Gusto Wind

As I watch the homeless man

take a look

at the very same sunset

that the owner of the World looks at

I try not to cry

I think,

It took 400,000 years for the light from the big bang

And 11 days for Truman to change his mind on the atom bomb,

It took one week for Jacob to leave his Father for his dream

And Beethoven a month to write symphony #9,

It took Hemingway a year to write Old Man and The Sea

And eight years for Joyce and Ulysses,

Almost a lifetime for Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

And many lifetimes for the pyramids,

But,

what too often

can be forgotten

is always the fleeting shiver

of a snowflake

on the back of the wind

falling from Heaven as the Angels did,

In time

so many were not Jacob or Beethoven or Truman or Hemingway

just people

looking up on the way

to their melting place.

Fable for a Friend

The dream itself is a rainbow

that fastens itself to every cell whirling color,

Through artery streets, ligament tenements and organ cities.

Behind every shadow that casts down are silhouette walls

of flesh that can never quite block out its shame.

As it rained, it began – Kansas City, 4am!

Burnt orange saucers stringing smoke above moonlit

eyelids. Light on. Whole apartment was watching.

Dead. Dead Asleep.

No food in the fridge except Grandma’s cookies n’ barbeque box,

five days old and Mr. Coffee machine dripping,

sweat dripping, ink dripping off that secondhand pen.

It was mad! Mad, mad(e) poetry from thin air. And sometimes,

You or I would turn in those stupid short stories to Mr. Gene.

And we both had girlfriends from that same class.

And both of them were profoundly odd. And neither worth

a scratch at writing! Man. And, we both dropped out.

And now,

I live in a town far away.

The mountains are like shark teeth.

The sun rays band down on my face. Writing, Writing, Writing.

Day after day,

in the sane sadness that is synonymous with life.

I wade through it.

But just for a chance

To hear your name once more

Trembling blue beneath the floorboards

Baltimore Avenue racing below

Cigarette in your mouth. At my door.

With your poems,

With your stories,

With a friend and not alone.

I think of this -

and the color melts back in.