or hike or bask in the glow of some other place. sometimes i return stronger.
once i rode on the back of a motor scooter down the hill to the village curled at the base of the bluff, and i listened to music in a strange little bookshop, run by a weird beatnik bird woman who hired out headphones that piped jazz to customers who liked to read in the booths by the philosophy stacks, and all for just for 4 kisses an hour. i danced with my house guest until our cords got tangled, drank too much wine and then had to be taxied home again, high on life, to fall asleep on the terrace and wake up to the rain on my bare arms, alone, but smiling in the gathering storm.
i return when i wake, to the familiar, to now, as i am, but thanks to my dream space, i will not forget who i want to be, and believe will be, for it’s all possible. isn’t it? isn’t it?
somehow. someday.

——

we used to share the moonlight
we used to share the night
a hostile takeover
you bought me out
and cast me into day.

——

walk down the local grocery store
return and make a cup of tea
drain the day from off its brim
sipping the hours away.

about this time you’re rising
i’m lying here in bed
climbing into your car,
i’m thinking of all you said.

i’m at the beach
i’m paddling hard
each wave could be my last
you’re hard at work,
you’re out to lunch,
you’re typing notes real fast.

you’re off to sleep
i’m wide awake
we’ll cross sometime tonight
a few dreams traded,
i’ll collect some more
as you rise to morning light

overlappin’ overlappin’
you’re risin’, i’m nappin’

—-

i would go back to purity but my passport has been revoked.

—-

I can’t see. I’m spinning and bumping into walls and tripping over my own genitals, grasping at smiles and glances and
Chasing the shadows of compliments
cast by strangers
into my beggar’s cap.
Shoot me down
And confine me to booundless ambition.

—

Bad Baby cut my marionette strings loose and I fell into the sky.

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shoebox and scraps