Notes from the Stairs

And I said, damn goose..
Pitter patter, you better get at er or your hopes and dream will shatter
And not because I don't think you matter but because what you did to me was a disaster
And the goose replied.. but master, no one told me you couldn't hold on too tight while being a slight to humanities cognitive delight
Ah master said. It is but a delight to welcome you into the night, forever you will drift till endless time remembers not your disasters but your greatest chapters

My bed
It calls and calls
But I haste not
For bed is dead
As haste is waste
When doom scrolling is best
At keeping you blessed
For an algorithm feed
To keep you read and fed
For your mind to be led here and there
But everywhere you cannot be
Only somewhere
And that somewhere is not just anywhere
But right there, not in bed you unread deadhead

There once was a spark
That ignited our marks
Marks on wood and marks on stone
But stone is no more and the wood was
With PFAS and with micro plastics
We poison our now and we poison our future
Taking for granted we shouldn't use granite
Because we build to sell and not to last
For to endure is to spark
A fire to build
Civilization back to granite and of lumber
Sawn from our mountains
Grown from our streams
Not from factories of poison
But the cycles of life

I weep and weep
For once we kept a light
Burning in our hearts
And in our minds
Channeled through our hands
Forging our present and our future
Whether we lived or died into the future
Mattered not
For those after us
Would take the torch and burn the light
Of stone and of wood
We built the blocks
Of civilization
To last and to endure
But alas
We build to melt and to destroy
A cycle of chaos and of malice
Toward not just the structure around but the structure within
Our souls and our beings cry out but the interpreter has been lost
Not even lost, murdered, killed in broad daylight
By our own ambitions
And by our own desires

We lament the loss
Of lovers and makers
Of makers of love
Of the womb of civilization
And we spiral down and down
Hoping for a light
At the end of a tunnel without an end in sight
But we reach a bottom to the pit
We despair there until we gasp for air
So we climb the stairs
We refused to see that our forebears put there
But we toil and we climb
We stumble and we whine
Until we see the brightness
Rebirth at last, out of the darkness

Trees and holly
But I want weed and jolly
Mix a little saint nick with a little ms Jane
No not Molly
I don't want that kind of trip
Just a trip to the store
That isn't illegal anymore
Where we browse and ponder
What to do with our hard earned dollar
We holler and holler for the store's man of the hour
But he's baking in back
And took a snack
Of his own stash
And now he's out
For the day and we've made haste
To be out of sight
And now out of my mind
More than a taste and no waste
Still a dollar for tomorrow's race

Boxes and boxes
Clutter upon clutter
We fill our homes
We fill our minds
With that which does not matter and pays us no mind
But we keep it close and we keep it tight
For someday it might even see the light
But that someday becomes never a day
And one day we die
And we leave it all to someone else
To ponder and ponder
If they too should keep that which costs them mind and cost them space

I went to mars just to spit some bars
But they sent me back to driving cars
Because I crashed a bus on the boulevard
And they didn't think twice to give me a device
That haunts my life and chains my limbs
But freedom to walk is really freedom to die
For only the interstate gets us by
Where we step is where we stumble
Into the gutter
Because engineering pays us no mind
And planners pay us no heed
So we hope for tomorrow
But die today
Flowers will wilt and crosses wash away
Another death but never a change
Because to blame only the innocent is to further the pain

I shook the box
Not a rattle not a sound
We wouldn't eat tonight, not even a mound of flour can make a meal
A little Veal would be real swell
But we ain't got a dime and even though we got time
No one else has a penny or a dime
Till the banks unfold and the market unravels, we'll sit here and bide our time
But oh, a dust storm behind the vine, a wilting old vine
Locusts swarm and women mourn, the loss of money and wine
They do not whine, rather they weep, for they could not keep that which they had
For the banks closed and kept their Dad's money under lock and key
And lost the key, then we lost the farm
The storm of Biblical material, even literal - wrecked our lives and wrecked our wives
Some lives stayed alive but many were dead, mostly inside

It was winter on the docks
I was dressed without socks
We landed almost on rocks
But we landed safe and we landed well, even a little off our clocks
The time changed and the land changed too
It was American the beautiful, but deadly and cold that night
We made quick flight to the nearest inn light
Barely a dime to give
But we would work in the mines, toil on company time
Make our best rhymes toiling in the vines
Lines and lines of freight rolled by
Like sand it flowed from coast to coast
A river of lines
Connecting our lives, connecting our mines, connecting our vines
Built by many, starting on the docks with just a few dimes

I wander streets not of gold
But of asphalt
Paved to the future, bold and bright
But faded, literal and figurative
Into patchwork of old
Crumble to the touch
Outlasting not a bunch of old brick and old stone
But here I sit
On a bench never to lay
For we hide our burdens
And shutter our demons
Save face and make haste
To lessen our pace of eventual debase
But alas
We keep the new that does not outcast the old
So it crumbles and falls in without bold, only whimper and as we try to recompose

It sure does bite
When the light just
Ain't quite right
But I sit here in spite
Of how bright and blue
This office light
Illuminates my lack of delight
We long for respite
And one day I will rewrite the manual on office light
And bring some insight
To let us delight in the morning lights

