Though certain pains may shadow you now

they are not yours to keep.

They aren’t your kin, nor your blood and bone.

The attachments you’ve known, some will change. Lovers will reveal their true faces, some growing more beautiful, others becoming more grotesque and distorted.

You’ll carve your spine into a divining rod and learn to guide yourself towards calmer, more faithful waters.

All the bizarre and beastly skins you’ve inhabited, you’ll no longer recognize.

You’ll wish them well along their journey, but explain you’ll be taking a different path.

Soon this transformation will be complete, and you’ll become the road sign that says,

rest area ahead.

My momma used to tell me

it’s better to be hooked on phonics than jonesing for nonsense.

She said it’s better to be a speed racer than a slow-witted racist.

Told me, along the highway of life, make lane changes with both eyes open.

She stated, it’s better to take a stairway to heaven than an escalator.

Said, when reaching for the stars, make sure you have steady ground beneath your feet.

If you’re gonna drink, she added, let it be a bottle of better oughta take care of yourself.

She told me, if you’re gonna have sympathy for the devil, make sure you have empathy for the people.

My momma said, always respect the dead because one day you’ll be one of them.

A little mascara and mystery will do the trick

Stalkers, gawkers, tweakers, and fame-seekers stroll grey-dawned Hollywood boulevards, searching for that star-infused fix,

an adrenaline of fame and fortune, leaving one floating feathereasy above a city where alleyways need a facelift,

and the homeless are jonesing for that gift of another chance.

Here we’ve got the yogafied and barely alive, sweet gutter angels and high-minded greed dealers with zip gun sneers.

Witness the milk and honey being converted into likes and money as another morning rises above the star-lined mayhem of it all.

A little mascara and mystery will do the trick, help conceal any bruises and bad attitudes on our lady of the devilish angels.

Hear her high heels clicking down the street like loaded dice ready to be rolled.

Saturn Return

Imagine an amusement park ride, Saturn Return.

A perpetual motion machine chockful of savage lows and enlightening highs. A revolution of the senses, a cosmic tilt-a-whirl into maturity.

As you transit from your Saturn of now to your natal origins, there’ll be plenty of drops where the world vanishes from beneath your feet.

No matter how scary it gets, no shortcuts or temporary patch-ups. The more you repress, the messier it gets.

Signs along the way will read:

“What Should I Be Doing With My Life?”

“Do I Have Any Regrets?”

“Don’t Forget To Breathe!”

Your inner child doesn’t need to be a certain height to board this ride.

By the end, you’ll both be one. You’ll have grown up together.

Certain days feel so heavy

like that final weight pallbearers carry to the grave.

Yet say the correct password, and the moon will allow you into its secret room behind the shine.

That’s where good fortune wears the scent of new laundry behind its ears. Where our brightest essence illuminates dark waters.

The clock tells me when it claps its hands, I can open my eyes. It’s then I’ll be older than I remember and younger than I care to forget.

Should you see me holding something to the light, it’s a letter I meant to send you

before all these troubles left their shadows at our door.

It’s Already In My Head

I don’t need to listen to a million and one beats to realize I love the singularly unique sound of home sweet home’s metronome.

I don’t gotta visit a nutritionist to see that a growling stomach can only write a manifesto of famishment.

I don’t gotta consult a psychic to recognize that when I’m gone, my memoir will be penned by my own ghostwriter.

I don’t have to chat with a pacifist to grasp that it’s really time to worry when the military-industrial complex develops a huge complex.

I don’t need to speak with a visionary to know that poetry is its own utopia.

Fret Hand

I know a woman that can turn a bullet into a church bell.

I know a child that can transform ill will into cotton candy bombs.

I know a man that swears it’s quarter till heaven and half past hell whenever he checks his watch.

I know enough to know I’m not even close to knowing everything.

But I do know that when I refer to my fret hand, I mean the one that plays guitar

instead of the one that worries over the weight of the world.

The baby teeth of Peace are coming in

All day, all night Peace cries; can’t get no relief. Peace knows it’s changing. Peace knows the whole world is changing, while Hate remains the same. Peace keeps teething on full moons and Dylan’s guitar pics. Waiting for that day when all its teeth come in, so it can wholly sparkle & song.

The Formula of a Kiss

If kissing were a mathematical formula, the equation of a circle would equal the shape of puckered lips—

an elliptical sweetness whose radius is centered at the origin of bliss.

Any and all equivalent chord theorems would refer to your joy’s intuited music—

songs soothing savage global anxieties into a geo-born geometry whose main function is to create an earth that is beautiful and round.

An earth that graciously bears humanity’s weight, along with providing an error-free formula stating that true love can exist,

just like the presence of a perfect-circle kiss.

It is not enough

to write our feelings down on paper. Write them on flesh. Better yet, go deeper.

Scribe them on bones, commit them to memory, to bloodflow.

Give those feelings a home on the tongue, in the heart and soul, so that everything said and done comes from the beginning and end of everything wondrous inside us.

So that those feelings can lead to something pure and true, meaning even blindfolded, we can find one another during rupture or rapture.

Meaning when we catch sunlight in our hands, we choose to caress, not crush it.