In Plane Site.

I'm pregnant with your child.
Oozing bags of puss are weeping from my fingertips.
D.B. Cooper is my real name.
I own not one, not two, but three magic bullets.
The Bermuda Triangle is where I found Jimmy Hoffa.
My left foot has seven toes.
Oranges make me sneeze official Nickelodeon slime.
When I was seven, I conquered Mars with a pencil.
Green is really a futuristic camouflage to hide two dimensional butt pirates.
I can walk on water, but only when it's really cold.
There's a colony of stranded alien cow-probers in my tool shed.
Stonehenge is just a fancy toilet for druids.
Not only have I found Atlantis, but I sold it to mermaids.
Yes, I know mermaids.
Roswell was a cover up for an all-night rave hosted by DJ Boomin' Truman.
The Lost Roanoke Colony just got bored and went to play golf.
I like to play croquet at Redpath Mansion.
Drive-in theaters were invented by lazy, perverted slashers.
Your mom called; she wants you to meet your real father.
Numbers stations are where I find all of my best recipes.
Once in a lifetime you'll take a road to nowhere and find a psycho killer.
I always tell the truth when I'm lying.

The Upside To A Lost Cause.

Waiting.
Gulls fly overhead, silently mocking.
Sitting along the boardwalk, sand between my toes.
A cold receiver on the pay phone around the corner.
Anticipation is dreadful.
Disappointment is worse.
Being strung along is a funny thing.
You're not going anywhere, that much is guaranteed.
Hope finally eclipsed by acceptance of the truth.
A tryst no more; an assassination of sincerity.
Curiously, the pit stops along the way are your pittance.
Cafes and bowling alleys.
Malls and movie theaters.
Amber sunsets on the ocean.
People.
Talking and dancing their troubles away.
Total structural collapse just below the surface.
All they've got is right now.
Tomorrow is just an eight-letter word for never.
We're all fighting a war that can't be won.
Some of us can luckily see through the fog.
Every unanswered call a hushed gift delivered in secrecy.
When there's nothing left to lose, you've got everything to gain.
Starting with today.

The Boxer And The Bear.

A child and cub born side by side
Bushy eared and eyes thrown wide
Parents thought no harm to fear
Brothers helpless as a dear
Growl and cry and play all day
Never apart would they stray
Each drank milk and slept a lot
Decide the cuter one could not
Up they grew so far so fast
Each day bigger than the last
Cub turned bear, boy turned man
Time blew by the years they span
Too large to call the indoors home
An outside pen the bear did roam
Boy became quite strong and tough
A boxer skilled and really buff
The fighter loved his fuzzy friend
Not foreseeing childhood's end
Defenses down the boxer screams
Tears he wept in soggy streams
Brother bear he took a bite
Off the boxer's face of fright
Soon to be the beast's cuisine
Death delivered unforseen
What he failed to comprehend
Bears are wild to the end
As boxer faded to the light
Truth revealed with every bite
All a bear can be is all its born to do
Eat fish and squirrels and me and you

The Lust.

What crawls from 'neath the bubbling muck
Renouncing oblivion to ravage amok
Oozing stale gasps of long captured souls
Dropped deep below to bygone holes
Bursting through forests and deepest of lakes
Terrors to give you the chills and the shakes
Encroaching the fields of our schools and homes
Flesh intended to fill catacombs
Nothing is safe and nothing is sacred
From shambling horrors rancid and naked
Teeth and claws left dripping with gore
Entrails aglow on the moonlit floor
Life reduced to fleeting ephemera
Death endures to dance in the viscera
An unholy fable formed by acrid chrysalis
Fetid revulsion with a stench limitless
Plunging the surface to rip at the hide
Sloughing off layers no relief implied
Encircling putrescence denies your escape
Hunger unbound their mouths all agape
Piece of you here and a piece of you there
Truth be told there's plenty to share
Rest easy tonight the struggle is over
Better to die than live without closure
A burden to walk the black earth eternal
Cursed to feed a lust most infernal

The Dividing Line.

