Dragon Leaves

ALL THE PRIDE WITHOUT THE FALL

[dragon-leaves]

Liminal Praise

Back when I drank myself to an all time low I’d crossed oceans for the potion. I had lost my home I was a ghost in a desert where the sand was snow The pressure was unmeasured but my heart still gold 

Beat like victims of a system with protruding bones Beat like dark skin oozing red blood coating torn up clothes Beat like madmen talking languages that no one knows I was driving into black holes on celestial roads

But then I smoked something much greener than the other side I passed it on the left side whether rolled or piped And I left behind my shot glass on the melting ice I breathed a smoke-cloud-zebra, yeah I earned my stripes 

Seeing pastel, feeling astral, philosophical, wise Teleporting through mandalas, I was seeing signs End times into bed times into open skies I was free as seas as the tribal echoing cries

Into open ended nonsense, into moonlight days Into dreamworlds, and occasionally paranoid craze But the laughter came much faster than the saccharine laze If I breathed in and believed then I was endless, raised

As the silence turned to music, I laid a mat, prayed Allah felt fit to find me in my malachite maze That’s when I wrote to you of whispers wafting on the glaze Angelic tongues left layers of liquid, liminal praise.

[dragon-leaves]

She Said to the Nomad King

She said, “Sing me something sad You nomad dressed too decorous I’ve caught you staring at the sepia of memories smoked and gone” She said, “Move me with your miracles To me, you’re not so dangerous Your pipe looks black and ashen but I know your heart too well”

I said, “Tame me then you temptress if you think I’m so damn weaponless My mind is clean and green inside and I’d kill to know my end”

I said, “I’ll sing you something sad I am a king suppressed, dimensionless I am sharper than a scimitar But I’m boxed inside these spies”

She said, “Humor me, Your Majesty I know who you were meant to be I’ve found you in your throne room this shabby town beneath the sun”

She said, “I’ll sing you something real I am your sheath, I cure your recklessness Our love will be expressionless Our war we’ll fight in time”

“I’ll clean you up, incredulous of your wandering doom, your fear of us your servants lost and vacant waiting for your cause to call their own”

“The prophecy says so modestly you will shine, refined, uncommonly and lead us past the past parting seas with just a pen”

“Through endless nights I’ll smuggle you beyond the things we’ll struggle to But tonight help me take off this dress Tomorrow we’ll take the sun”

I’d spent years and years directionless Yet in her eyes a compass crept In her caress I dreamt a dream of dragon leaves and death

I decided then I’d follow her But she followed me as I left the steppe And was crowned above a battlefield Where she said I was the One.

[dragon-leaves]

Ether Star

Relax.

I’ll take you to a planet called Etherstar Be ready by death, we’ll float so far that the sun and its rubble become liminal scars like cataracts in the eyes of God.

[dragon-leaves]

The Fool Reclines

I have questions in my conscience doubt and strain and heavy rain

I have a new day dawning but no flowers to tempt the sun

I have an opaque sense of longing for a home I lost last hurricane

I have the red and cloudy eyes of strongest green and scent of rum

 I know that she belongs beside the solid me I dream of

I know she knows I know I can be so much more than death

An addict to the thought-stream of my past pain’s paranoia

I meditate. I levitate. I medicate through breath.

 Honestly, I want this promised honeymoon catharsis

Honestly, my honesty is some horse shit on the road

I’ve never been a human who follows through with plans or promises

But I’ll prove myself through comedy I’ll clean up all my honesty

I’ll stay the course, so follow me My mind’s mad miracles make me fun.

[dragon-leaves]

Ashes for the Wind

Questions lifted from the ashes of the boy still wondering where his home went when the hurricane pill-pile heaved pride upon his sick mind and made his lunacy pave the portrait of the polygon pastor reading sermon after sermon to the brain-dead congregation singing on the quicksand like a breeze that points the way to greatness  to opalescent reincarnation a certain sort of answer from the ancestors raining water for the daughter of the dragon-fire and laughter that burned the boy who smiled in his soul ashes still wondering where his home went as the wind scattered him mad forever.

[dragon-leaves]

Be careful what you call me, Captain. Only three of my ten wives know me as Juan Valdez.

