Listen

Open.

Open your ears; hear the

wind rustle through the trees

grasshoppers’ pinch cut through the dense breeze.

Guitar strings resist his tender squeeze.

Listen and you will hear

sipping of beer, melodiless chords,

calm, deep, melancholy.

Drive

lock your inhibitions in the trunk and drive away into the sun, blind to where you’re going, confident you’ll get there

Best Friend

I’m here.

I’m here for you,

if you need to scream, want to sit quiet, cry angry, run far and drink, lie in the grass and think.

I’m here.

There’s no reason, no doubt, (don’t have to think about it.)

Exhale a bit and know that I’m here for you.

I will leave at 3 am to sit in silence, bring you soup, find you Cream Liqueurs when all the stores are closed.

I will procure midnight oranges and make sure you eat them.

I will make faces, bad jokes; I will sing with you.

When you are angry and nothing will change that, feel that. And I will be there to hold the anger and pain with you; look at it, feel it, let it wash over, cry until there is no more salt.
We’ll go to the park, remember when there was less to think about but seemed like more; we have more under our belts, our pelts are longer, our hides are stronger.
Its how I know you're ok.

Solar Powered

But then they cry at the movies or when they hear a song. They want catharsis but if it’s due to fiction then they aren’t compelled to act on it; it’s just a story. Fiction-derived emotion could be harnessed, like solar energy. Collect, store, use when needed. Change happens in small, unexpected ways.

Street hip-hop doesn’t unquestionably pilot revolutionary change. It may mean that a boy has a way to get out aggression, and has something that he’s good at and somebody likes his rhyme and positive feedback feels good. Maybe this contributes to less conflict with his girlfriend. Maybe she’s able to talk to him more, maybe she gains more confidence and feels safe in saying ‘not without a condom’ and maybe he starts taking pride in that.

Maybe.

And maybe that’s social change.

And maybe revolutions are minute, like the world turning – you can’t feel it but it’s happening every day all the time. And maybe these small things mean that the world turns in a way that lets the most sun in and keeps the trees growing up and the rivers flowing out to the seas and maybe these are the revolutions we need: constant, unglamorous, quietly vital.

Welcome Mat

I hope you’re enjoying that cigarette.

That would make one of us.

I hope you’re enjoying your freedom

to smoke uninhibited, while

restricting mine to

breath.

Its hot, smoke going

down to that verging on painful spot in the bottom of your lungs.

I hope you’re healthy and you stay that way.

But more than that, much, much more than that I hope that

I am. And that I do.

See, every time you calmly, unknowingly, satisfied, exhale

directly into my smoke-hating, and until recently, decently-smelling face

rage builds.

Its cold: a snowball, growing, circling, collecting.

And if the unforgiving smoke doesn’t kill me

this grey loathing surely will.

So enjoy that cigarette, enjoy

blowing its refuse into my face and feel my fury as you go home,

relaxed after your café chat, climb your winding staircase and find a steaming, fiercely putrid pile of shit on your welcome mat!

Teach the Mountainside to Drum

I’m trying to pull what is quietly there in the back of my mind,

to the foreground.

Metaphor, piano notes, these things hold meaning.

Can I explain on ruled paper, rectangular, thin?

Can someone explain to a mountainside how to drum, each on their own djembe, congas, some leading now others some dropping back a little girl dancing clouds gathering?

Some things cannot be orchestrated.

Metaphor, images of a cloth-draped man calmly holding a flail,

Men linked together ankle-to-ankle, orange, no hair.

One look and you know.

Ideas of punishment-revenge, loss of freedom, loss of choice come and you feel it and you don’t need an explanation.

Play the game.

Wrestle the song to 5 lines 4 spaces. Remember the clef, the signatures.

It’s not enough to hear it; to play it. The proof waits on paper.

This is what we need:

We need the proof.

Traffic is slow with no cars on the road

This poem is happy.

It’s happy because it is sitting in warm summer grass,

Because it saw a good friend today, and because soon its going to fly away.

When it’s written it will fly.

Clouds will rise, lifting the smog,

drivers will            slow,

then stop.

Guitar toters will put down empty cases and won’t replace them.

Mowers will relent, lawns will grow up around them.

Swings hosting kids will whine as they grind, moving only slightly

with the wind.

Everyone look up.

Words, letters, stretching like loose white cotton float gently up.

No destination, no constraints.

They stretch their toes, clap their arms.

Together they read:

                                                         i           M           

L   o      V                               t                                    e

                    e                 S       

                         TH   i