Slicing the air with joyful fingers
Each one dancing to its own beat
The slightest stretch pulsating with life
Cupping the full-blown blast of the highway
Neurons firing eager trumpets of triumph
Easing my mind as I barrel along
Packs of roving bison and leopards
Mechanized behemoths of the new world
Boxes brimming with unbridled meat
Steel automaton docking complete
Open roads the only elixir
Punch-drunk bender full of techno innuendo
Solar streak goes west from east
Hues of violet usher the glow of lanterns
Guiding us to a forlorn pit stop in the fog
Endless layers scanned and wiped
Glossy flickers of nocturnal guardians dashing over
Atonement unlocked in these vivid reflections
Photon mass swirling in the metallic paint
Release the discord with miles piling high
A question not of whom or when or even why
Where does the human end... and the vehicle begin?

How Did I Get Here?

Trapped in a Dodge Nitro
Spinning wheels on the way to an Indigo Girls concert
Where did I leave my man card?
Back at that Motel 6 in Tulsa
With the cute desk attendant in her second year of vet school
She liked my chocolate brown polo shirt
Said that gator was 'cute'
Twelve hours and too much tequila later
That former beauty queen rolled off me like primary school insults
Meaning she didn't
My dad is going to love you
Mama is dead, she got hit by a cattle truck
I felt sorry for her again
Just like I had the night before
Lost in a thought... sorry folks
Are there apologies in poetry?
I digress
Barreling down the highway at a thunderous 55 MPH
Seemed like a good idea at the time
Just like nipple piercings and buying a Yaris
When do we get to LA?
My mocha frappa double whip no sugar soy milk caramel whatsamajig
Needed a top off... I was tweakin'
TWEEEEEEAAAAKIN'
I don't know her name
I'm gonna call her Lucy
Lucy puts down her spicy chicken sandwich and asks
"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
Waiting for my demon spawn outside his charter school
Dad belly and tissue in hand
Crying
The closer I am... to fine?

01010000 01101111 01100101 01101101 00101110

Electric circuits glowing with passion
Pushing harder, farther, faster
A swarm of numbers flooding the horizon
Spilling over a jagged cliff of VGA monitors
Into a crypt of dial-up modems and Zip drives
The old replaced with the new
Layer upon layer of humanity's latest and greatest
Here today, gone tomorrow
Never a dull moment
In the tomb of zeroes and ones
Necessity is the key to survival
Every cassette tape and 5 1/4 floppy disk
From dot matrix to coding BASIC
Nothing is sacred in the land that time.gov forgot
And yet, a peak behind the wizard's curtain reveals the formula
If everything is obsolete
Then nothing is

What Is Trash?

What is trash?
Leftover bits of life tossed to the wayside
Your life stacked here
Their life stacked there
Piles and piles of unwanted memories
Floating along their winding road of ruin
The debris overlaps and smothers
Broken promises and tools of lackluster skill
Refrigerators and picture frames
Electric sorcery of every kind
Cobbled together in a depressing salad
That no one wants to eat
Garbage can be a funny thing
So much of our trash isn't damaged at all
And the only thing that's broken
Turns out to be us

Magenta And Blue.

Wrapped together like braided rope
Thrown longways across a neverending bed
There, watching the most wondrous colors
Through a window, magenta and blue
I lost sight of me and faded into you

In my dreams I floated elsewhere
To a home nestled in a valley, surrounded by mountains
The flood had come, sending water to our doorway
And yet you swam in the deep mountain rain without worry
Just let it all go, you told me over and over
Peace begins with opening your own cage
And learning how to be free

I awoke to the coming of the cool, breezy night
But somehow, I emerged on the other side of the window
Though the color had faded, I could now see with clarity
My mind saturated with magenta and blue
Finally found in a dream, envisioned with you

Two Hearts.

