To the least of these my brethren.... (2)

You stumble in, all gray and black and brown hair - stringy and hanging shoulder length, unkempt unwashed. Your red and brown plaid, flannel shirt worn thin, so thin. Your eyes burning with messages of knowing, of seeing deep into the very pit of my soul, reading my thoughts, knowing all the things I think to myself, all the blasphemy that runs across the back of my tounge and slides back down my throat until it comes to rest in the pit of my stomach, where it sits and festers.
The bags and bags of all your worldly goods....my modern day messiah. Go out amongst the gentiles in these halls of learned men and waste away under watching stares of scorn and mocking contempt. Knowing. Always knowing - as any good messiah would - the hearts of men. Their darkest secrets become yours, all rotten to the core that they might be. Resting heavy in your mind are the thoughts of men and girls, boys and women and all the in betweens that come here into these hallowed halls to find their place....to find a place.....to find some semblance of truth. In their minds you become a spectre, a phantom of all the dark places that most would choose only to visit in the light of day, if even then.

It is in this light that I begin to see you for who you truly are. In this you are my brother. In this you are my father and my only one true friend. It is through these thoughts that you see so well that we are to be weighed and judged. To clothe the naked, feed the hungry, help the helpless - these are acts and acts alone.

Open Books On Dusty Shelves

Look up here
and then you'll see
That in the eyes
LIE all those secret things
That I have never been.....
never been.....
never been.....

And in those secret trappings
sleep easy. For tonight,
No longer am I
dust and bone.

Rather empty naked hollow small
And all those things.....
those things.....

On Flight and Those Unfortunate Enough to Attempt It....

As I make that left onto Mulberry - all lined with pecan trees and little yellow flowers in the patchy crab grass lawns - I hear a scream from a second story apartment, all high-pitched feminine and full of tears. And as the suit case flies from the open doorway, unlatched and throwing clothing - blue shirts, black socks, faded khaki pants all raining down in an arc, the suit case landing with a thud upon the roof of the idling Honda Civic waiting below - I wonder what the fuss is all about and continue on my walk down the street with but a single glance over shoulder to try and get an angle through open door at the black eyed Nancy who wouldn't do it anymore.
I walk on past in innocent by-stander fashion and make my way to the corner where I will wait for that bus to make its rounds and take me down the street to buy a pack of cigarettes and a Coke. No, I don't smoke - but I like the look of that pack all rolled into shirt sleeves Dean Moriarty style and my room-mate has declared the prospect for a dollars worth of profit if I can manage to swing by and pick one up on my stroll across this town that we have been calling home now for so long.
As I stand and wait for that bus to come and take me to that shiny Mecca of convenience shopping - all inflated prices and shoddy Japanese made toys amongst the lottery tickets and cigarettes and beer beer beer as far as the eye can see - I hear the breaking of glass and, in the same arc as those blue cotton fruit of the loom shirts and faded khaki pants, comes a man flying through the air with all the grace warranted a stone or maybe a little cartoon anvil with the word ACME all in capital letters etched across the sides for convenient anvil marketing purposes. As he sails through the air, he screams a list of profanity the likes of which is seldom heard on Mulberry Street or anywhere outside of Bangkok or maybe a film starring Samuel L. Jackson and hits the roof of that same suitcase-dented Honda Civic with a thud. It was in that moment, just after he exited the second story window but before he made his final impact on the roof of the still idling Honda Civic, that I thought man just may have mastered independent flight.

Well....maybe next time....this is my bus.

Drink some of this....it's just the type of thing you need.
Suddenly then....three feet taller and picking up speed
Crash out through that cieling - all blue and yellow tiles
Ceramic and Plaster and Thatch
Like that beanstalk and pauper child dance
All golden geese and made for tv action

And Then Comes the Fall...

The sun, after all these white-hot months, loses a bit of its fury and begins to succumb to the fall, relegated to a pale disk behind grey clouds - impotent for all its wanting to scorch and burn. The air is no longer white and thin - invisible but for the waves of heat moving between here and the horizon. The wind comes now from the north and west, from parts more accustomed to snow and ice and all those things that Texas has little experience with.
As the front moves through, it brings with it rain and lightning and swirling winds that throw the sticks and leaves and pecans - there are many this time of year - around the yard and into the street, finally to be carried into the storm drain at the corner by that little river that flows with such purpose....lower, lower, lower, always downhill, always to the sea.
This paper-boat and galoshes river, flowing downhill so quickly, with such purpose, swollen now by the downpour, stained a miriad of swirling colors of greens, purples, blues and greens.

Oil slick / Beautiful.

And somewhere south and east, a river runs into the sea with these our colors. And in the belly of some fish there swims a little paper boat - the first of this season, all lined paper and three hole punched - S.S. Johnny in smeared blue ink across the bow. Swimming now to warmer waters in the belly of the Leviathan, while back in Texas children don their caps and sweaters, cardigans and scarfs against the gathering cold and wind and rain and all those things that summer was so very empty of.

BLOCK

I don't know.....................
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On Dust 2

Here in Texas, under that sky so large - screaming INSIGNIFICANT! with all it's might - a man can watch a storm rolling in from across the plain and wait in anticipation and never feel a single cool drop from that cloud. A man can watch and wait all day and eventually that storm may just rain itself right on out until nothing remains but a cool breeze at sunset - come rolling in pushing all the dust into little rivers that run up around the tires of that old truck and push into little piles there against the side of the porch and up on the window sills.

Here in Texas, a man can get mighty dry watching the storm clouds.

That dust that covers everything, for truly it is the dust calls this land it's domain. Here under that sun - savage and brutal in its fury - the reds and browns and tans swirling under furious winds and gentle breezes alike....that dust that covers all.