Selected Poems - Hide and Shine

Death of a Clown

Cast down, the full white face of a clown dies alone in the big tent, surrounded by elephants. He’s protected by a mourning shroud of trunks swung low, at half mast, a ceremony for the fellow they knew as Chuckles.

He lay in the sawdust, a fallen hero of the failing circus. A mysterious whim of death unburdened itself upon him.

The sadness is coursing in a wild frenzy around the ring. A gleaming white face is slowly fading into black. The soul of the artist rises fluidly, a tumble, a calculated fall, a snap to attention pop a flower from its lapel. Nobly it drifts up past the trapeze, he always wanted to fly with ease as they did. The company troop cheers a roaring “hoorah!,” and sends the pure spirit of the man formerly known as Charles “Chuckles” Morton, off smiling to opening night at the grand unknown show.

Saturday is the Future

0 4 0 5 2 0 1 2 – the combination to the future. Digits have taken hold, swarmed and calculated our humanity. It’s not so bad, when I can get away into hills out of radiation’s way.

I’m like a paranoid alien-snatched renegade, waiting for the day the operation will be made. For all of us are to be disposed of, like so many articles of clothes of finicky consumer bodies fit with colorful bits.

My courage must be quick, undoubting, or the fans this shit will hit. Keep a low eye on the overhead situation. Always know the quick route to the underground compounds.

I hate to make such frightened blade running sounds, but the sun will start to don a dimmer light. The days will seem like disco Vegas nights, never knowing when to sleep. We’ll step out of body into dreams, regaling memory chips of better days before the neutron winter haze, when flowers lined the steel passageways.

Probe the data deeper still, before when grass coated feet roamed the hill and salvation seeped up from the ground and rained from the sky, pressing hard between this mortal goodbye. The future was so far away, the following afternoon or maybe the day after: Saturday.

Yes, Saturday was the bright and illustrious future. Please don’t make me go back—forward to the digitized black and video sun. I don’t want to lose the inclination of the hill I run. The composite formulation does not compare, nor does the filtered ventilators to this wild grass perfume air. Please, may I stay. Let me live in this state, even though I tremble knowing that this too is an algorithm, a bio-digital meta vision. There is no escape.

[unsolicited hopeful response follows]

If you can imagine what you’ll see, it’s not even close—beyond the construct of a low-voltage synaptic random access melancholy. But I indulge… What if this numero-visual race, and this endless hurtling through black space is suddenly understood to be a great journey, through the mythic dually proven hypothetic plasma-driven emotional magic dream heart, into the bright hot molten core of this Saturday?

Artificial Goat

“Mannish Water
Ram Goat Flavor Soup Mix
with artificial goat flavor”

Advertising this?
Really?
Is it good?
It raises so many intriguing questions.

First and foremost…
No, there are too many.

I must have it…
To know.
To take the artificial goat
Into my soul.
Envelope it
As it warms me through.
Then hopefully I’ll know.
Where the artificial goats do roam.

The Secret Inversion

Some days I’m inspired by everything I see in this town. It’s mayhem of beauty. I hear in every sound the ring of perfection. When the sun hits it right, the magic explodes into fractal macabre of color. Intensity, androgyny, moral decapitation, inconsequential activity congealing in one great masterpiece of form, function and majesty.

Many have seen the alternate inversion, equally sublime in darkness. To live here, you must share the secret. At the same time, keep the secret deep in hiding, lest the light escape and burn the eyes of the infidel. Protect it well warriors. Your reversible image is not for all. It may be misunderstood.

The Grand Insignificance

What starts so seemingly big, ends in supreme insignificance. A nervous feeling, a throbbing sinus structure, a number of swishing thoughts through the mental membranes–all conspire to fabricate a reality of facts.

Then I look up at the early April Sun, warming my face from more millions of miles away than I can understand. This perspective is not a thought, but shift of reality, and it comes slamming into earth like a meteor, a contextually small particle that can easily disrupt the temporary function of another larger particle.

The science may astound, but it is the vast mystery that fills me. The insignificance of it all is what makes me feel grand.

Monolithic Heart

How did I get here?
You’ll never guess where I am.
In the belly of the Titanic.
Deep in the sinking heart and center.

I return to the scene of the crime.
Ten plus years later.
A hundred million tears later.
Since it all tumbled down.

The city blood rushes on.
Renews itself with fresh oxygen and steel.
Only its memory holds the pain.
Its cells are strong, resilient.
The fire forges a new change.

A broad and ever expanding skyline.
A monolithic heart of darkness.
No intrusion withstanding.
It pumps and breathes on.

The Silence of New York

I like to be in tune with the music of New York.
So many simultaneous symphonies.
So many psychic notes.
It fills the air in blinding colors.
If you are one of the lucky few.
Who colors do coordinate harmonically.

The instrumentation is beyond richness.
Always approaching train wreck cacophony.
Climax and diminuendo.

The rests are an integral part of this song.
But they only come in long wave frequency.
Once in a strange while the silence sets.
The audience gasps and holds the breath.
Awaiting the next note.
Will it come crashing in again?
With fire and a terrifying chorus of screams.
Will the next bar blind us with infrared.
Anticipation is the element that builds this New York City musical mood.

Martian Returns Home to Earth

Martian touches down again on his new blue planet. His red home is long since gone. He’s been to this bar before. It grows familiarity slowly like crystal formations from the salt caves of his youth. This time it seems different. His complexion is somehow paler. His voice is steady with inflections of the native species. Where once situations used to baffle and confuse, he reconciles the mood with modicum of pleasure. The genetic structure unfolds further. Waves of nostalgia pour generously. He now wants to come home to his new home, in the wild frontier of non-chloride social atmosphere. He still checks as his breath deepens. Test it for noxious carbons. It’s safe now. The acclimation has been successful.

Die To Be Cool

Cool people don’t say “touch base”
Or “FYI.”
They’re not afraid to cry
In public places.
Not hiding broken faces.

Cool people never give
A thought to where the time goes.
Even if it goes to waste.
Cool life lives not in haste.

What does the cool one do?
Chilling feverishly away.
Never knowing which part must die
To feed the cool monster inside.

Fly Fly Brooklyn Birdie

Thundering upstairs neighbor
Where are you going?
Walking back and forth
From midnight to morning.

Your footsteps betray
A sense of unease
A life’s work undone
Malignant ambition.

Is it a family dynamic
That’s left you pacing the miles?
Your mother perhaps who lives downstairs.
A man burdened as someone’s child.

Someday you’ll fly lighter than air
Not even stomp up the stairs
To the third floor, one farther away
Then glide off the rooftop and soar.

Or perhaps your mother may drag you
Flapping and squawking
Up to the top of the nest
And fling you out over the streets of Brooklyn.
If she knows what’s best.