Drone

Here I am trying to have a picnic
And there you are just droning on
Flying overhead with me in your crosshairs
Recording both video and audio
For upload to secretive men in cushy chairs

Drone in the sky with the repetitive sound
Are you lonely up there
As you circle round and round?

I shove another small sandwich into my mouth
Wondering idly what this could be all about
Internally reviewing my book purchases on Amazon
Perhaps something there raised a red flag
Something that my trusted government must act upon

When just as I was imagining strange closed door scenarios
Of becoming a casualty of the war on terror or maybe drone stalking
The object in question darted down quite low
Where it resembled nothing more than a diving young crow
Then accelerating straight up clear out of sight

What a relief
It seems it was just a curious UFO

Right Words; Wrong Time

When your father died
I broke into a soliloquy
About all of my favorite hamburgers
From the cheese
To the mushroom
White Castle
And a Cajun served in a Bourbon street back room

You cried and slapped my face
Saying how you loved hamburgers too
But oh, how could I?

I always tell you the right words at the wrong time
Every time

At the birth of our first child
I waxed poetically upon the politics
Of the baby eating cannibals of a far off land
Oh but don't worry
I'm sure they don't do that anymore
And hey, this is subject appropriate, eh?
It's pretty much about babies
And all their tender parts

You wept and asked me to leave
Saying that you loved babies too
"But obviously not in the same way as you"

I always tell you the right words at the wrong time
Every time

When you lay upon your deathbed
Blessed by the priest for the last time
Wasted by cancer
I told you how beautiful you are
That you gave my life meaning
How you helped me get through each and every day
All while feeling your soft thin skin grow cool under my touch

I cried like a baby and finally left the room
Hearing no comment from your lips
As they lay still never to move again

I always tell you the right words at the wrong time
Every time

Fart Surfing

It was a melodic daydream
Brought to life between two fleshy pillows of fat
An exhaust of lower intestine gas
A long low note called F flat

The stink grew and spread its fledgling wings
Soaring about the room with ease
Causing most of my fellows to run in feigned pain
Accompanied by curses and at least one hearty sneeze

Reaching up with foul stench fingers
Into my nose and polluting my mouth
I could both smell and taste it
Driving me out the other door and due South

Even as I ran a dark cloud followed me
Attached to my butt like a smelly trash trailer
Pushing me along like a cresting ocean wave
Until I was riding atop as a sea of poop sailor

Both terrifying and exhilarating
Sort of terrirating or exhilifying if you will
I was roiling in boiling bruising stench
All of my senses long past having their fill

There was only one thing to do to bring this ride to a stop
So I pulled the virtual ripcord cringed as my pants seam parted
And the stench cloud ocean released me from it's grip in a foamy groan
Leaving me in a smelly puddle both relieved and embarrassed that I'd sharted

Spinning Wrench Spinning 'Round

I half watched the 5/8 inch wrench spin
Fluttering and flickering about my fingertips
Because that's simply the mood that I'm in
To rotate chromed steel in a fantastic blur
As I step firmly upon reinforced concrete
Shaded by an aluminum alloy wing
Humming accompanied by the rhythm of my feet

The tune is incoherent
But the view is razor sharp
Target acquired
Twelve pointed box end descending at warp speed
To perfectly alight upon the bolt head
Applying pressure in expert fashion
Not to loosen the bolt mind you
But in a maximum fashion pose
With a perfect 100 degree angle on the inside of my elbow
What muscle I had peeking out for the ladies
Chin thrust out proudly displaying my manly beard

Though the fairer half of the species was not anywhere in view
Just another dude looking at me like I was weird

Goodbye Again My Hairy Friend

My manic hair left me today

Chopped lopped trimmed away

My face exposed to the cold spring air

Making me look twenty years younger with nary a care

Never mind that I now can't buy a beer anywhere 

Damn you clippers

Damn you face

Oh how I miss that hair

Now scattered all over the place

Robert The Creator

"Robert!
Come get your Easter basket off the table
Or I'll give it to the pigs!"

