Lord Byron on poetry

"Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."-- Lord Byron

storytelling

Once upon a time

to have been somebody's amazon warrior

been somebody's wide-eyed wild woman

have been somebody's sugar mama

have been somebody's Jackie Kerouac

been the cool side of their pillow.

Reborn in a Nashville hotel room

with the changing of the light

daylight savings

No longer naming myself,

trying to grow my face into masks

which don't quite fit.

Just sit on this cushion

and name bird noises

in the early morning

Scribble silly things in a notebook

and try not to take everything

so damn serious.

The world

needs its clowns,

its sad-eyed poets,

its piss-bottle men,

its lobotomy eyed suburb wives.

They're all lugging heavy hearts around.

On this big road

we are propelled at such high speeds

in chunks of mineral smelted and drawn

from deep inside this earth

fueled by burning hunks

of old dinosaurs

Stars of our little stories,

playing our little roles,

zipping along in metal bubbles.

We listen to voices

of those we've never met

over vast distances.

Blood of the Bag Lady

by Lawrence Ferlenghetti

"Happy he

who held those breasts

apples of bliss

blissfully hanging

once upon a time

Now she of the broken bust

stumbles across the street

looking for butts

Old bag of blood

with a history to tell

of where all that blood came from

coursing through generations of generations

all those swimming unsinkable genes

in veins and arteries of the world

sailing through rife humanity

through that beat body

A walking gene pool

teeming tide pool born of oceans

Mother of us all"

proof of love

take one series of sweet and tender kisses

add a few rolls between the sheets

minus one small shower

factor by two bowls of homemade soup

multiply by

two oxytocin

three vasopressin

one hefty dose of dopamine

divide by six moments of gnawing longing

subtract one thwarted pregnancy

multiply by the zero of unreturned calls

and what do you get?