Mind Tavern

Drops of Juno descend as rain, Invisible strings disappearing in veins, I slip, like a doltish fly on glass, Into the mane of a headless horse. For Elise, I shall cast a Jazz stupor, Condemn the Plague with the Holocaust, And when the Last Supper comes to call, Stab your brother for the Roman fall. Paper soldiers and exiled archers Mount their aim on creased swans, The dark cardboard chains you to the oppressor’s cause, A moment of moonshine, an eternity of religion. These little pigs donning a red hood, Hide their porridge in a giant bean stalk, Hurry! Throw that poisonous apple At the big crooked wolf. Adjourn from your weeping under the Christmas tree, And stare at the forlorn mime’s craze, A teaspoon of claps, a slapstick of screams, A shoebox diorama of scattered scenes. 

It's dark and you're late, Fright and disgust quicken your step, Skillfully dodging me and the heap of filth, That you find so hard to distinguish. Not unlike you, I was taught of four walls and a roof, Never saw a home or humanity, Something tells me you haven't too. I see the brushes and pencils in your stares, Do not exaggerate the shading, to show me in proper light Because I will only see your sketched illustrations in shop windows, My episodic suffering stands as a luminous spot on an obscure zebra crossing Between your art and my reality. Some scavenged bread to please the stomach, How the fire hides my shivering breath In the small can of water, Reverberating my frozen smile between floating leaves. Licking the cut in my thumb, Awfully metallic it purrs, I chuckle at his frizzy fur He looks beyond my shaggy beard And acknowledges an existence, not different from his own. He points at the holes in my glove, Is there room for another? I w...

One at a time, You surmount those numerous dents and shoddy patches, With tear-stained digits, you turn the wrench on a disfigured bolt Hiding in this secluded garage To repair what you cannot do without Leaking vulnerability as you knit along your split. Your sight refracts in prisms Raining a cataclysm of colors in snow globes, The mundane wallpaper pulls you through the rib cage, And the bricks absorb you in their gaps, Burying your fading essence in termite cartons. Cruising down the paved asphalt You hold out your hat To catch fireflies, dandelions, and shards, Would you be so sharp if you weren’t broken? You prefer solid black against the setting sun Because there are features to hide, The hanging receiver oscillates with a beep Carefully tuned to be out of reach You watch over your brethren, between sleep and awake, Polishing a trophy you never had. There’s an endless freefall in you, Trudging under the chandelier of distant ...

"A drizzle I cannot see," said the hunched weatherman shrugging his drenched shoulders. A wrong forecast in his closed umbrella, strangely dry in his coat. A shove pushedhim into the narrow thoroughfare. He silently proclaimed his innocence to the dozens of inconvenienced pedestrians that do not know of him. But in an inexplicable way, their grievances took the shape of a protruding lump of cement, upon which his feet abruptly halted. In a forward descent, he rotated half a circle and smacked the pavement. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth as his extremities were channeling pain to his brain that it successfully acknowledged in one syllable, "Ah!" A neon gleam carefully incised into him, picking out parts that it could not seduce with its light and placing them on his pupil. He was a man and even a seasoned child, but looking up at the sky, at those ominous clouds, he searched for a space of clarity. When we found an unclaimed edge, he painted it a shad...

Bent over the windowsill, at anchor point I look below at an injured gargoyle Ravaging through the litter, Symbiotic parasites miserably feeding off his flesh, Ironically macabre in sight. I hear the last train, sleepily calling in the distance, I wonder about the last passenger, Deceived from the company of absolute strangers, The nippy night seem to trick his counting of posts Between the only two stations He bothers to be on a first name basis with. Greasy overalls drape the rail yard worker, And lying on his side in the abandoned coach Over the scent of some beloved's pillow, He stares at the last retreating pedestrians of the day With a twinkle in his eye. Sometimes, there's a rustle in the attic, When a bat dives from a high rise To shelter in a crouch near the oval window, Knocking at the moldy glass, For a sonar exchange, existing without feeling. These evenings freeze in an orange daze, Numb hands steering a stationary projectile, Ever so su...

Scornfully resting in the bowel of a brown box Truncating remnants of a dusty form, These cobwebs elegantly outline inconsistencies In the slanting warmth of ticking chimes. A closet is not a makeshift bed, A blanket is not a looking glass, Yet counting up to an ever changing ceiling Until solitude is unbecoming. In the winter of the great recession, Her arm fell asleep, Wisps of frail affection and decreasing reach, A frigid soup of her delicate screech, Landing perfectly on a superstitious twitch. I walked every day to her, Sometimes close to the ground, sometimes further up, Avoiding the patches of sun, but not the puddles left by rain, And to scratch the rhymes of her forlorn evenings, In the blank lamps of denuded carriages. The fancy towards madness is a momentary delusion, An attire for special occasions, For a tongue appreciates a blade of blueberry, Stations away from monotonous morality's clutches. Would you lay out...

These glances make acquaintances, subtle and momentous. Of all places, you chose a drenched park bench to seek warmth. There's a buffer between us, a small inclined field of human absence where our coffee cups touch. They have our names in grandiose misspelling. A penny for your name? Another evening, I'm on the opposite side of the road. The street light sneaks through the crowd and falls on your trembling arm. Those lifeless fingers so catastrophically puppeteered on ivory, to cast a defunct melody, reverberating from tinted windows upon my ear. I'm reduced to a standstill and you recede in perpetuity. A penny for your voice? A vision for it's difficult to differentiate from dreams. The bed leaves a small clearance from the wall. Your silhouette, looks down this finite chasm and the darkness fails to hide those strained veins in your eyes. They drip all that was unspoken into that narrow space. The wall is so cold and aloof as it touches your cheek. A whirlwind d...

I spy through a misty perspective, Whilst battling a musty hotel room With a silent cough and an evening breeze Setback by a trifling window mechanism. Clouds huddled in the sky, Like schoolers, clad in gray uniform, Around the pot-bellied headmaster, Listening and mocking his village folklore. Calm waters rested in blue, Neatly wrapped in  a blanket of currents, That seemed like looping scribblings, From a child's painting. Moored boats tugged slowly At the anchor, wallowing in soft mud, Seeking permission to sail for the horizon, Only to be yanked to the bank. Nature seemed to borrow from Tagore's tales, And lacking a Kraken, released a tolerable fish stench, A return call for diving fishermen, And an incense for their evening prayers. The sun decides for a long swim, Takes light beneath the surface, The trees mourn with a swaying routine, They yearn for those distant lands. A candle, a bulb, and a narrow dwelling, A bowl of rice and freshly ca...