Robert jumped up to move as he heard his mother's voice
Pausing his video game as he went
The digital warrior onscreen instantly frozen in mid-swing of a machete
With a white rabbit hanging in pixelated air
As it hung there interminably trying to escape its fate

Grabbing the basket
Robert headed to his room
Looking to stow his trove of eggs and chocolates upon his tall dresser
The higher the better
Lest one of the pigs could connive a way to get to it

The video game was waiting out in the living room
In all of its frozen framed glory
Just needing a touch of someone's finger
For the mayhem to begin anew

But Robert couldn't move
His eyes fixated on one of the eggs
Which had peculiar patterns upon its colored shell

Upon the pinky orange background of Paas dye
There was a filigree of gold
First a grid-like pattern with dots sworls and dotted lines connecting them
Then all condensing into a dot the size of one of mom's stick pin ball heads
Before expanding again to cover the entire surface of the shell
Showing a moving picture of a boy holding an egg

Slowly the fine lined boy upon the eggshell cracked the egg he held in half
Discarding one half of the egg
The boy looked at the remaining half in his hand
And slowly put his index finger into it

The golden lines froze like that for a moment
Then contracted to a dot once again
Only to show the first grid pattern once again
Then the dot
Then the boy with the egg animation

The cycle of images continued as Robert stood and stared
Seemingly out of time with the rest of the world
The clock on the kitchen wall stood silent and still
Hands and pendulum immobile

After an eternity or a second
Robert moved
His hand reached out and took the egg up
Gently cradling it in the fingers of his right hand
The left hand smoothly coming up to grasp the top half of the egg
Breaking away a dome shaped chunk of shell in one motion
As if the calcium carbonate had perforations manufactured into it

But that piece was unimportant
And quickly discarded onto the floor

Robert's eyes peered into the open topped egg that rested upon his fingers
Falling into the swirling darkness and light within
No patterns
No reason
Simply chaos inside the shell

Until almost unconsciously
Robert aped the motions of the filigree cartoon
Bringing his free hand index finger to the opening in the egg
Slender finger wrapped in brown skin tipped with a slightly dirty fingernail
Dipped into the churning miniature madness daintily

Instantly the chaos became ordered
Compressing to a dark pinprick speck
Then exploding outwards with a blinding light
That imprinted itself upon Robert's retinas

The tiny light expanded into a bright cloud
Which broke up into smaller points of light
Tiny star armed affairs
That soon twisted with rotational motion
And buffeted by tiny cosmic winds

The lights changed color gradually and slightly
Going from white to yellow to red to black again
But others forming as the old ones faded

Occasionally a tiny speck would wander from one sparkly starfish to another
Though that didn't happen often
As the tiny specks continued their little life cycles
Slower now though
And not as many at any given time

Slowly dwindling in number until there was only one left
The largest one Robert had yet observed
And much like several of the other ones before it
A few tiny specks darted out from the twisted sparkling spiral
Searching in the blackness
But now finding no other destinations
Because they were no more

Some of the specks returned home
Though one kept going
Seemingly exploring the boundaries of it's universe
Until it vanished before reaching the shell of the egg

Robert stared at the last tiny spiral
As parts of it changed color
Growing dimmer and dimmer
Until it winked from sight

Nothingness now resided within the egg
Supported by all ten of Robert's fingers
He remembered to breathe
The clock in the kitchen started ticking again
Sounds and smells of life entered his senses

Blinking wearily Robert set the egg down carefully in the basket
Nestling it safely in the synthetic Easter grass
Open end up
Just in case something there needed to be contained safely.

He remembered his video game
And scampered back out to the living room to press START again

After all there would be time later to eat chocolate and chew jellybeans

And there were three other eggs
Just like the first

Mind Over Mind

You add rungs as my hands reach for them
Removing them as my feet step off
A never ending Jacob's ladder
Of solid wood created in the mind

Just another game we play
Keeping the darkness at bay
Activity that entertains the angels
Idle hands that the devil doesn't mind

Flexible rules
For faux butterflies
Flowers seen with eyes closed
Tasted upon the ears of a distracted mind

Flat Squirrel Barbecue

Strings of meat-like substance
That's what the black beak was pulling up
Up out of the flattened carcass of a red squirrel
One of those famous rats with fluffy tails that are everywhere in the spring
Running with no regard to personal safety across roads everywhere

The black beak in question was on the face of a black bird
Sort of a medium black bird
So I don't know if it was a crow, or a raven, or just a black bird
Is black bird a type of bird?
I'll have to look that up

The only reason I'm here to see this macabre display of culinary delight
Is because I'm driving towards it
At about thirty miles per hour

