Because our blood contains sun / Because our blood contains dreams / Because our blood contains wars / Because our blood contains wounds / Because our blood contains hope / Because our blood contains healing / Because our blood contains lies / Because our blood contains truth—that’s what makes us human. That’s what drives our hearts to seek balance.
Month: June 2022
Crosstown Traffic
Crosstown traffic is tired of wearing hectic threads,
wants to shed its gridlock, go off to India, find a guru,
lose all the road rage and steady stream of brake lights clogging its congested intestines.
Crosstown traffic wants to run off and join the circus,
become a billboard painter along the peace-of-mind highway,
a bird watcher in tranquil forests, an enlightened being that translates cynical jazz into optimistic pop.
Crosstown traffic is sick of so many people’s frustration,
tired of being overlooked and undercooked as a potential Airbnb destination or cover story for Better Homes and Gardens.
Crosstown traffic wants to write a song about a song about crosstown traffic.
It wants to move somewhere quiet and listen to Hendrix at full blast.
Sun/Moon
Summer sun scorches, pummels, bullies, brass-knuckles, works the world over in its fire-calloused hands until it’s forged day’s final hours into a lovers’ moon, a jukebox moon. A diamond-eyed perfumed moon rising high over homes, castles & cardboard jungles. Promise-keeping moon, vampire & werewolf-loving moon. Silver-flask moon. Rosary-bead moon. A moon to ride shotgun when you’re driving alone down the highway. A moon to spit-shine any sins from your savage, sun-sweated skin.
This one goes out to all the dads
glad dads, rad dads, tattooed, tap-dancing, and blue-sky loving dads.
Divorced dads, dynamic dads. Pet dads, plant dads.
Roadtrippers and pancake flippers. Gamers, gardeners, geeks, and freak flag fliers.
Skywriting dads, book-writing dads. Gay and straight. Stay at home, or home alone.
Dads that are no stranger to fire in the hole. Dads as shy as the random pimple on a soul.
Yoga dads, Rogaine dads. Single dads, singing dads.
Dads funkier than the soundtrack to Shaft. Dads whose heart knows how to find a needle in a haystack.
Juneteenth dads, civil rights-fighting dads.
Dads of all races, religions, and ethnicities.
Skate punks, film buffs, coin collectors, and waterslide testers.
Hairy and baldheaded, musical and artistic.
Dads that took the stairway to heaven and are no longer with us.
Happy Father’s Day to all of you!
When the sun goes down
the undertaker washes the body of the deceased summer day.
He dresses it in a honeysuckle suit and cuts the dead’s hair.
People come from miles around to purchase the radiant locks. The undertaker whistles a faint song as customers come and go.
At some point, it starts to rain. Slowly at first, then sounding like falling stars tap-dancing across tombstones.
The darker the night gets, the more customers arrive—
to wear the golden hair of a once summer day.
this bed
once again, i find myself awake in this bed—
this ambien labyrinth, this insomnia museum 3:13 a.m. bus stop to sudden wide-awakeness, all-night waffle house of tossing and turning, this zoo of doom, crusher of circadian rhythms, hippie commune of sleep apnea, truck-stop along the highway to hell, war zone of snores, tram ride to slam time, snotwad of snoozelessness, scheme of rusted bedsprings, 9-1-1 crank caller, off switch to sleep onset, enigma of pin cushions, bloated corpse of corporal punishment, this boxspring lobotomy, dante’s inferno with a pillowtop—
this bed, this bed, this head, this dread, this way station between sun and moon that won’t let me sleep…
As children
all our various wound tattoos—bloody noses, knee and elbow scrapes—marked our temporary casualties and heroics.
We didn’t yet understand how certain traumas never leave us,
how bullets can obliterate bone and breath,
how fists like wrecking balls can pummel and crush a body beyond recognition.
Some wounds we’ve learned to leave by the side of midnight highways, scraps for coyotes and other wild animals.
Some wounds we still bear, only we’re better at wearing them.
A loss, a heartbreak, a shame—
jagged body daggers melted down into a slight smile, a lighter step,
an open hand that others want to hold.
Money Talks
Sometimes it sez things—dirty, greedy things—that couldn’t even get a thunderstorm wet.
The little bit of money in my pocket talks way too loud.
Tries to shakedown the sweet angels in my seventh heaven.
But those angels are much too smart for that.
Their robes don’t even have pockets.
January 6 Committee Barbie Play Set
Mattel has released a limited-edition January 6 Committee Barbie play set featuring vice-chair Liz Cheney;
blonde-haired fair, but raining down fury on her fellow Republicans as she says: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
When she’s not at committee meetings, Cheney Barbie zooms her pink convertible around the Capitol, hurling epithets and heavy gavels at Proud Boys and Ginni Thomas.
There’s also the Marjorie Taylor Greene QAnon Barbie. If you pull her string, all she says is, “Gazpacho Police” and “Frazzledrip.”
At the center of the collection is the Trump/Ken doll, sporting a wicked combover and Bronx Colors-brand face makeup.
Evidence will likely show he should be escorted away from Barbieland in a color-coordinated orange jumper.
His next dream house: prison.
Same Sun, Different Seen
A man stuck in early morning traffic drives towards a rising sun that reminds him of a big bright coin he’s too busy to spend.
The man clicks on his radio and hears a woman singing.
She, too, witnesses the same rising sun that looks like a gold record she longs to hang on her living room wall.
The deejay playing that woman’s song mistakes the sun for the key to his lover’s bedroom.
Somewhere across the city, that lover sees the rising sun as a big lump of nothing.
She whacks it upside the ear with her twenty-pound book of Shakespeare, proclaiming it needs to read more.
The sun soothes its ear, then scribbles a reminder across its Post-it note glow:
swing by the library come dusk.
RichRant 