At night they unroll the subdivision

maps. Every yard is keyed with color

like the countries on a globe. With

precision each tree is noted, every

arterial street is traced. The huge

squares cover great room floors.

Security is controlled. Blinds closed.

Doors are locked and left unanswered.

.

Like strange dancers they crawl on

all fours pointing and muttering.

Stuttering disagreements flare over

what to change and where. Every

night they close cul-de-sacs, switch

mailboxes, rearrange the names of

streets. Milnor becomes Maple, Maple

becomes Tuttle, strategies to befuddle

outsiders, to preserve the sanctity of

community.

.

A few without careers choose to be

daytime volunteers. They watch who

drives through the gates and where they

ride; eye the strange, souls without the

code; and make up games, laughing at

the lost. It’s bad

.

enough, they say, that anyone can

penetrate the neighborhood, a clear and

present danger. Any stranger might

carry bombs, disease, poisonous

thought. Corrode smooth edges of clean

lives and make them rough. Measures

must be taken because gates are not

enough.

Cars pull out of driveways.

Light snaps off chrome like a

paparazzi-crowded sidewalk. The

sun refuses to illuminate. It stuns.

Every morning’s like this: a crowd

of orphan questions.

.

Already what begins has begun. Talk

is slow, the start, distant. Attention’s

awed by a secret world. Its proportions,

its dimensions, the threat that pulls

people past the house on schedule. Every

.

metal box traps a face, a skull. A

globe of lightning bugs, swarm of

strobes. A small cloud of chemical

messages made to ignite, entangle,

gouge the dark. A mouth

that chews nails, eyes that mark

.

us. Those feet, accelerating and

braking, were already working waking

up, pulling in silent mystery to the floor.

Stretch into the step. The foot waves a

little, halfway there. Then it tramples

fear. Arms extend pushing air,

miming walls. Now common, once

rare, a walk appears followed by

triumphant

.

fall. Start and stall, start and stall,

each foot determines how

the floor creaks. But even in

different languages we speak

like each other. Other to other to

another other, we’re all our own

freaks, foreign only to ourselves.

.

Every beginning’s hard. The start has

no sound, the struggle then the breath

then the cry. We try but words don’t

connect us, their failures do. We pursue

“enough” but always too much or too

little comes through. We rerun each word.

What we write, what was said. Soon

there’s a line of lost ones, a trail of

clothes from the front door to the bed.

This is submitted for Read Write Poem prompt #40.

.

The Haldol plods

through brain cells

fills veins, makes movement

tiresome criticism, dulls every

nerve with its molecular conformity.

.

A hot air balloon

floats low through a

blonde sky. The slow

basket breaths like a ventilator.

.

Time lags early,

sags somewhere in the

center of my chest and goes

to sleep. I lose my best clue

about how to stay awake.

.

A low dark cloud drifts in

from the west. A low dark

cloud drops over thought. I

try to write. I stop.

Take a look at Dana Guthrie Martin’s inventive new site, Postal Poetry. It’s a showcase for poems written on cool postcards. I’ve got one up there and so does Christine Swint.

Orange-white sun in black sky

paces on clawed paws. Six steps

.

back and forth between artificial

mountains. Fur shines when muscles

.

ridge back and forth behind glass and

wire. Restless defiant actor refusing

.

to perform. Each stomp makes a tiny

dust cloud. Awake, dreaming of hives.

.

Bees circle wet snout keep sleep out,

the pace up. He never sleeps. Awake,

.

hallucinating palms, parrots, banana

trees. Awake, alone, bees bounce and

.

ricochet inside skull, bones. Agitated,

alone. Stare into the inappropriate

.

landscape. Look with awe and pity

at this lonely beast in a city of prisoners.