The black bird pays this fact no mind
As he methodically picks at the squirrel innards before him

I get closer and start thinking I should maybe hit the brakes
Or maybe swerve into the other lane to avoid hitting the bird
But as this type of bird usually does
He flaps away at the last second to avoid me

The poor flat squirrel passes below the center of the car
And I watch it dwindle in my rear view mirror as I get further away

Before I'm twenty yards from the flat squirrel
That black bird drops back into his place
Cocking his head to examine things closely
Before driving that black beak in once again

Searching For Super

The old sign was freshly painted

"Become a real superhero or - $5"

And it seemed like an odd typo

To have that 'or' hanging off the end

But hey 

Nobody is perfect

So I went into the single wide that the sign was hanging on

I paid my five bucks

An old man in a lead suit gave me a box and left the room

I opened it

I dropped dead

The old man tottered back 

Dragged a piece of drywall off an opening in the floor

And rolled me into it

Where I fell into bottomless darkness

Box picked up

Plywood in place

Old man waiting

The experiment set for the next person

Upon the wall next to the calendar

Was a sign with a small whiteboard square

It currently read

"It has been 9768 days

Since the last superhero"

A Typewriter's Tale

One hundred years old

All it would type at first was rust

Brown colored letters

That expressed a lifetime of neglect

First in an office typing pool

Located on the tenth floor of the Empire State Building

Where a different person every day laid their unique fingers upon it

Stroking and hammering

Clacking and pressing

Sometimes too fast

And tangling the arms in a sudden jarring jam

Sounding like a small matchbox filled with clock gears being shaken

To be carefully pulled apart

Transferring some ink onto fingers every time

With a different accompanying curse to match the mark

Who says ladies didn't swear?

Now the rust is mostly worn away

But dirt still covers the nooks and crannies 

Blurring the letters as they are struck

Marking out a sad mud covered tale

As it tells of transitioning to government service

Being dragged through wet trenches

Tapping out orders and dispatches

The center of a mobile command bunker

Surrounded by croissants and cigarette smoke

Ashes lubricating the mechanism

Both from tobacco and the soldiers

Remains floated upon the winds

Dirt falling away revealing a coating of oil

As a story of storage is the game of the day

Wiped down and spritzed with preservative

Packed carefully in a crate with others just like it

Typewriters all

Marked as fragile then thrown around with abandon

Chassis cracking on the side

Stored upside down in an endless government warehouse

Just around the corner from the golden ark

Forgotten and timeless

Until yet another cold war had ended

Finally flowing with ink

The letters mark clear and concise

The result of being taken into the light

Unpacked with care

A metal strap binding the crack

With four shiny brass screws

Trucked to the flea market 

Inserted into the "Typewriter World!!" tent

In location 5F

There I found it 

Paying in cash I took it home

I asked it to tell me a story

So that's what it did

Another Day At The Diner

We both reached for the sugar at the same moment
Tangling our fingers atop the white grainy cubes
In a mingled morass of splayed digits
Our eyes locked
She went for my throat
I peed my pants
Blood was spilled
Mistakes were made
It was another day at the diner

At three in the am
Jorace scrubbed at the blood on the asbestos tile floor
Being the son of Joanne and Horace
And the end product of a bitter name battle
His only option was to become the night cleaner at the diner
Tanned calloused hands gripping the old red plastic scrub brush
Back and forth
Back and forth
Jorace grimaced as the blood stain slowly faded from site
Buried under a soapy pink froth
The table above him still decorated with stray sugar cubes
It was another night at the diner

With the sunrise through the plate glass pressed between frames of polished metal
Came the daily delivery of eggs
Of all different sizes for all different patrons
Colored eggs and white
Speckled and plain
A sepia one for Oklahoma Dorothy
Robin's egg blue delicacy for the more technicolor Gale
All kinds started trickling in for their morning dose of coffee with beans
A little gossip and frolic greens
Just the right way to start the day
At the diner at the end of the yellow brick road
In the merry old land of Oz

Aviation Maintenance Frame of Mind

The responsibility is daunting
So we choose not to think about it

Millions of parts
From the smallest rivet pin or length of safety wire
To the heavy castings that would take several people to lift
All assembled in precision
All to spec
All just right

