ode to the travel poems

an Ode to the Travel Narrative poems

Up & Down

the West Coast

One & Two

San Francisco

After Glow

Blinking Words

the No Lesson, Lesson

Fear

Your 2 Syllable Name

the Groove

Cat's Eye

Mystery

Undone

Bonneville 900

Kinetic Energy

Push Pay

Accept Not

Jack and Jesus

High treason my thoughts and inactions

towards the sell out best for this price

earn more than you’re paid they say

that this is what is best for the business and business

is a person so do unto others amiright-

when did we agree that this is a good citizen

duty to society, apathetic dulling tv radio phone

numbing is society. How can you have a genuine personality

when they’ve told you exactly how to behave

and you listen, because, well, there is no reason

not to except

I just don’t want to

all my heroes die young

like on the road beat bopping and drunk flap reckless

then left out in the cold, frozen solid

starting out as an ouroboros

but kept munching and couldn’t get sober, so

the circle kept getting smaller until dead at 47

47! You ain’t even half way man

is it suicide or cannibalism when you eat yourself alive?

but my hero, fatal flawed and im-m-m-mperfect

because we learn while learning in on the edge

sinking down or getting high

and I’m in between both Jesus Christ and the devilish Jack

both dead, both died, both alive

in books, in holy writs

in the reflections of my face when I look

at the mirror seeing myself for like the first time

I swear I think like this every time I have

black coffee or black lungs but I feel healthy

like how the road to heaven looks the same

as the road to hell, so how could you tell?

If they're the same then I must've been deceived, I guess

it all boils down to honesty ::::::::: is that lame?

It’s cold, in this building

i only ever look outside

feeling trapped. Like a monster

in a cage i feel not

contained, but

I’m suffocating-

is this growing up?

Is this how people spend

their lives waning

away in front of a magical box

every single day?

My God, fuck

I can’t,

I’ve got to

find another way

out to make money

but still

understand that I am

an animal yet more

or less in need

of space to roam

and wrestle in

the struggle.

Looking at the new

moon and thinking

“have we met?”

i see you in different lights-

flip you over

in my mind i roll my tongue

over your name

practicing it as a thing

foreign, sacred

Precious as a petal

fallen from the stem of our time

(all time, i suppose, too) brief

and i want to take it all in

for myself

I want to ask you so many questions.

I want to hear you speak every word

I want to see you silhouetted

as a shape, then

I want to see you in vivid sun

shine on every freckle

every blemish

i’m not done, with your skin

I want to feel when you’re cold

I tell myself not to lose

my romanticism with love, with poetry- is it scary

growing old? If I am lucky, then I am

a quarter way through. Already I’m older

than some of these evergreen trees,

though they are taller and deeper

see how much I still have left to learn? Still,

I have gone higher still, deeper still, still

I have something to add. Mystery

enabling comedy and tragedy- there’s a story

about loneliness and friendship, God and nothing, earth

and me- isn’t it all connected?

I’m not sure how I came to see things this way

but now I can’t look away.

Thought after thought after thought,

are you looking for some magic?

There is some leftover in the tray

more in the night sky.

Imagine that

you woke up right now

what would your first thought be?

Perhaps ‘what’ will do,

if a word is needed

then something fantastic

like ego eyes

or a melody

or the sum cycle of a 24 hour house fly.

I’m just searching for your attention,

any little thing will do.

As I was driving the rain

seemed relentless

and I was afraid

but mesmerized too

by the colors reflecting off the concrete.

I wonder, sometimes

I can’t stop. My mind

behaves like swirling air

pulling at you, pulling at me

getting written down.

[the groove]

consists in the advance and retreat

dance like - like lighting like metaphors

grasping but not exactly capturing exactly

what I’m talking about

Pop and shake your way into my mind like the tip-tap-bop

sounds of a dance, you’re an onomatopoeia, I swear

you reverberate my thoughts like sound waves

like last night I repeated your name as two syllables-two notes

and I'm walking a hundred miles every moonlit hour

I just can’t get over your mind

Darling, do you know that people crumble all the time?

as I’m sure you must have but look at yourself now

and imagine from my eyes; I’ll expound again,

you’re like a word on a page that I can’t give a definition to

but I say aloud again and again

and again stumble out open into the wild world listening now

shaping my lips in different forms and testing it to your lips

I’m humming, you’re humming, these are sounds we don’t hear

but we sense nonetheless, resonance is noise

we feel in our bodies.

