After Hours

Into the wild late night parking lots
Freeze at the 24-hour mark and hold your position
Just near the turnpike outside the grocer
Underneath the cabinet beside the spring onion mountain
This street is unique to any other in the neighborhood
Stray cats abandon their litter and stroll the sewers
Water flows onto the sidewalk and drips down the gutters
The stench is visible and the busker is blind.
Alarms are amplified and distorted tires screech corners
Night owls sleep on porches outside lofts maintaining steady balance
The weird and rare are wandering and preaching in trench coats
Yells echo in-between buildings and down alleyway graffiti
Flames are burning in the shadows and the dance club glows
The diner is quite and the seats are emptied in blood-red leather
Laundry mat is spinning in a trance for three dollars an hour
Detergent is extra but no one is providing or selling.
Near the brick walls they offer kicks in high heels the connecting side supplies dreams for insomniacs
Gas Station pumps are running dry until sunrise arrives
The convoy trucks seem to only travel at night with imported cargo
Payphones light up the dark spots like a holy angel with broken windows
Posters, billboards and advertisements are ripped and peeled in inconvenient places
Harmony Park is in the center and the play sets are dated and faded
Swings blow back and forward with eerie sound effects grinding the metal
Every street sign is a gravestone
And the whole world is a stranger.

Backward Birds

The birds of the south
refused to advance in a forward progression.
They flew backward against the wind

To the all-seeing eye,
including the birds eye view
this was a strange sight to behold

Politically they knew what they were doing was right.
It was because they were left wing
and they couldn’t be swayed by the breeze.

They remained in a flock
and over time collected more recruits.
The sky is an open market

Soon these views became the norm
with the landscape in reverse
this was how it should have been

When the carrier pigeons caught on
deliveries had to be made the other way around
It was confusing, but faster than bureau de poste.

Time went on
or fell slightly behind
before we knew it

“We” being the spectator
Forward motions were stamped out
And now it doesn’t come as a surprise

Frame of Mind

I told my friend
that I admired his mind,
he had a steady balance
of vision and alcoholism
but his sides never tipped

I suggested that one day
we should frame his mind
and to put it in plain view.
People could pay the fee
and take photographs beside it.

What frame did you have in mind?
Possibly a dark oak
or red wood?

Sometimes it’s hard to capture one’s thoughts

and then to exhibit them publicly
Facing the shadows of critique

with a singular image
that others can vandalize and distort.

Tijuana Reindeers

Snow cones float around Jupiter absorbing dust
Various parts of the anti-matter flatter.
Alphabet shaped cereal from breakfast banquets in New Jersey.
A group of reindeers gallop into the ocean and into the mouth of a whale
They awaken six months later washed up on a beach in Tijuana
Children building sand castles gasp for their parents
Red crabs slowly devour the carcasses and move in packs towards the esplanade
They weave in and out of traffic and narrowly avoid pedestrians as they pass
The soul of the reindeer gives them unknown strength to move at rapid speeds
One leaves the pack and goes into a Chinese tea house on the corner
The waiter collects it off the ground and places him in the lobster aquarium
It is displayed on the front store window with fake coral and plastic scuba divers.
Customers watch the little crab fight the gigantic lobsters as a one-man army
Suddenly Mexican and American tourists are standing on the top of tables waving dollar bills
The reindeer strength unleashes super powers onto the lobster
He bursts out of the shop glass window
The two are fighting in the street
Other crab packs return for back up support and all hell breaks loose
The collective relocates onto the streets and are all crushed by a passing semi-trailer carrying supplies of tequila, kidney beans and novelty sombreros
The driver curses at the creatures and continues his journey north.

Drinking from The Hostel of Youth

They promised eternal life at reception an infinite party.
When you lay in a bunk bed surrounded by snores and grunts.
You know you’ve been drinking from the hostel of youth.
The showers reek of international sex.
The common room has a pile of beatnik novels folded on the same page.
When someone has taken your food from the fridge.
You know you’ve been drinking from the hostel of youth.
When you’ve been out all night with twenty different nationalities and you can’t remember a single name or even the address of where you are staying…
You know you’ve been drinking from the hostel of youth.

A Product of Your Heroes with Shipping Included

This writer, this painter, this actor, this musician is merely nothing more than a product of his heroes.
You can now buy this brand-new product and take it home with you today.
It will be up to the buyer to figure out what heroes contributed where and how
Because buyer beware,
instructions are not included.
It’s a fun game, fun for the whole family for ages six and up.
So buy this product, a product of your heroes
with shipping included for a limited time.
There is a money back guarantee for unsatisfied customers unable to decipher the influences within
At the end of the day it’s all just a game yet very few bother to play it.

Burnt Butterfly

Immediately after escaping the cocoon
the butterfly took flight northbound
across whitely’ s impression of the harbor.

Grand ocean views
different colored depths of blue
and plenty of abstract sea traffic.

It was all a little bit overwhelming
maybe a similar sensation
for a tourist flying overheard

Reaching higher and higher
it seemed no one educated
the specie on slow and steady

It was summer
and he hadn’t heard about the warming just yet - missed the evening news report.

Spontaneous combustion!
There! A brief flame from above!
Floating between the arches of the bridge

A driver looked up
and thought he saw some sort of obscure phenomenon.

But it was really just the beauty of nature’s death.
Montserrat

The mount has been sliced elegantly with a serrated blade.
It looks like a well-done Sunday roast on a vertical dinner plate.
Many layers that reach higher than the leftovers
Start to slide.

I walked to the top of one peak and a Japanese man was walking around in circles.
Like an inmate in a prison yard at noon.
He had a map as if lost in the metro station
He held it up as if it was an umbrella.
He asked me where he was, and I said,

“Natures main course, a Catalonian delicacy”

The map blew out of his hands and soared down the cliff like an eagle.

Gliding Down the Quarters

I glide down the quarters on a thick sheet of ice.
I never lost my balance or swagger.
In day it’s wild but at night it’s wilder.
You can be lost in an empty street
Then found by a twenty-piece horn section.

They will comfort you with their soul
And show you back to the glowing lights of the bar.
A musical search squad of sorts.

I’m down here thick in the voodoo
and I’m drowning in a sea of gumbo.
It’s like Paris in North Queensland.

I can see the steam rising from the swamps.
St Charles Street knows its architecture
and I’d happily be buried in the graveyard.
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper pranced about with whores there once
both on and off the screen.

That’s a tick in my box and a nail in my coffin.

My neck has grown heavy with beads
My heart has grown fond with affection for the landscape.
My arms and legs have shaken all they could like a man possessed.
Cast in some deep southern spell.
My brain is dead, and eyes have widened.

Better catch the next bus to Texas to play it safe.

Otherwise I could be caught between the Quarters forever

Bad Blood

The nurse advanced with the syringe.
He shook like a vibrator in his chair.
Regret rose from his gut and went upward towards the forehead.
“Now we want good blood, not bad blood”
Bad blood, he thought.
His blood was as good as any if not better.
He would defend his honor if he had to.

“Do you have bad blood with anyone?”
she asked.

He remained silent while seated there in the blinding white.

It entered in the mainline, hook line and sinker –
Sat in there like a perfect jigsaw piece as she withdrew the red.
His eyes rolled back into a state of nausea.
Man up, a voice-over boomed from nowhere in particular.
The right side of the bullet-hole ceiling.

He sat up straight and obedient.

She put the blood into the bag.
It filled up like a tall glass of Merlot.
Stored on a shelf just above some test tubes.

His name written on a piece of scotch tape.

His blood was good blood
and one day it would become someone else’s.