A peerless vision driven to guard
The hole in my chest weighs a ton
Loneliest king of a desolate junkyard
Brighter than the endless midnight sun
Our two hearts beat stronger as one

Nothing is easy when everything's hard
Trying to live a life on the run
Battered and bruised, bleeding and scarred
Trouble will find us before we're done
Our two hearts beat stronger as one

Deck full of jokers, not one is your card
Joy is fleeting when you're under the gun
Being with you was its own reward
Might be all over, but it sure was fun
Our two hearts beat stronger as one

Yield To Yesterday

Wipe the crust from my tired eyes
Better to see the borrowed lies
Something tells me I've been here before
What's mine should probably be yours
I'll fumble around the afterglow
Flying blind and looking for the light
Stumble lifelessly into tomorrow
Pretending that I was right

Empty handed but bearing gifts
With the wind my motive shifts
The ghost inside calls out to say
Yield to yesterday

I'd fly over hell to avoid the havoc
Just to fight the war at home
The gears inside are all automatic
Only seeing the world in monochrome
Canvas as wide as the gap between
The shadows painted with doubt and glycerine
Limping along the path to evolve
Not seeing the puzzle I need to solve

Better to linger than live on the edge
A hollow man with nothing to pledge
Your sympathy calls out to say
Yield to yesterday

Another world rolls past eternal stars
Bubbling on the cusp of an unborn truth
A million bastards and their unread memoirs
Each grossly unprepared and full of youth
Which one I'll be I could not know
Perhaps the hermit entombed with Bradbury and Thoreau
Icy fingers clasp a tattered dress
We danced once nevertheless

I'd shatter the earth for a moment of glory
Without an audience there is no story
The angel of anguish calls out to say
Yield to yesterday

In this unlikely moment of clarity
Daring to plunder a fool's memory
This close to losing skies of blue
Bastion crumbles in awe of you
I'd rather slice off my writer's hand
Than turn over my useless heart
A flock of vultures strikes up the band
Wherever you go I'll surely depart

Pray for the flood on a sinking vessel
Everyone's destined to wrestle the devil
A fleeting fantasy calls out to say
Yield to yesterday

The Ballade of Georgina McPhee.

The Night of Enitharmon's Joy -- William Blake, 1795

Georgina McPhee was a tough act to follow
Her heart all painted in black
There wasn't a meal she could not swallow
Worms nor grubs or bears from Kodiak
Her brother a thoughtless amnesiac
And her father, dead at thirty-three
Poor mother was an ax wielding maniac
Oh where, oh where can she be?

A feisty young lass, full of bravado
Ran alone without friend or pack
Cast ablaze by the moon's pallid glow
Stalking the moors for a stack
Returning home, smelling of sweet lilac
Torn to bits against an old dead tree
Her heart left open to ransack
Oh where, oh where can she be?

Never to know what comes tomorrow
Gazing above at the ancient zodiac
Left rotting with the beasts to wallow
Her forehead split wide, more than a crack
The vileness that swims in the brack
Washing out and drawn to the sea
A meal for the depths ready to attack
Oh where, oh where can she be?

She walked without footsteps to track
A ghost, a shadow, eternally free
Her spirit unbound, not to come back
Oh where, oh where can she be?

Who Knows My Face?

This evening's article is being written from the road. I normally publish a new piece of fiction on Saturday, but today will be a rare exception. I revisited a lot of old places from my youth today. While the full details of my visit will be detailed in a future article, I simply wanted to express my feelings in a poem this evening.

Falling apart
Your bones left exposed to the harsh winds of change
The flesh peeling from your frame
No longer a home
The shadow of a thousand dying suns
Your holy houses of learning
Left to dance with the dust
The graves of kings and queens
Sinking into the depths of a forgotten hell
The shattered glass of a windowless house
Scattered across a boneyard
Seeking but a single drop of water
No life, no hope
Remember... there is no 'I' in team
But there is an 'I' in failure
Who knows my face?
In a crowd of strangers, I have become invisible
How can I be anything but humble
Gained a fortune
Lost a losing proposition
In that, I am redeemed
A vulture overlooking a cemetery of the living dead

An Ode To The Duck.

