Chrome Ink: A Collection

the inks

remember when i worked toward good   those days
a river   deeds like salmon leaping boulders
levees   many bitter beers ago
//   a jet roars overhead   can i come back
of course you can my angel sings but just
not all the way   //   i carry water in
the desert   more than metaphor   the poet
that i’m reading says a pulley lifts
us up to heaven i still think about
deep wells beneath   //   you tell me that the things
we do mean everything & nothing both
are true   the tattooed moon we’re drinking booze
the bloodlet dawn the coffee’s on   fuck death
indelible the inks that   staining us   sustain

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pressure cooker

so nothing much external needs to happen
since the braincase is a pressure cooker
with a lid that loosely fits   //   & me
i’m channeling Great Uncle Walt just simmering
simmering simmering oh so close
to boiling   //   thank my reading & my weird
friends look even doggo’s panting at
my feet dishwasher churning like
a biplane spiraling on fire   //   psyche’s
chasm charm a Mariana Trench
a million buckets to dip in spill out
//   oh see & smell nay feel the fragrant steam
that’s nimbusing my muse stoked lobster red
claws tap tap tapping hissing into song

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chrome attic

the color’s in your head of course with dust
& bats   last generation’s mattresses
//   in one old house you lived in college days
unfinished attic with a mattress   sex
there several times   oh hot as hell   no not
the sex   //   you have a good friend who wears only
black but you’re more into color   nuance
ain’t your jam   oh smelling purple hearing
orange tasting blue there’s synaesthesia
of the psyche too   //   in Poe the house
is metaphor for head the corpse below
the floorboards won’t stay dead   //  chrome attic so
unnatural it shines too easy   mirror
stained by things that needn’t even touch it