READING POETRY IN 2K10

As your eyes skim
these Words,
skipping stones
slapping sos, likes
Drinking great gulps
of simile, Gorging
on syllables,
do you Feel
our layers of
fine-spun Filth
snugly fit
over each molar?

Set yourself on
Auto-pilot as your
legs fight to
Escape the horror
while reality Follows
pawing, kneading
neon claws in
gruesome waves
decorating every
detailed twinge, Electric
blue as a Gaudi
scale-model monument,
child-like & Petrified.

But do you even
really want to
feel? Every
ruined step? Every
blistered thought? Every
faulty circuit clumsily
tied and wired to
these wilted words,
Tumbling?

i know You,
as i,
would rather
simply
sink.

LOS CALLES DE BARCELONA

we often feel as if we
are under seige
watching waiting walking
the streets with the elderly
couples in tweed jackets
woolen sweaters
hair the color of spilt table wine
below skies of frozen smoke
still as the closed gated shops
all the same on every street
bars and bocadillos
tobacco and tapas
flowing crowds on sidewalks
abruptly plummeting in
frenzied construction but
nothing is changing
occupied buildings are still demolished in favor
of emptied lots
instead we occupy spring
paella in dirt parks surrounded by
yapping pups and laughing children upside
down hanging from boughs
and arms, loving ballast
the stars are few, but similar,
dimmed beyond our reach
pinpricks in the sky above canopies
of flapping fluttering fabric
between wrought iron railing steel
grates clinging to stories of
brick aged in centuries
salt sprinkled days pouring
through narrow alleys, darkening
tinting, mellowed,
cooled below rafters behind
quartered walls like thin hardened steps
into thick clouds
hanging palls
returning every day to
supervise shifts of control
sometimes narrowly edged out by
wind swept sun saturated streams
whose currents pull us
under painted trees,
but not glass or blood
just shade and song
fruit and beer
and tomorrow, stained