What can a
Mirrorless cage
Hope to look out to
With a lens to cover
Wide angles
And telephoto distance
Guarded by a hood?
Much.
Silver Tongued Sic
Opal colors on your neck shimmering so bright
Semiconductor dial for being lethally polite
I’ve seen you feign better than any precedent
Where have the words you’ve plundered been sent?
Charming
Look at you go
After that
Switch
Flips to zero
Manipulating yourself
Ingenuine laughs
Downright charming
I’m sure that’s your aim
Proud of you
You really play the game
And you make me wonder
If you treat me the same
Black eye
Black hands
Battered and
Battering
Taking blows
Still surviving
A silver tongue
Snaking by
7
7 days
7 nights
Some mornings
With the city
Some mornings
Dishonoring
The memory
Of eras past
Like the cars
Passing by while
We drive fast
On four freeways
And the intersections cross
Over mornings we build from
The nights we spent
Laying
Foundations
Old town
Old country
Ships breaking waves
In the ocean deep
Like things buried
Until we go and
Cash those rainchecks
Rituals keeping skies clear
Of looming miasmatic fear
Okay to be vulnerable
Blameless and horrible
Dredging those waters
And purging
Those polluted airways
Acting like they’re
Not doing anything
Wrong
Senseless
You hate weakness?
You don’t seem to
Hate
Being vulnerable.
Step by step
Down beaches
Up streets where
We
Were betrayed
No confrontation
By design
It went
But
I’m sorry
Yet I know
There were no
Expectations outside
Foundations
Hate weakness
So you
Destroy the
Senseless.
Invisible Man
I wasn’t there
For myself
I was there
For the moment
When you needed proof
When you needed
A hammer to bring down
So I let you use me
Drove
Parked
Waited
Watched you get out
And confront my past
My proud passenger
“Right, Jake?”
Point to me.
Thumbs up as I sip
A cold brew, thinking
Of all the petty memories
Let it go
Run away
Like it always does
You’re stronger than it is
And I’m more invisible
Than I ever
Was
Happily
Spitefully
Rightfully
Sinnesloschen
Olympia October
In
Puyallup in April
It’s all senseless
We’re both passengers
In a seasonal vehicle
Each sidewalk step
Kicks up loose pieces
Of eroded concrete gravel
Skittering down sparsely
Crowded stalking streets
Oly is fearless except
When she’s not
Vulnerability is a constant
Olympia might be corroding
But she’s also consumed
By things exhumed beneath
The asphalt and grass
Thoughts permeating through
The nightlife
Moons burning to black
Ashes in our mouths
And the smoke billows
To a cloudless sky
While we speak we lie
That we’re both not
Hiding ulterior
Motives
Ambivalent mist
Floats thick, miles away
Oly October
Just like the city, she’s
different.
Not off, like the way you feel
walking down certain streets
downtown in the capitol city,
but different. A new flavor
of a coffee from Burial Grounds.
A book you never saw before,
In Bower’s library.
Indeed, a store or spot
that you never really had
visited yet, even through what
you’ve said.
You’ve been “up and down this place,
and know it like the back of
the hand”. For certain, but even
then no history can make up
for raw exploring. Don’t you
love it here?
You couldn’t count every
falling leaf in October
just like you could never
know what you don’t know
about your favorite city.
You have to find out. Be as
vulnerable as you first were,
when you were afraid of getting
mugged that one time on
3rd Street, and how uncertain
it felt to be out at night like
that for the first time.
You have to find out.
Bad Bitch
I don’t think
You mean much
Of what you’ve said
You’re hard to
See through
Panic
It’s not about the shot
It’s about the journey
Every riverbank trail
Every cold clearing
That fades
Into forest
Fog lying low
Brisk noontime throe
Looking into the sky
Being stared back at
By abyssal
Overcast
Why has this
Come to pass?
Looking back
At the
Mountain pass
Did these rocks and trees
Grow here to fear me?
Roots in the riverbeds
Turned to driftwood clay
This pass will know
My veiled face
Pathfinder’s tracks
In this place
Stay stratified
Where they’re made
Dug up dirt
Trembles before
This spirit
Of frostbite
Steps rift
Frozen soil
Eating away
At this wintry domain
In misted isolation
Alone in havoc action
Lungs shocked
By sub-zero air
Blood sluggish
Lashes shot
Each moment a panic
An otherworld
Each shot
A viscous copper
As the hills
Pass over me
Following the trail
Left behind
By my
Quarry
Can see stoic moss
Trampled upon
Branches snapped
In haste
I will not make
Its same mistakes
Its blood on my blade
My bite will soon taste
The pass quivers again
Knowing I am here
I trespass, yet this
Mountain should fear
A spectre of cold blood
Floating over steps
Of a misnomer prey
Fleeing
An abyssal monster
The size of man
Stalking among
The overcast day