Color Transition

Your blues have become reds
As your painted fingernails move
Gouging gnarled gashes
Deeply into the skin
Just what the doctor ordered
All that depressed devotion
Better going out than keeping in

Your grays have become golds
Mixing up chemicals in your lab
Draping the tiny room in fumes
Smoky streamers of a million dreamers
Former attendees from Alchemy U.
Celebrated and berated in portioned parts
All chasing the same dream of Pb to Au

Your yellows have become greens
Sprouting up depositing butter on the nose
After decorating the lawns
Of the not so rich and famous
Those who just can't mow on time
Harvesting a flowery little harvest
Making the finest dandelion wine

Your oranges have become violets
After a violent collision
With a deep and stormy sea
Ebbing into a sailor's delight
As the first stars wink into being
Dying light's purple fading to night
Till the nothing is the only seeing

The View From Seat 4-A

Clouds slip by 

A constant conveyor belt of textured fluff

Mostly the regular texture of old imprinted wallpaper stretched tight

With the odd area resembling something or another

Here is a duck head

Over there a castle tower

A nearby left handed guitar attacking the gates

With rock and roll

Forehead pressed to the window

I watch the seemingly solid vapor landscape pass me by

Quicker than it did in my youth

From my favorite seat

On the old orange couch

Close up to the picture window

By the lake

As the sun proceeds lower in the sky

Interesting shadows and textures arise

To grasp at the threads of imagination

Fluttering along at full speculative speed

Brightening to make an impression upon the neurons before they pass by

When the light is practically parallel to the line of clouds

My heart jumps into my throat

The most beautiful colors come true

Oranges yellows purples permeating the heavens

Even a tiny rainbow amidst some stray mist

Unbearably breathtaking imagery such as that

Can only exist for moments at a time

As a rule

And following through on that promise

The sun drops below the clouds 

Leaving me alone in a twilight lit from reflected light above

Along with this old airplane

And her crew

Everything creaks as the first stars appear to me

The wing spars flex in a long curve from root to tip

As a slight updraft makes the autopilot do some work

Computing how best to manipulate the flight controls

To keep us at our assigned altitude

Give or take a couple hundred feet

The temperature inside hasn't changed

But I feel a chill inspired by the chilly view

So I pull the old smelly Pan Am blanket a little higher

A little tighter up to my chin

Smelling of a thousand bad in-flight meals

And a hint of pipe tobacco

Out the window the clouds show their first gap in a thousand miles

And the rolling textured surface of the Pacific Ocean peeks up at me

Then it is gone

And I'm trapped once again above those clouds

Now dark grey and slightly menacing

As the world outside the window dims

And the twinkling heavens open their arms wide

Terminal Speed of 300 Toads

I see you are going down again
I'd offer you a gentlemanly hand
But gravity seems to be doing you well

If only there were some way of measuring this
Your acceleration in a vacuum
Your terminal speed

I spy a nice sized rock and throw it at you
Smiling as it hits you square in the gut
Who needs to measure shit when I can do that

You cry out for my help
And three hundred toads shoot out of your butt
Just like you always said they would

I fall down right with you at that
Tears obscuring my view
My breath catching in almost silent gasp laughter

"Oh my god!"
I finally gasp out
"You said, 'The day I ask for your help......
.....three hundred toads........
...fly out your butt!!'"

And I can't stop laughing
Nor can the tears stop flowing
Never a breath will I catch

As we both hit the ground in unison
A smile upon my face
And three hundred toads pitter-pattering down all around us

Valentine's Chalk Candy

I will
LOVE U
4EVER
Just like the children's bedtime storybook
I'll hold you in my arms
Every moment that I can
And if you get dementia and forget me
I'll court you all over again
So that I can hold you then too

Could you
BE
MINE
But not in a creepy way
Oh no
Just a bit of your love
A taste of your skin
A touch of your soul from within
(ok, perhaps in a slightly creepy way)

Would you
KISS
ME
If I promised to be clean and fresh
A lightly minty tongue
Hiding behind warm soft lips
With facial hair trimmed so as not to poke you
I have prepared and am quite a dish

These candy printed platitudes
And more
Can be yours
Because I love you

Won't
U LOVE
ME 2?