Then it flies away
All one million seven hundred thousand forty two parts
Syncing in their assigned tasks
And by doing so
Wearing out little by little
Flaking away
Attracting corrosion

Flawed by design

Until the assemblage returns one day
Looking dirtier and more tired than when it left
To be disassembled and cleaned
Inspected repaired reassembled
Mostly by the book
Somewhat not

It's like a game of telephone put to solid form
Where parts leave the factory in a just so kind of way
But every time they are used taken apart reassembled
The outline blurs just the tiniest bit
Mostly through human error
Sometimes by intent and design

That's when everything goes right
But sometimes things get missed
Cracks or corrosion looked past
An intermittent wiring short that happened to be working right when it was tested
A flashlight shining at just the right angle to mask a flaw to the eye

And the aircraft flies away again
This massive collection of parts
With the knowledge that it isn't perfect
And it never will be
It's just as perfect as humans can make it
Which is mostly but not very

Balancing lives upon it's wings
Supported by expertise and a single Airworthiness Release signature
Work to be done
Acceptable level of risk
As always

The responsibility is daunting
So we choose not to think about it

Rain Today

Rainy day morning bleeds into rainy morning day
Foggy dripping and grey
Only frogs and fish seem to like it this way

Though even they buy little umbrellas
All twisted and shaped to fit them perfect
Held by fins and frog fingers
All little
Jointed
Creepy

Thespian

Eating up scenery like a bulimic Hollywood star
To vomit it up again on opening night
Bright lights
Smoke
And an Oscar

Little Road Trip Poet

"I spy with my little eye
Something red
Red like a Solo cup
A fire engine trimmed in gold pin stripe
Race car red just a blur upon the track
The color of your face
After you lose your dignity never to get it back"

"Joey, shut UP!
You sound like an idiot
You sound like one of those stupid books at school!"
Sally sat on her side of the car
Staring in rage at me
In a time long before personal headphones
So there was no drowning me out
As I poeticized and romanticized
Every sight I saw without

"Mom!"
I cried out
"Sally is repressing my creativity
Make her stop!"

Mom looked in the rear view mirror at us
First me
Then Sally
"Sally
Let your brother be
He isn't hurting you
You can just ignore him"

The car was quiet for a few moments after that
Just the wind noise along the outside of the five year old Ford sedan
And the steady "Thump-Thump" of the tires upon the highway expansion joints

Then I turned my face towards Sally
Looking right at her
And started up again

"I spy with my little eye
Something very angry
And not just any kind of angry
But an impotent kind of anger
The kind of anger that nothing can be done about........"

Heavy Metal Pip

There once was a chunk of metal named Pip
He went to Newport News and became a ship
Upon the seven seas he fought many battles
Till twenty years on the ship was full of rattles
In the end he thought it was a hell of a trip

Workaday Blues

I should have called in sick
My job it's on the fritz
Computers are down
Microwave is broken
No casual gaming behind the boss's back
No bags of popcorn to pass the time

Though there is this thing over in the corner
It's strange looking and dusty
I think it might be some actual work that needs doing
I'm going to investigate
Send help if you don't hear from me by lunch

Emo Poetry Rant-a-thon

Darkness pain and loneliness plain
Ripped open soul all covered in stain

This is poetry!
This is poetry!
Poetry!
Poetry!

I totally just sang that in the voice of Jack Skellington
But maybe that's just me
And the gigantic bug up my ass about poetry
Also wishing I was a living skeleton sometimes
Ruling over Halloweentown
With loneliness and misery
Etcetera ad nauseam
Because without that all the emo poetry would never be written

"This poem is derivative
It mentions pop culture
It is not valid"

Nope
You're missing my point
Which is this:
So I hear that your father/mother/sister/brother/spouse/child passed away today
I am sorry
And of course you can write about it!
All those depths of dark feeling to be plumbed
How fucking marvelous
I'm sure you'll do it justice
And it will be free therapy to boot!
I really don't see how this isn't a win win for all of us

Death has ripped my body in twain
Left my soul wide open to rain

This is poetry!
This is poetry!
Everybody weep with me!
My girlfriend left me now I cut myself nightly
Poetry!
Poetry!

