A SHOT AWAY
shot in the arm
shot in the back
Merry Clayton
backing your jumping
jack vocals
the whole planet
about to boil
rise up, straming, foaming,
bubbling over
but
if we go
(fast fast
not slow)
at least we can tell ourselves
with songs like these
we were
more than microbes,
were
way more
than
just froth
ABUNDANCE
a single seed
making the Universe its
own garden
garden upon garden
gardens within gardens
the green
in your fingers you
can speak
of it as archetypal
mystical magical
soon we will have
be
the machines
that can really tell
BREATHLESS
WITHOUT BREATH
got no Elon
Musk starship
no Colorado Mountain
bunker with
all the mod cons
so let
the bombs fall
missiles zero in
let my self split into
muliples like
every heavy
metal atom
under the Sun
who cares
if the system burns
the towers collapse
not me
nothing got to lose
as indifferent as
the darkness
of the Universe, to
how
the dice fall, what
comes about
the life of all those digital
billions of
pure
civilization
gets flashed, windstormed
burnt to ash
BLUEBIRD
there’s a Bukowski in my heart
that wants to get out
and in the heart of that Bukowski
a bluebird that needs
to learn
to fly
but first
crack its shell, hatch,
escape, aspire
for the sky and
outer
space beyond
but as
for that Bukowski
I have no
whiskey for
him
no cigarettes
to dole out
and, to add
to my ignominy, no
checkout girls to
flirt with
grocery clerks to give me
at most a secomd glance
(best
I can do, best
I can get
is mountain of
rejection slips, is
debt collectors swarming,
crawling
all over my ass
yet
he survives, he obdures
this Bukpwski with
his bluebird
I just
cannot express
poems 2 die for