Bridge Ices Before Road

Up to now it seems

That things have always been

Idyllic countryside drive 

Endlessly rolling hills

Easy going all the way

Until the edge of the known world approaches

With a thin ribbon of concrete and steel

Arcing off into the unknown

There is a temptation to turn around

It isn't too late to go back yet

Familiar highways and trails

Traversed a million times before

Tire tracks from times past

Crisscrossing the old familiar earth

But this road goes only one way now

And it is out up and away

As a light snow starts

A setting sun showing off distant clouds

Dumping moisture off their undersides

Obscuring the future in a haze

Looming large in the fading light

Going slowly past the final 

Well-used turnaround area

Where we used to gaze out at the unknown

In our youth

Sitting around bonfires

Tentatively kissing one another

And awkwardly touching

Before there even was a bridge beyond

Or at least we hadn't noticed it yet

Now pushing through an inch of snow

Crunching satisfyingly under tire

No place to turn back now

One final sign before the base of the bridge approaches

"Bridge Ices Before Road"

In black print

Upon a reflective yellow background

And a crazily skidding car outlined within

Up the structure we go now

Heedless of any warnings or fear

In search at last

Of that fabled away up and out

Darkness closes in

At the disappearance of the last irritated sliver of sunlight

And the tires begin to slip

And we notice that there are no guardrails

Speed decreasing upon a steady grade

Wishing for the sand tubes of a railed locomotive

Portable granules of that safe earth

That is now so far behind

Beneath accumulating snow

Lightning sparks across the sky

Illuminating all

Once

Then twice

Long enough to look 

Left

Then right

Over the edge and into black waters

That stubbornly refuse to freeze in the cold

Filled with the carcasses of cars past

The only indicator that anyone else has ever tried

To go this way before

Chug chugging upon slickness

Downshifting just to keep the engine running now

Acceleration a forgotten idea

To keep forward motion the ideal

Headlights shining up into the night

Catching sight of nothing but the gently falling snow

Flakes as large as curled white Persian cats

With ice blue eyes

Accusing us of everything

But expecting nothing

"Maybe the road just ends here at the top?"

That whispered question still hanging in the air

When the apex is reached

And the car teeters upon a point

And for an unending few seconds

There doesn't seem to be an answer

Until there is

And the car decides to go forward and down

Please keep your arms and hands inside the vehicle

Picking up speed upon the snot slick skid surface

Those curled white Persian cats

Have now become stars

Streaking towards the windscreen and past

A tunnel of bits of light

The hyperdrive is fixed at last

The far side approaches quickly

Too fast for much thinking at all

With several inches of fresh whiteness

Trying to find the road is a dicey call

Until the edges can be picked out

By sparsely spaces white reflectors

A path to a new land's interior

Following only the idea of a path

No tracks to be seen

A new territory

Try not to fall

Bitter Orange

Ironically bitter orange
Took a bite of his opponent
Speaking through the mastication
Of her milky mammaries
Chunks of flesh flying
Through gaps in his teeth
As words flowed wordily
Insults insulting the insults
That came just before
Withering them to rotten ropy bits
Stuck along a throbbing red gumline

Reaching for an old ICBM
To pick at those necrotic specks
Poking with weaponized tip
Grasped by a toddler's teething urge
Cracking open the warhead
With a soothing and curious bite
Irradiating the spot where his soul should be
Leaving an x-ray imprint
Upon the skyscraper behind him
A solid gold image
Of what lurks inside

There a silhouette of an unpaid carpenter
Here a pile of broken hearts
Left from those who tried to love him
Over yonder an infant in tears
Inconsolable and insatiable
To feel the whole world in its hands
But not willing to pay the price for it

An infant orange window shopping tire kicker
Begging
Borrowing
Stealing
Everything he had ever wanted
Especially coveting
All the precious people places and things
That should never be within his reach

Indifferent Swamp Yeti

Indifferent Swamp Yeti just doesn't have an opinion
Whenever asked
He probably won't even tell you where he is from

Every poll that calls his yeti phone
Gets noncommittal treatment
Pledging himself to some obscure seventh party
From Abominable to Zed the Bearded Giant
The Hirsute Aboriginals will get the job done

This swamp yeti won't tell you what he wants on pizza
"Oh, just whatever you want is fine"
Is something that he would say
Sitting on rotting logs
Roundtable debating topics of the day

So when the pies arrive in thirty minutes flat
No enjoyment will cross his face
Beneath thick hair and masticating grace

Only a vague satisfaction of being full
After consuming yeti appropriate portions
And tossing the crusts to the side
Where the odd toothy creature chews rudely
With lipless maws chomping wide

Indifferent Swamp Yeti takes pride in only one thing
And that is his lack of commitment to anything
Politics, "Meh"
Religion, "Meh"
Yeti rights, "Meh"
It is the predictable response
That he has for everything