Dragon-Leaves

[dragon-leaves]

The Shade

The tall tree grows The shrub in its shadow Is plucked from its marrow The slightest of sounds

And wish as i may And wish as I might The moon in his day The sun in her night

Are yellow as hay Then black as burnt sorrow The time that we’ve borrowed The debt must be paid

I write just a play I pay with my knowledge I pay just an homage A poisonous arrow

That flies like a sparrow Goes straight to the brain But finds just a hollow No blood there to spray

An emblem of hate The clock strikes eleven No one’s sent to heaven Yet no one has stayed

She drops a full tray Yet nothing is broken It fell in the ocean The most endless of greys

And I am the shade The bottled-up gallows The place for the shallow The smoke of the craze

[dragon-leaves]

The Paling Sun

When love was your priority  and despair was your default you spread your wings so powerfully  you flew above your doubt you gripped your wish, your make believe opened your mouth to taste the breeze beyond your fate, on purple seas surrounding you like hope  you shared your tales of brain disease how you sailed a sinking boat and I shared with you my sacred leaves and made a signal of our smoke

I said,

Your homeless rain, its pattering Your tears and faded scatterbrain will trail off as we shout the names of angels battling our insomnia, our harrowing the demons and their pallid king the knives and razors straddling our wrists and all their shallow veins all the strain of the devout the blindness and unkindness We’ll ignore it.  Mellow Out.

And if the day comes when you wear the dress I gave you at my death Remember me still sparkling Remember me in health Even now, there’s something rattling Something I must confess,  Our kiss on manic Everest… The time that we were borrowing… I would have died for less

And if your dreams die as you follow me I’ll wrap and save their bones We’ll throw them in the fallowing They’ll grow like seeds to hallowed green We’ll smoke until we’re wallowing In secret, sacred tomes In fantasies and poetry In dreams of endless Halloween In open fields of bronze Where we’ll lay like broken songs Where we’ll watch the falling bombs The noise then silence following The ghosts that pale the sun

[dragon-leaves]

Half Angel

I was born with one wing And as I tread the steep mountain paths I was afraid to fall

But as I outgrew and abandoned my childish trickery  I’d coated myself with for warmth and my childish cleverness a tightrope walker’s pole I’d used to keep my balance on the snowy cliffs, I gained Knowledge.

Knowledge of the Heart To save the unbalanced children with two wings, but who had not yet learned to fly

Knowledge of Books taught by the old ones So I could have blueprints and maps of earth, sky, and stars the bodies of man and beast and all above or beneath or in between that I would defeat any in a test of wit and prove myself capable and malleable in the eyes of the wise

And finally, as I mourned my groundedness and saw my brothers take off to the clouds I raised my head and tasted my courage

I began to pray...

And as I did, my vision flashed as though lightning had corrected me And I saw many demons jesting and pointing and cursing at me nearby They filled my thoughts with violence, which I was forced to enjoy They filled my heart with weak hate that damaged my mind and friendships They laughed that I could not fly as an angel with wings of gold They laughed that I could not fly as a demon with wings of violet and velvet

But that day I gained Spiritual Knowledge I searched the caves for scrolls and stepped out to face the dark The snow melted beneath my feet and a wall of flame blasted from me in a field and swallowed those fools who had tried to possess me 

I begged of God Please, give me flight. I am ready for my wing. Give me flight and I will teach to all the world what it means to be half-angel I will show them what only a crippled light can show...

A balancing act and a searching for the way through shadows heavy and rocks as sharp as glass

It was never for me that I deserved to fly But for the willingness to stay on the earth for as long as I was needed to heal the sick and grow magical plants and ivies that would make the steep paths soft as smoke for the feet of those with no wings at all.

[dragon-leaves]

Ready For The Road

Slippin’ down the highway Smokin’ somethin’ sideways Countin’ down the last days Badder than the liquor on the way down the driveway

My glock turned the sky grey Hear the thunder then they start to pray One wish is all you get In this life you have to bet On the horse in the rat race.

[dragon-leaves]

Honor

I watch her dance as only a man can with all the presumptuous flirtation of a nearing storm

But I read carefully a woman’s soul before her sway and never underestimate the threat of her breathy sighs

I keep a compass pointing towards wars and worries steady in my chest to keep me alert in the wilderness of attraction ... I’m not kind. I’m not clever. Merely taking note that she is free in ways I will never be commanding a fluid, sultry ease that captivates that keeps me facing forward but her prison of beauty’s trappings and fears is no less real or painful.

