The Drought of ’22

The body of missing teen found plastered over headlines
Barely mentioned, the lake and its 500 year low waterline

A society that buries itself in fantasy buying virtual land
Will eventually realize that our bodies cannot drink sand

Prosopagnosia

Night and day’s tied faces to the plainly hidden
Double helical wrapped Christmas morning gifts
Opened up like halos when street lamps kick in

The Antihero

I am the undrank cheer
and the spilled champagne
Of the New Year’s promises
that wind up supine, dead

My Town

I’m an erect middle finger to the puppeteer
In valleys full of folks sick of California
Doing their damnedest to make California here

Re: Redrum

A carnival of meats
Creaky carousels of subjugation
of the tortured and sentient
Wide eyed and scared
Naked and bleeding
Braised and bruised
Animal corpses splayed
On dinner plates

Solvitur Ambulando

This is my journey
To this goddamn place
I pace just behind the edge
Or at least what’s left of me
This, my purgatory
My paradox
My gathering
My reckoning

Men At Work

Curse the tailors
For theirs are the blindfolds and the mask of truth
Curse the steelworkers
For theirs are the bullets and barbwire

Honeycomb Pageantry

Her palace collapsed
Like a mini civilization
Amidst flapping wings
undulating in perfect pitch
along a downward,
spiralling trajectory
and a fusillade of rifle shots