Beyond the Lines of Yes and No

I got some wind chimes caught in my throat. Now people only hear from me on breezy days.

The only mixtape I have left from my high school days suddenly lost its growl, lounges around in sweatpants, and eats all the food in my fridge.

Life can be like that.

Once you start coloring outside the lines of simple yes and no questions, anything can happen.

I sometimes mistake purgatory for paradise.

Once wore a colored contact in my third eye, believing I’d see the world in a new light.

At least all the remaining skeletons in my closet have been created equal.

They no longer shiver excessively at the thought of being left out too long in the light. 

What is the counterpoint to sorrow-torn tears?

A radio song in the key of uplift is a good place to start.

Or a flash mob of fireflies on a summer night.

A reveille of reverie ain’t bad.

Even better, better homes and gardens of happy hormones.

Gimme gimmes of sweet-love shimmy.

A Monday hello in its Sunday best.

A long-tressed sky with rainbow highlights.

When balled fists fire off right-ons instead of fights.

When the pursuit of happiness flips the script and runs after you.

When lush new romantics offer good riddance to old heartbreaks shaken, stirred, and poured over a future of optimistic ice. 

Enumeration

On any given day, I count the stairs I repeatedly climb at work, the number of billboards along Sunset Boulevard, and the number of bus benches on the east side of Western Boulevard.

I enumerate the counterfeit auras I’ve witnessed at highbrow Hollywood parties.

All the sleek red cars knifing in and out of traffic lanes on the 101.

I number the clouds reminding me of the faces of all the drunk college guys that have yelled for some bar band to play Free Bird.

I count the days we’ve ducked and weaved between raindrops of holy water and napalm.

All the times my love has held my heart like a lucky penny in her cupped hands, whispered a wish of forever happily-ever-afters before casting it into a fountain reflecting a moon that has lost count of all the times the romantic and the lost, the worriers and warriors have asked for the answer to a glittering wish to be placed upon their tongue.

Praise the taste of dreams come true. 

after

the leak of lack and food of flood;

after breath, soil, myth from mud, and pitiless creation;

after ocean swell and drought sorrow; fog and fire, feather and forgiveness;

after collision and embrace, boulder and burning;

after a dog’s life and the cat’s meow, stanzas of raven song and alphabet honey,

then came a silent evening sliding into fretboard morning. 

When the gun gets a massage

its tight grip lessens, its barrel backbone hollows to a hum.

Friction decreases bullet diction.

Thumb rubs increase circulation of meditative vibrations.

Effleurage eliminates trigger stress.

Petrissage digs down deep into muscles of cocked-back hammer,

shakes away anger’s rough muscles,

rhythmatizes to alive.

Their Finest Work Songs

Along Hollywood freeways, trouble gardens of all-night rumblers, tenements of toothless soothsayers whose mumbled predictions are mistaken for bus directions.

Down-and-out angels work double shifts at the feather factory to earn new wings.

In alleyways along Vine, bruised and nameless hands grapple with scraps of metal and broken glass, determined to transform them into a rib of sacrifice that can build a saintly gesture.

Unemployed actors work on movie backlots, building awe-inspiring technicolor daybreaks.

Come evening, everyone gathers around a Venice Beach bonfire to sing blues, ballads, and their finest work songs.

One sweet voice rises above the rest. It’s just a whisper away from becoming a wishbone. 

Liquid Gold

As a kid, I drank water from the tap or garden hose.

No Evian water. No highly filtered water. Just tapwater.

And if my family didn’t put the toilet lid down after each use, my dog would slurp water from the porcelain bowl.

All of us survived just fine.

These days, some waters contain arsenic, nitrates, and other highly toxic chemicals.

So I drink filtered water. Maybe even a bottle of Smart Water from time to time.

As for my plants, I feed them filtered water.

Scientists say because of its scarcity, clean drinking water is more precious than gold.

When it’s our time to go, I hope my loved ones and I are well hydrated and death has plenty of drinking water available.

I hope that whatever dog I have, when it’s his time to go, he has the good sense to know he can drink from his own bowl and not the toilet.

Speaking of which, are there even any toilets in heaven? 

Agent Orange

Ask the trapeze artist with the bad back, the antique typewriter digging a Q-tip in its ear.

Query the blackbird flying backwards, the gun that traded in its license to kill for a library card.

Question the angry poet and Zen Buddhist, the pop melody stuck in your head and phone ringing at 3 AM.

Interrogate Chopin’s ghost. The barely read hotel bible, the ashes of the dead scattered over the sea. The unscrubbed bathtub, the dog that barks Mozart, the underpaid teacher and overworked defense lawyer.

Survey them all and they’ll say:

“For the sake of your wellbeing, don’t conduct shady business dealings in New York City.“

One war

bleeds into another war where everyone bleeds a little more than the war before.

What happens to a war deferred? Does it sugar sweet or heavy love then run?

Maybe it just dreams like the sun. 

The Dead Can Dance

Even the best of days can sometimes be partly cloudy with a chance of funerals.

Even the worst of days can give birth to moments of true magnificence.

The dead dance in our hearts alongside our dreams.

The sky may have aged since we last saw one another but at least it’s maintained its color.