I delight
In this fright
Wrapped in layers of light
Beckoning for me to seek shelter
In the arms of her might
It feels so wrong, yet so right
To bask in this ghastly sight
Somehow also angelic
A bite I feel, not on my flesh but my soul within
The consummation will begin
As my spiritual layers spin
Wrapped to dim my own light
Consumed from within
By her devilish delights
Taken advantage of my lust for sin
The light turns to laughter
A cackle from the rafters
Holding up my longing for happy ever after
But it crashes down
As my derelict state rebounds into a heavenly estate
Far above this earthly state
Touching the clouds with haste
Then yanked to the depth of hell without a waste
Bewildered by the lack of light
Feeling now only the fright
No more layers, only the manic delight
Of a devil of hellish might

The parade does not endure
For all of us are sure
But most of us reassure
Ourselves that day is some distance away
Our youth is forever - our actions betray
But we neglect our eventual decay
Do not plan for the end of the day
Play as if the light never turns to night
When abruptly the curtain closes
The show is throw the roses
Our casket is dropped
Before we even had time to stop and collect
Regrets born from our childish ways
Never even considered as we did not reach our old grays

A touch of rain
Beckons my name
Falling from space

I glance at the window pain
Streaking like tears
I once had

But I turn in my bed
See a flowing gown of bright red
Smile instead

At the girl I once searched for
Now held close without a touch of sad
Ever in my head

The bell tings
My heart rings
She enters the frame
My pain leaves my veins
Loneliness swept under the rug
A little tug she gives to my shirt sleeve
Checking my fit
Telling me it's lit
So I give her a flirt, compliment her shirt
We order our drinks
Neat without a chirp
We slurp and laugh at a burp
Laugh at what a derp we used to be
Now we are buzzed like bees
Keeping a rhythm of love in our weak knees
The quiet part is said aloud, followed by an embrace of silent accord
Gaze into the eyes, of a lover maybe to a lover to be
Clasp our hands, touching our knees
So we hailed a taxi
Rolled into the back seat
Laughing with glee
The night would take us, well into a sea
Rolling with warmth, presence adorned, crowning you and me
Blurry it might be
Seeing each other for who we were meant to be

I sink as I rise
To the depths
Not of despair
But of glimmer
The higher I rise
The more I'm enveloped
The glory wraps around me
Chokes me to my last mortal breath
My eyes open, then covered
Light to darkness
Darkness back to pure light
Broken through as from thunderous clouds
A new layer
High above the rest
Finally at rest
Mortal shackles turned to glitter and specks

I saw a brick
But it was a trick
When does a brick turn into a slice of bread
Factory made for our endless ways
Cutting the costs, making the most
Bays upon bays
Of roasted clay, sliced into slivers
Soon to fall to display
Their wanton desire, never to aspire
To real brick on display

I turn over this brick
Look over at Rick
Exclaim real quick
This is going to make me sick
He narrows his eyes, glances between me and another guy
Asks if the sky is on fire
I answer with a rasp of wry
No, but I'm about to call a ceasefire
We have a key to every desire
Stack these and we'll be so desired
The other guy calls me a liar
Wonders why I changed my lines
I whisper, the corporate lines, gets me thin brick for just a dime
No matter there is no lime mortar, and this brick falls from tall stories and looks like a blunder
Rick throws his trowel and gives me a big scowl
The other guy scoffs at me, looks at the sky, shakes his head as if wondering if he should go to bed
Thinking it's a bad dream, something he could awake from
Nay we're all building from this poor clay, a shadow of what once stood longer than a few days

Walking through the hallowed ground
Shadows cast all around
Buildings gazing down upon me
Empty and without a song
Held together by care of yesteryear
I shed a tear for the jeers that kept them from fulfilling cheer
For many a dear would love their facades
To be in their rooms, inhabit the street life, call across the narrow road
Alas, tis but a fairytale, no one left to save their timeless faces from the gale of future progress

Golden hour
Sitting on the tower
Holding each other's borrowed time
Fastened by vines, reaching down to the ground
We'll be pulled without a care
Senseless and bare, the words of yesteryear
Informing the actions of here and there
Against our kind, mocked for being able to climb
Declining daylight, moving by moonlight
But now, refusing the battered calls to throw us against the walls
We'll not last till midnight, but clasp each other in final light
Red and orange, like the glow from below
The snow touched the afterglow, soon they'll take us to sow in fields of chains, separated by pain

Greedy she screams
He retorts with just a snort
She slams the door
The roar of an engine
She makes a split second decision
To go into the night
Screeching under the moonlight
Till a figure, cloaked in shadow, crossed her path, and she yelled as she passed
Not ahead, looking beside, caught a glimpse of jasper eyes
She crashed into a barricade
Airbags deployed
She levitated for only a moment
The stranger ripped her door aside
Taken from the inside, pulled to the roadside
As lithium flames lit the inside
She looked him in the eyes, pain and love mixed inside
They lifted off, into the starlight