Prosopagnosia

Night and day’s faces tied to the plainly hidden
Double helical wrapped Christmas morning gifts
Open up like halos when street lamps first kick in

My memories of them trapped in an hourglass
They sink away within the insides of sand hearts
Their visages blur like anxious breath at candlemas

Some were contorted from being overworked
Some stretched too thin, some too serious
Some with too much sun, most unremarked

Faces belong to presidents and Tik Tok stars
Courtyards to the keepers of 7 of the 9 gates
Prisons for souls pressed up too close to the bars

I remember personalities and sounds, sadness,
And laughter and the way I think about history
That’s bound to string through waves of blackness

I saw auras and how they felt, faces not so much
And how my Mom’s wings came out when I cried
I recollect her scent like splattered tangerine guts

But mostly I remember

Touch.

A Love Letter To A Chameleon

I admire your art of blending in
I’ve watched how you exhibit
The mastered tricks of your trade
From early antlers into a crown
Like a faerie perfecting flight
Before you had your wings
When these were Viking days
You’d proudly wear his bones
But for today and your role now
Just his scars will have to do

I know because I wear them too
I stash his music inside my skin
And his song woven from flute
He is my consort and my duality
The particle and my wave
Lets revel in this Bodhi
Dance forth with wine
And pull the moon
Down over our cheeks

Like two shapeshifters
Caught in each other’s gaze
I see your headlights
The deer stuck in you
I see your picked spots
and all your juicy roles
Two conjoined stars
At our souls’ hip
A tangled, tentacle mess
Like when cuttlefish fuck

We both know, we can’t hide
Our newly discovered skins
So lets uncover our smiles
And peer past the fig tree roots
Past the machinations of gender
Past the strangulations of light
For just one glorious moment
Within the madness of these times

I see you

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom

Cops push out addicts
Living under bridges
Then talk them down
From jumping off them
Suicide rates are leaping
But it’s not all bad news
At least the stock market
Reached a historic high

Welcome to the new norm
Please just distract at home
The CEO of Pfizer just sold
His shares for 5.6 million
On news of a fabulous jab
While outside my window
I saw a guy find salvation
Inside another kind of stab

Clean air, trees, and animals
Live more inside memories
Than anywhere else now
Once the polar ice caps melt
It’ll be another place to drill
But it’s not all doom and gloom
Elon’s gonna save the world
By sending man out to mars

Creativity tilled to vacant lots
Where kids used to play tag
Games like hopscotch or jacks
Red rover and capture the flag
Lone statues of imagination
Rotting in teenage wastelands
This is the zombie apocalypse
Without a single shot fired

Millions with no food or homes
Even more without any work
Yet everyone owns a phone
Why do you think the Nazis
Gave every family a radio?
But it’s not all doom and gloom
Sony came out with the PS5
Jails come with joysticks now

Runaway Trains

There’s this divide
Thirty seconds wide
Trillions of commercials long
Most everyone I have ever met
Want to save the planet
While filling up with gas
Or vote to save the environment
But refuse to leave their cars

Boy! Howdy! Hooray!
Americans and their cars!
Pickups with smoke stacks
Louvres, tinted glass
Chrome molly, mud flaps
Glasspacks, four barrels
Let’s open them up
Sideboards, tailgates
Hummers in Hummers
Driving under the influence
Of petroleum and work
Guttled. Oiled. Greased
Like the skid marks
Of the American dream
Texas longhorns martyred
On hoods of Lincolns and Caddys
Bentleys, Benz & Beamers,
Endangered animals
Like Jaguars, Cougars
Pumas and wild Mustangs
Their symbolic effigies
Now hood ornaments
Memorialized trophies
Crowing bumper stickers
Of precious places drilled
Like high fives after rapimg
Mother nature face down
The exploited names
Emblazoned across grills
Of Tundras, and Yukons
Safaris, Range Roving, Denalis
Pacifica and the Outback
Pathfinding Expeditions
While masturbating
To Car and Driver

Or maybe you prefer brains
And batteries over brawn?
Like Teslas and Nikolas
Smart brown cars
Future Faraday’s
Volts and Priuses
Their cobalt bricks
Carried on the backs
Of Congolese children
For 2 dollars a day
The smart money
Is on lithium mining
Just ask the dead yaks
And cow carcasses
Floating down rivers
From contaminated
Drinking water
Be sure to plug them in
Every night to charge
With dirty energy
From dirty coal
And natural gas

Frack like you
Just don’t care
And drill baby drill
Like you’ve never done before
America has gone green
Like the shade of money
From sea to benzene ring sea
America the disposable
We demand twice the torque
Acceleration, towing power
A quarter of the gas mileage
A fraction of the stopping power
Of these unstoppable,
Habitat choking
Self destructing,
Planet suicide,
Co2 gas emitting,
Runaway trains

Magoa

Her wry patina etched face withers
A spavined effigy raped and ruined
By past atrocity, disappointment
And the relentless passage of time
Like the portrait of Dorian Grey
Whose worn canvas painted smile
Became a reflection of men’s sins
Twisted and turned upside down

Years drape her marcid gaze
A veiled and fraying simulacrum
Of acrid wafting past memory
Attached pain pinned reminders
Mar her downcast countenance
Stuck, fossilized and frowning
Like a dead butterfly crucified
Under glinting caught glass

Honey spilt love songs culled
By jaunty beaks of hummingbirds
Episodic nectars of heartbreak
Gathered and built into her lips
Like when she fell for a friend
Abandoned, pollinated and stung
His stinger still buried deep inside
A painful, pricked proof of a time

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