One month on and still writing the pain away
Six months and still
A year
Until it seems that all that pours from your pen's life blood is tears in the rain
Washing down the page in your bereft rage
It's all you know
It's what you've become

I wish you well
All the best really
And in my best passive aggressive modern day social meda way
I uncircle you
I unfriend
Unfollow

Lest your pain
Become my pain
By proxy of the daily dose of black that you dish out

And now the rain in Spain
Doth fall far away from your pain
Because even though it seemed cruel
It was getting pretty goddamned lame

This is poetry!
Poetry!
Yah!

Just Another Drive In The Day of

I'm busy chasing the new fangled LED taillights of this semi in front of me
Lit up like a Christmas tree from the rear
It distracts me from the problems of everyday life
The mortgage
The car payment
The insurance premiums
Dog poop on the floor
A kitchen that needs to be taken out and thrown away

I let the wind from the sides of the double aluminum gravel trailers buffet me in my tiny car
Kind of riding the sweet spot
Where I can noticeably back off the throttle to maintain 60 miles per hour
But not yet so close to the back of the rig as to be suicidal if the driver has to tap the brakes

It's a pleasant feeling
Being in that buffet zone
A twilight zone of rocking back and forth
With the red red taillights reflecting off my eyeglasses
My right thumb idly picking at the black gunk that collects on the cheap grey plastic steering wheel

There's a man droning on about something over the speakers
Some podcast or another
Spilling fascinating yet instantly forgotten information into my ears
A disposable TED talk for the road

The car hits a bump and my iPhone comes out of it's dimmer 'idle' mode
And illuminates the passenger area with it's brightness for thirty seconds
Before allowing itself to be lulled into a lower level of consciousness
Sung to sleep by the irregular droning of the car's three cylinder engine
Raggedly calling out through the worn out exhaust tip to the rear

All the lights on the trailer of the big rig in front of me flicker off and on for a moment
As they do sometimes as the electrical connectors flex
Gathering up my attention once again
Concentrating it into multiple points of LED light
Being chased by me in the pre-morning dimness on US-23

Wings In a Jar

Broken wings cannot fly far
Forgotten in the dirt as they are
Embrittled by heat
Snapped by my feet
I gather the small pieces in a jar

Now there they sit upon my dusty shelf
Right next to that damnable collectible elf
Though they are quite a pair
Sitting together up there
Though nothing that they plot can be good for my health

Movie Quote Cheap Shot

I forgot to write!
I forgot to write!

"Who won the fight?"
Cried Mabel the part time chemist from across the alley

No, 'to write'!  I said
'To write'!

"What's too bright?  Is my television bothering someone?"
Asked the elderly retiree from the Chevrolet plant

This is madness
I mumbled to myself
Frantically pulling my typewriter out from under my old spring mattress'd bed
An old postcard caught under the heavy corner of the old brown imitation leather case
Staying there
Face up
After I picked up the box and set it upon my rickety desk

Madness!
I say quietly once again
Dropping my correction pen to the floor
My eyes fixate upon the postcard as I pick up the errant instrument

Below a black and white picture of some Greek-ish looking ruins was a caption

"This, Is Sparta"

A Communal Morning Prayer

After the long dark night
The sunrise comes in all its shaded orange glory
We draw our bloody swords for one last time
Beating them into plowshares to plant the seeds of our children
Making offering for the day that the world forgets our crime

Dream of Summer

Without any fuss
Her free flowing hair
Framed her strawberry freckled face
Riding in the back of the wagon
Pulled by a horse named Horace

Slowly swinging her legs off the end
Bare feet and wiggly toes catching the wind
Brushing the occasional tall seeded head of grass
Was this lass
This angel in a white dress
Laying back and staring up at the brilliant blue summer sky

Freemason Fighting Cock

I don't want it to be true
So it is not
Instead there is a fairy tale plot
Full of dragons and wizards
Full of straw men of conspiracy
Hiding in plain sight amidst a blizzard

The truth is too hard to take
Too banal and common
Not feeding my need for drama
For Machiavellian scripts
Followed with precision
Details kept behind tight lips

I did NOT just stub my toe
It was all a Freemason plot
That was set in motion the moment I was born
All revolving around me
Pushing me in this direction
Upon a small rock I could not see

There isn't enough therapy in this world
To convince me that I was just clumsy
Staring at my phone as I walked
Tripping on that little rock
That was as plain as day to everyone else

Nope, I was chased by the infamous Freemason Fighting Cock