Love can have a dumpster aesthetic, scrap feelings flying
past the flap. I’m tasting as I search, trying jaundiced liquor in a jar
under the rumble of bridges, next to smiling billboards where
mini-van drivers become mesmerized by sexy ads and the vibration of it all.
.
That sanitized art they watch sinks my passion so I’m left to look
at broken glass, factories closed, graffiti of lives left in heaps, unspoken.
The head of a baby doll, marked all over with a pen, my jealous face
both carry the same scrawling message: we’ve been replaced
.
by shimmers of heat, by the sparkles of lies whispered in back alleys
by a clean-faced doll. But there is still some gum (with bits of dirt and hair in it)
a shared token, a worry stone, a fossil from the lost world pressed in
my palm.
.
I cannot escape this loss, this puddled sun, this dumpster of time tossed
like a rotten orange, leaving me with nothing but the death-smell of the empty bin.
.
Those others can afford their sins. I’ll walk their streets, watch them look away.
I’ll beg for rusty pennies, rustle through their dumpsters for bits of uneaten life.
And when the moon rises, I will see the shine in the broken bits of glass.
Nothing will pass me by. I’ll memorize every piercing odor, each vivid stain.
The grease of evening, the skitter of rats, the smiling doll, the bottle half full.
.
My sins don’t go anywhere…they just stick to the bottom of the bin, and
wait to pull me in. I twist and trim, bend each part together. Find us in the
thing I’ve made. This is my art.
.
.
I’m so excited to be finally posting this. This is a collaboration with two amazing poets, Holly from Honkeycackle and Julie from the Buffaloe Pen. To make this, one of us started with the first line, sent it to the next person and so on. Julie came up with the title. It was a great experience. So much so, we’ve decided to start a blog about collaboration. Look for details in the near future. Oh, Holly began the piece with a phrase from an Easystreet prompt.

Feel the cicada’s migration: dirt

birth, long walk up the trunk to

singing in the high hot leaves.

Hear the buzzing, the shaking

hum, an electric sky.

.

Exchange places, learn its trick

for growth. It changes, discarding

the husk of itself, bearding bark

with the empty past. It sings

instinctual rhythms after

swelling in slow silence among

roots and rocks.

.

We’ll not be stung by change,

arrange ourselves with brain as

guard and body jail. We’ll not

fail to sing of fingers and feet,

want and mourning. We’ll not

make our freedom an excuse

for prisons.

.

New body, new mind - a single

piece. Glisten and shine in the open

heat. Crown this muscled self, this

nerved thought. Call it boss. Leave

the cracked carapace where it is, a

smoky transparent marker of its loss.

My veins are conduits for

electric current. Synapse to

synapse the brain snaps on.

Skip sleep and glow, wait to

catch the copper dawn.

.

*

.

The night traffic echoes

your deep sleep sounds. A

quiet shore, a soft rumble

receding, rolling over,

coming back.

.

*

.

They’re working on a roof. They

talk and hammer. The knocking

stammers through the streets. Their

conversation penetrates the yard.

Not the sense of it, just the sound.

Theirs are the only words around.

.

*

.

I shouldn’t mention that your

hair smells like lemons, that the

bed is a mess, that our lives

travel faster approaching the

final station.

.

*

.

Arms crossed, button the jacket.

Keep a hornet for a pet or

teach a wolf to ring a bell. You

can bind what’s meant to bite but

you’ll be bound as well.

How many of us would it

take to move the Wal-mart?

Not the sort of move by petition, court or

protest but to push it like a shopping cart.

Just a few inches, maybe a foot to start?

.

How many around the giant box digging

fingers to foundation? A million muscles

tighten like wound springs until the

concrete block sings and whines. Until the

things inside quake and rock.

.

Stock topples. Indentured slave-made

shoes lay with soles to heaven. Sweat shop

shirts fall into tired heaps. Fish sticks

leap from the freezer case in a spray of

frost. Bags of chips are lost, smashed like greasy

dominoes.

.

We inhale dust and grunt. The building jerks. Weight

shifts. We lift left inch by inch and let it

drop about a foot from where it was found. Sirens

sound in the distance. The sign falls

.

apart. Now it reads “al- art.” We know it will be back.

We know. But for now this is profit’s mausoleum. For

now, this is our museum.

It’s just a phase, this

crazed bleating over mercenaries

and refugees. It will be shed

eventually, the way thunder’s forgotten

once it’s gone.

.

But now forty years have been

scrawled on, crumpled up and

tossed. So much loss. Lines with

heat - they hiss and steam, draw sweat

like a sauna. Words with teeth like

piranha, they swarm and bite.

.

Nothing erased just lost. Look into

the tangled wilting mass of cut ivy. Things

lived there. I saw

.

you at the bar. First your arm, your

back, your hair.

It could’ve been anyone.

I saw your shadowed face get closer then

disappear as I drove past.

It could’ve been anyone.

Clearly that was you downtown

walking toward me. You even stopped to

look.

I could’ve been anyone.

.

So much loss. Stare at the lighted

glass. Shrug. Move on. Follow directions

and stare. Or keep the

.

argument between anger and form. Find

a new place once the ivy’s gone like the spider

and the mole. Make the goal the distant storm.