Webbed wonder of the murky depths

Stoic master of the indifferent

I watch you float from moment to moment

With little regard for the past

Your bill eternally points to the future

Like a compass on the edge of tomorrow

Your transformation is a glorious sight to behold

From the ivory cloak to owning the moat

So easy to disregard your unwitting facade

Dare to break bread and learn your secrets

A breathy cackle like thunderous innuendo

Quack at the notion of being caged

Freedom to fly lest threatened to die

Furious threshing of nature's fabric

Anything less to the liberated simply wouldn't do

There you go with the answers I sought

Sailing the quivering membrane of the universal enigma

Neptune's gatekeeper forever more

Mighty waves of veracity rock me to sleep

And then I finally see it

The duck knows more than we could ever forget

Another Story Hidden From View.

While browsing through the book section of a local thrift store, I happened upon a copy of Moliere's masterful Seventeenth Century comedy "The Misanthrope". I've wanted a copy for quite a while because I rather enjoy this farce. Obviously, I was overjoyed.

Sure, I could buy a new copy from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but what fun would that be?

Anyway, upon bringing the book home, I discovered that within it's pages was another story hidden from view. Not one of laughter or whimsical satire, but of a journey by someone whom was in love.

A few pages deep, I found this boarding pass.

It seems the previous owner of this book flew on Air Canada. Their last name was Brown and they went from Vancouver to Calgary. No date was provided, but I could say within reasonable certainty that it was no older than five or six years. On the back, more clues were to be found.

The first ticket appears to be linked to Calgary Transit, which is a bus and rail service. Finally, I had a date of travel! Looks like they arrived in Calgary and traveled further on June 5, 2009 (Canadians and the rest of the world typically reverse their date format from the way Americans do). We know the traveler was an adult based upon the price of the ticket.  There's another ticket related to Air Canada as well, which seems to confirm that the trip took place in June of 2009. The Brown name is also repeated again.

The plot thickens from this point. We're obviously dealing with a fan of poetry here.

About halfway through the book, I found a transcription of Amy Lowell's "The Taxi". Lowell is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet whom broke against traditional expectations of women during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century. Her works are wrought with love and fiery passion. As evidenced by the poem itself, it speaks to leaving behind a loved one and how much it can hurt the soul. Based upon the handwriting, we can tell that the transcriber was a woman. The neat vertical strokes indicate the writer was logical and a thinker. The shortness of the letters reflects a person whom is introspective and shy. Being that it was printed and not written in cursive, we know the writer has a tendency to be patient, but also versatile.

But we're not done yet.

Towards the end of the book, one final poem was found.

The final poem is "I Carry Your Heart With Me" by E.E. Cummings. Known by readers of poetry the world over, Cummings is considered a champion of Twentieth Century literature. His works are known far and wide. This poem is famous for being used at weddings -- which makes sense considering the content. Read it for yourself and see. If you were to look love poem up in a dictionary, you may just see "I Carry Your Heart With Me". Obviously, our transcriber Brown is in deep love with someone, though we know not who.

I almost resigned myself to never knowing the end of the story, until I flipped the previous poem over. On the back, encircled in a heart, was the name Gregory Brown.

Ah-hah! So the target of our love is Gregory Brown. We know our traveler was also a Brown, so it must have been Gregory's wife! Alas, her name is lost to time.

I'm inclined to believe that Gregory Brown is from Vancouver, British Columbia. His wife took a trip away from him, but surely experienced much heartache in doing so. For someone to write such sweet, passionate musings and carry them in their book as a reminder, that bond must have been very strong. Why did Mrs. Brown travel to Calgary? Did she come back? Much less, how did this book wind up in North Carolina? That's quite a journey from Canada to here.

I'm always thankful to find a piece of the previous owner in a used book. It tells me that the book I'm taking home had a life before me. These little pieces tell a bigger story, one that you and I are now a part of.

Gregory Brown, if you're out there... you're a lucky man. I hope your love with this mysterious woman has only grown stronger with time.