I look past her gentle exterior at the rage suppressed at the crazed interest of one caged for years unending. ... “Will you keep me safe tonight?” “Yes but I can promise no more. I’ll be sleeping on the floor. The bed is yours. I’ll watch the doors. I’ll cook you breakfast in the morning.”

No lies. She cries. And I realize. Less is more When you’re giving what wasn’t asked for...

[dragon-leaves]

Shark

I sleep through most journeys submerged and carried downstream My churning, squirming brain numb from years of pill-pop pretending keeps me dazedly wading in a smile

The landscape may be radiantly exposed but my mind is hiding the sharks beneath my surface deeper, deeper and deeper still where there is no sun to saturate the experience my unconscious depths absorbing sight  no love to cleanse from my eyes as I watch mountains morph on this ocean floor

Every scenic celebration a battlefield flooded red I smell the blood from miles away In every man potential war In every woman’s smile a potent hypnosis

To fight the encroaching delirium I swim and swim Knowing one day I’ll be too tired to come up for air.

One more bimonthly injection eases but doesn’t erase The sharks

Who knows the difference between their searching and sleeping? Their primordial schedules and their hunting smiles so sharp

Well, I have no eyelids either at half-past three Nothing to prove yet so much to prove A shallowness born from the bubbles and a savagery well camouflaged by the blur of submersion  decorate my demeanor drown my conscience My oceans swallow my flesh. At times like these, I almost admit to myself: All I know is this permanent exhaustion  coloring my travels a monotonous blue All I hear is my sunken internal monologue slow and sad like a wet-rotting of the mind as I sink beneath the flotsam truth.

[dragon-leaves]

Nice Night (a song)

Step into my winery See the finery, The highest weed “Smoke that and get high as me,” The choir sings, wind rides the trees Death piles the leaves, waves high at me I smile at him, he smiles at me I count down to the time when I’ll be just like the leaves

It was a nice night We sip and sink into the night sky You could have told me it’s a goddamn lie, “I try.”

It was a nice night We ride the highway to the night sky You could have smoked that and get goddamn high “I try.”

It was my choice, right? I brought a knife into a gun fight. I slice him straight up through the wind pipe And now I’m so sure that now he’s no more

Wait, what? He was a figment of imagination A hallucination A mirror pulling graviation A mistake in my calibration But what is all this for? I thought I liked life. Guess that was just the drugs... I hear my soul cry I hear my soul sigh Tired of the gold mine Cut the fuckin’ phone lines

And count down till the leaves I count down till I leave.

It was a nice night...

[dragon-leaves]

Run out of papers? Smoke a Bible.

Dragon-Leaves

[dragon-leaves]

Kakarot Glow

Sicker than a madhead in the pouring rain Shell down the corner, is a cold steel rain Smoke like a stampede, we for sure insane Yeah, I could never ever outgrow this pain

But I could learn to love this easy life I could kill the villains with my psychic brain Mental martial arts, is a neuron knife Slice through the ether like a cold breeze crane

Sell me a soul String me a bow Kill me a crow The ending you know Is a long time comin’ Is a ready set go Is a short time runnin’ Is a bend in the road

and a long spliff puffin’ Is a steady pull, blow Charge it past one hundred Is dat Kakarot Glow!

Is a... Is a...

[dragon-leaves]

We stood beside the sea and made the waves roll backwards in fear.

Dragon-Leaves

[dragon-leaves]

Dementia

Her tears decorate her fragility like windchimes mourning in minor key translating an omniscient breeze: “So this is how they’ve cursed me.”

Regrets soak her dress. Distressed, I reach out across her salted sea And choose a wisdom from my gallery, “This is the way it was meant to be. We’ve had our happily ever after.”

Her response came doused in misery: “I first grasped it on that poignant eve… when we lay beneath the tamarind tree and caressed each other’s make-believe Long before my dreams were memories When you always had the answer. Even now, I see him in your eyes that child who flies through cloudless blue who knows no inner enemy forever reaching for the moon…   

No cure in all your empathy You have never known this misery. Your heart still beats with destiny. You have no shadow. Not like me. I’ll ask you once,” she says to me. “Will you stay with me without the keys to the bars between our melodies? Even if I lose identity? My will to live? Our history? When all you’ve known is fair and free How could you want to stay?”

Her cage has shrunk so rapidly Her bravery a parody “Please make your choice with honesty I could make this death much faster.”

I hold her hands, her symmetry. I made my choice last century. “No freedom without love, you see.” That is my final answer.