Homer St. Pilgrimage

Street writers outed at Armitage
by a hairless cynic.

“Guy gets his ass kicked!
Write that down…”
he says and frowns.
A moment later I can’t pick him
out of a crowd.

The bike path underpass leads
to the self-storage smoke stack,
through a drain-pipe waterfall
and past the glamour of a weedy courtyard.

Shopping cart junk piles fight
gravity uphill to feed Finkl Steel.
cranes graze scrap piles
for car parts and refrigerators still
unworn and ready for more.

Molten metal sizzles in
a giant’s cauldron.
A robot’s lunch bubbles red,
but where are the flames?

when the sidewalk ends,
iPhone dings again.

I am the green dot
on an empty grid.

Find me.

Powerful Reflection

Overcast ocean skies reflect
my uncanny mood.
I am at peace with
my deepest dreads

Jagged mountains spill into
unsettled waters and I
tumble relentlessly with them.
The waves have a
kind of eternity I
am sure I will
never know and I
do not envy them.

Seagulls try to sing
but they can only
manage to choke out
a few gawks that
mock me, and I
can sense that they
know.

Wedding ring fingers snap
off and the promise
of forever is lost
in the words I do.
A thousand golden bands
are held captive under
the pillows of the
innocent youth who
were never taught affection.

The waves swell like
the familiar feeling in
my throat.
A storm approaches.

A dozen oil rigs
will be the first
to feel the rain
and their Mobil subjects
will scurry for cover.

I met one of
the industry's loyal servants
on the bus. I mistook
him for homeless because
his hair was a
tangle of oily strands
and his fingernails were
painted black with residue.

The man next to
me droned on about
a spider bite
and I was bored
with his narcissistic tone,
and angered with the
way he ignored our
fellow passenger. The battered
and functioning deserve the
most respect so they
can learn to inflect
that notion.

I wonder how many
grains of sand I
can hold in my
hand and realize it
doesn't matter and that,
perhaps, all numbers are
simply irrelevant.

I knew the man
on the bus was
a rigger because
he rambled about Eskimos
freezing themselves into the
next life digging up
our oil. The bus
was electrically powered and
I felt proud for him.

A pirate
ship passes me in
search of booty that
has already been found.
Perpetual mystery is lost
to our age and
knowledge. That ship has
undoubtedly sunk and now

science saves the day.

Yet the whale won't leave
the harbor and his
crowd pleasing bursts of
air are really gasps
for the breath that
is being choked out
of him by the
reverberations of a

jackhammer.

My plans slipped through
the cumbersome boards on
the wharf and still
the cacophony of the
gulls is taunting the
gray skies inside. They
look to me for
nourishment and my stomach
grumbles like the cars
on the ugly wooden
structure.

Overcast ocean skies reflect
my uncanny mood.

I am at peace with
my deepest dreads.

goodbye fall

The brisk whether seems to have moved in for good. Although who knows, the temperatures have been known to wildly fluctuate throughout December and sometimes into January, before the blistering month of February rejects all warm fronts. The waves pile high on the beach in majestic icicle form, proof of all the states of matter theories. The old windows have either cracked away from their frames more, of the cold has just found a better way through the existing holes. Ice now builds up on the insides of the window where it can't help but precipitate from the cold air outside. The couch had to be moved away from the window for the sake of our warmth. The vents are already closed becuase they inherently omit cigarette smoke, especially in the mornings. House, keep us warm through these cold winter nights.

Does Class Room Dissection Deplete Species?

Go

power strike ligths deep into the night on the streets of Philly days to lay and sleep in the shade of those smoke clouds blowing loud from shallow rocky waters that I taught her how to fish.

weeping low below the lights in a cold hospital room, shining neon across faces and white blankets. lonely tears and fears of being alone.

tomorrow blows slow from the south, just walk down to the station and look for the rooster perched upon the west barn. the key's in his beak and the password is go.

greeny-blues

steelworker gates hang

from /taught/ ropes
on the slopes of Euripides' palace.

s.nake fountain dream.s

wriggle and squirm
to the tilt of a mason-jar

moustache painted green.

Space Balls Ecocide

This hilarious satire of all movies of the outer-space genre offers an interesting example of topic of war and the environment. The Space Balls attack the planet of Druidia in order to get their fresh air to sustain the Space Ball planet, while killing the Druidians. When the air is being sucked out of their enclosing bubble the snow is taken off the mountains and the trees are ripped one by one out of the ground. The Space Balls are essentially committing an ecocide. I wonder if this is intentionally satirizing the way in which humans wage war on a person's environment.