laundry

regrets? i got a few.
wishes? show me mine and i'll show you yours.
dreams and goals?
they're on my sleeve
and i'm washing my shirt.
i'm washing my conscience, I guess.
it seems like it could come in handy.

Sunday morning, you are my sunshine

I smell Sunday morning in my dreams
Long before i stir.
My blindless window catches fire
With the rising new day
And the birds sing out of key
Warming up for later praises.
Sunday morning shakes me
I read postsecret in my bed
and write poems on my roof.
On Sunday mornings,
a Veil is torn.
And all over the world,
Truth falls, rain from the Sun.

sliced apples
sitting
in the
pink bowl
on the
dirty table
is
summer.

dragons are no match
for my hands,
strong and sharp
on their slimy golden scales.
i go against the pattern
and they squirm in discomfort.
success? yes.

walk down to the chatahoochie.
look into the ripples of the river.
see the past in the bank and the sand.
write my name in the tide
and walk away, back to home.

smooth air of atlanta in the spring
you make my breath smell like rain
and stories and lore
of the southern voo doo land.

Swinging: An Epic

I. The Girl

My hands chafe already
the callous of a ten year old long fallen
into their epidurmal graveyard.
I kick against the ground and rise
rise into the blue sunshine.

II. The Revelutionary

Thoughts gather inside me--
whole armies lined up straight--
and they are itching for battle,
cascading into the boom of a canon
as I decide, once for all,
I will change the world
falling back into the arms of the wind
kicking down the walls of gravity.

III. The Girl, Again

My legs caress the clouds
and my head soars like Icarus and Daedalus.
My backyard is so real this far up
and as I fall back into it
I can see the future.

IV. Last

I rise.
I fall.

at night I am not the owl
but the mouse.
and sleeplessness pounces on me
and swoops down on me
and devours me
and leaves me with no protest.


look at you my generation.
you don't want to know who you are
so you drown it all in the glossy amber glow
of late nights and the fragrant clouds
of afternoons left blank.
I've got a cold bucket
filled with nature's finest
and I'm not afraid
to intoxicate you with freshness.
wake up, kids.
there is too much to do
to lie there...mind gone.

jack and i go way back, son

On the Road
The hands of asphalt snake up
Kraken under concrete
Twirling round my ankles
they hold, firm.
Jack Keroauc set out with twenty
and his name.
I've got a little bit more--
maybe thirty and my hope
in something better
found in tar painted wilderness of America.
I want to wake up somewhere
with my back sore from the ground.
I want to fight for my right to live
on the battle ground of all America.
Maybe Jack was running away.
Maybe I'm running away.
But I think--
I think---
it's better to run to something you want
than to stand still in somewhere you hate.

Under My Dreams There Are Dreams
Foghorn coming through my window
midmorning birds calling to each other--
"come away I've found food come away
I've found you"--
I am asleep.
I put my clothes on asleep and I eat my breakfast
asleep and I look in the mirror asleep and I see
the dream in a little girl's eyes.
My alarm clock is broken
and I am do not know how to fix it.

can you see my black emo roots? dagum, cuz HERE THEY ARE

i threw my running shoes into the give away box before i left.
they were too big for me. and i wouldn't need them in georgia.
i keep wishing for them.
i want to put them on and start out slow in the rough paved road in front
and then let speed catch me up as i move further and further away.
i want to out run emptiness and loneliness and a good many other nessess.

who waterloo?

My father can make few things in the kitchen
the whirl of hard counters and ripe fruit sensory overload
to his engineer's mind
but on Sunday's when my mother has
fallen fast and soundless into bed
he strides through
Napoleon in a white shirt and tie
first the bread, thick and brown, lathered with sweet cream butter
The cheese now
sliced by sword and his determind shaky hand
the smell of the dirty griddle rises through the house,
last weeks' sandwiches now burnt on
he slaps his babies down, like spanking the griddle for some misdeed
it sing sizzles into the afternoon air
and calls us in.
We have never heard of Waterloo.


the later it gets
the hotter my room
it's my early morning bath
in the moist sleepless humidity.

yes, comrade?

when you get passed my American smile
and american fat and american dreams,
my belief in democracy and father capitalism
you find something far more red.

red not like the stripes on the flag
nor the firecrackers on the fourth of july
but red like freedom
and equality.

i'd rather bleed red than green,
my america.


(prose poem attempt. it will be bad. because that's how we do it. i mean i. that's how i do it.)

after the clock ticked tweleve she sat up and threw the covers on the ground where they lay like a pile of trash unwanted now, made obsolete by time and sweat, from the greater blanket of sleeping atlanta like an owl on the hunt ready to find it's nightly reason to live she opens the laptop to type type type. the sounds of the cat in the kitchen come in from the vent he is loud her mind is loud at night all the tiredness of sleep repacked until the time will come for sleep but not when there is much to be born onto the white deep.

i push i push i hold on i push.

and finally it gasps. and howls.

time already got that nightcap

time has stopped moving.
she hung up her cap and apron
took some tylonel pm and went to bed.
i can her snoring the bedroom over,
through our closets, back to back.
she snores like my father
and mutters faintly like my mother.
i'd go wake her up--
but the air is so still with anticipation
it has lulled my legs asleep.


the art of everyday movement
is as complex as a sonnet
and gentle as my child hood creek.
my hand holding the cordless to my ear
the cool feel of plastic on my cheek
and against my fingers.
my feet slapping against the hardwood, too--
also simple, also filled with the cream
of power and purpose.

early morning after (late night movie)

the wispy halo of significance
floating over lines in movies
setting them apart
transforms them from the writers desk
late nights and empty Rockstars
into punches of languages
hitting the air like spilled wine
and falling fast
into my conscious
staining my conversation.
mm. purple scented lips and words
are as good on me
as they are on the writer's desk.