S.O.S. – Dream Babies

Smokes on a Sunday

S.O.S.

My grandfather’s dreams, medicine and poetry, I realize, are also mine

Oh, I’m getting closer

Remnants of cherry tobacco in the air from somewhere brings me straight to his porch swing by the lake where the cormorants sing me to sleep

He read his paper & puffed

My weighted eyelids lift every so often and just look at him and the lake

Love of my life

My peace

Shelter, shelter

House my home

House my heart

House my dream

Never tear us apart

But he leaves eventually

We all do

I grieved two years later in a hammock by the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica

Same thing, same place, only different and the mist was a Marlborough

The hammock brought me to you, to me, to us, our times our songs

You were the only solace this world has granted me

Flash forward and you and me, yeah, you! My mate. We’re at odds constantly and the strange thing about it is you get me, I get you, more than anyone else ever has

So what’s it going to be?

Grandfather never wanted this strife for me

So I spring to my feet, my typical response, I’m running fast and hard

Faster, harder, beat that street

But now I am winded and exhausted

Everyone is watching me pant my breath away

Their stories get louder

Off she goes

Living another dream

In Defuniak Springs

Podunk town

Drama Free

Dharma Dreams

There’s cherry tobacco and a lake there, cormorants

Can’t see the David Byrne concert from there

But maybe in Alabama

Alabama, Alabama

Alabaster, Alabastard

And another tirade

Can’t ever get it straight

Are we coming or going?

Are we dangerous or desperate?

Or one in the same?

Definitely one in the same

Shit.

Guess I am not so weird now

I already silenced myself several times before

Silence now, because what words even matter anymore

None. Defunct. Dysfuntional. Defuniaked. Desolate.

That town is desolate and now so are we.

Dried up. Done. California Raisins.

Everything is cyclical and strange, really

All these stories, stories from everywhere

“….and it had a hemi”

Everything a story

Bringing me back to the here and now, home, where I was almost vaporized by the sun while running down the longest sidewalk in the world

Ugh, not my favorite place, definitely not my lake

The dirty bay stinks

A million dollar odor

Sure to please and suffocate

You get what you Bayshore*, er, I mean get what you pay for

Green wafting smoke signal, a message in the air

That their caviar dreams wreak of algae and pseudomonas

There’s no seabirds singing over here

It’s dead and it’s drafty and the green smell is again wafting and now more than ever, I want out of here

But I don’t know where, I really am scared this time

I’m terrified of you

I’ll never come back to you, I’m done

I never felt so complete again and scared in my life now

Safe and bored and teeming with anxiety at every turn

S.O.S.!

Foxwise grandfather star

Beam me out and into a beautiful realm

Where words aren’t scalpels and projections shouted at self reflection

Bring me out of the stink and into pink and orange sunsets. sky on fire

Back to the hammock near the Pacific

The mighty cold Pacific that already brought me to my knees

at least that abuse of power I understand

Bring me to her, Costa Rican Pacific, I’ll cry in her rainforest, comb my hair with a cyanide centipede, for protection, like a Howler monkey

Set me free

and hurry up!

*Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, FL hosts the longest sidewalk in the world.