poetry is at first
a star melting
in your mouth
emerging as
a burst of doves
made of laughter
or
a swarm of locusts
screaming tears
it all ends up in the sky
Tag: Flight
you are the reason
the wright brothers took flight
you are the reason
the chicago & rock island railroad
dared to cross the mississippi
you are the reason henry ford
leaned over a drawing board
sketching models a to t
the gods knew
one day
we would require them
to carry you to me
you are the reason
daedalus fashioned
a pair of wings
you are the reason
icarus fell into the sea
Categories
terminal
my priority was silence
after being weighed
measured
scanned
and cavity searched
by tsa agents
i just wanted to find a quiet chair near my gate
within the noisy LAX terminal
preferably a dark corner
with no other passengers within twenty feet
lacking over-molested copies of the LA Times
and the pink sugary crumbs
of well traveled two year olds
ah, there it was
my weary feet and rolling carry-on
made their way toward flight deck utopia
a rounded blue row of seating
right by the tinted night windows
my eyes were swollen from crying
i didn’t want to leave the city
or the love i had come to find there
unable to read, think, have a smoke or a drink
all i had at that moment
was a peaceful spot
in the airport
before my red eye back home
that’s when he walked over
disturbing my solitary meditation
a learned looking man
accompanied by a worn brown leather miami university attache
i suspect he felt safer near a fellow buckeye
smiling as he read my sweatshirt
which reads
college of mortuary science cincinnati
he asked if he could sit
certainly i replied
this area is annexed for Ohio
we exchanged life stories
24 hours he had been on a layover
in Los Angeles
on his way back from China
he said he was a professor
who had been sent there
to teach the chinese
how to slowly kill
the American economy
the exquisite irony
wasn’t lost on me
because he was positively green
his skin gray
eyes glassy
silvery hair dusted black
from breathing particulate from coal plants
and suicide net surrounded factories
floating in the Beijing air for the past three weeks
his shaking hands
pulled out a stash of respirator masks
still in his pocket
the sight horrified me
it was the first time i realized that all was lost
the human race is near extinction
that inconvenient truths are
merely the tip of a melted iceberg
given the reality of irreversible damage
so
i got up and threw away
the remainder of my give-a-fuck
hearing the girl from ipanema went walking
now boarding boomed
as i traipsed down the ramp to the tin can
not caring as much if it safely landed
full of the knowledge
we’re building cell phone towers
on the corpse of a planet
Categories
i found god
i found god
five hours into
a red eye flight
back home to cincinnati
from los angeles
my burning forehead
was leaning against the cool
of the aircraft window
hips aching from the unreclining seat
my eyes were staring at planets
when it happened
a faint blue line appeared
cupping the curve of the earth
the stars began to tumble into the rising light
i watched the night give way to
an aurora divine
as the hands of creation
lifted the sun above
a white sea of clouds
taking on the color of fire
this is the force that made the universe
i whisper
i wept silently
by the exit door
of row 17
having seen whoever made this life of ours
do their best that august morning
realizing i could not deny
what i had seen was
holy
and the mistake i had allowed my heart to make
was thinking that god was
in any way
associated with man’s religions