Fall must be the most kinetic of seasons, what a time to meet you

what a time to get your name stuck on my tongue

what a time to surprise myself, I repeat myself

often because my groove is a sporadic rhythm

and I’m confessing every dog gone thought to you

as if this is some confessional, I just want to hear your words

because they fill my mind each unique and ineffable in reality

like the gods of a pantheon, then you're the muse

beyond begging the question, but what else can I say

I have so many questions still left to ask

He roared screaming down the silver road with his heels

fast up over the handlebars kicking wild

and that wide child smile looking ahead off further than the setting sun-

We had that caged city feeling again, so we went off again

to the surrounding islands and the great primordial peninsula of Washington

never tamed and we flung against it all sanctifying our cloggy souls

with asphalt and rubber and the forest all around reminding ourselves that it

ain’t for the future the way we living.

Back then he and I did not not believe, but felt propelled nonetheless

simply by ourselves. It was ever West

no matter which way we were headed, every direction onward;

and things will change, we’ve already learn't that lesson

so right on, write on, ride on

don’t hang back on account of any flap, Jack’s On the Road

listening to the beat, we’re learning the rhythm

proving there’s more out there of every sort of thing holy and profane

and both the same, mementoes of change, teaching our humble hungry minds

how to drive.

a Brisk Fall Walk

I’m afraid you think I talk to everyone the way I talk to you. I’m afraid that just because I know the problem, I don’t know the answer. I’m afraid it’s all just a game and I’m just a human. I’m afraid there’s no point, but it’s still a big object (this is just the way I feel). I’m afraid I’m too sensitive and already feeling sore. I’m afraid you don’t think I’m taking this seriously. I’m afraid I’m taking this way too seriously.

3 feet off the ground swinging side to side

like a careless sleepy child the sun warms

my stomach and though my eyes are closed

patches of light still break through

my eyelids like goblins and lizards

imagined in my mind -real even if

never seen - usually i am ready to run

but today i will stay, still and low

hanging in my hammock. There is no

point to this other than to say

enjoy everything for what it is.

Don’t fill in the gaps of my meaning just allow all these words to populate your brain while your eyes flash by and forget it all the next one Day. Afternoon. Evening. Night. BLACK. mourning. still. joy. all. joy. here.

you-and-me is. you-and-you is. me-and-me wind. breezes. soft. like.

butterflies-and-me breathe. Expand. breath. again. deeper. more (there’s pride) “can you hold something with an open palm?” yes. that. butterfly. in. my-mind flies. I-wonder. where. it. goes. when. I-stop eyes. LIGHT and go about your day.

Drop down menu on the airplane gives an impression of a ‘choose your own adventure’ but I know better, these things come and go on the weekend flow and the best I can do is try my best to remember snippets like these pictures, as if we’re pithy disasters, don’t take it all in just sip on the nectar. Everyone/everywhere is so damn similar unless you crack open the second layer then check it out, what a wonder you and I - I ain’t a pretender I won’t recall the names of the dives or cafes because those don’t really matter, but your name and your face I will.

I was high tide about time for another storyline, feeling myself all new and fresh in a dead ass tourist trap Greek dream i-land // the baptismal mocks the Ocean. I came out of my lover, Salt-Water, forever the first born Sun call me Adam. I turned around on the shoreline towards my dark blue horizon, I’ll call you Eve (oh baby, I know you’re the entire Ocean). I twist my legs up through your swirling waves, surfing on your surface bare skin babe, twirling and dancing, I don’t mind if you crash into me // later you pick a forbidden fruit and say “eat”, I reply, of course, I ain’t ashamed and hell no I ain’t afraid. God prophesied the two shall become one so

look at me solo now Yang blazing towards Aporia, I’m swimming, do you like the way my hands press down into the water and into your flesh?

I’m Yin now, all wet, receiving your actions spiraling with pain and pleasure because I’ve never had it like this [One], I’ll suffer all, your rule, gimme another bite, let me suck the juice outta that pit ~ desire desire, dance upon me Kali for it is thy pleasure, but this is my scene too, so moving well in time we are One & Two & One & Two…

(but humble humble, Ego be humble. Beginners Mind which I did not conceive, I allow you to give birth inside of me)

It always happens the first time leaving a place when it hangs on around longer than I want

and clutches at me as I tear away.

Nostalgia ain’t a feeling, it’s a substance

a little bit and I see something new and positive and get all appreciative all over; overdone though and it’a damn hangover leaving ya in a fuzz phased out like you’re walking around with cataracts in your eyes and sore for weeks on end

I just woke and looking out the window to the trees below not looking like Evergreens, Ponderosa probably. I'm half way home, Shasta area I imagine.

What a song

my heart beats

with your body

while the night

displays the moon

the day the

clouds for moments

---

now we walk

and kiss and

I think you

sing so lovely