Lee Dunn

I have thought this, and hope for it too.

The old man
still dreams
of French kisses,
and stays in the curb lane.
He knows that the speeders
and the weavers
aren't the ones
who are in love.

Some sour long-nosed elf, eyes a-bulging, is stirring the pot with a long-nailed and dirty finger. With a thin-lipped and gap-toothed smile, he breathes a breathy whisper… “and so. Just so.”

In the booth across from me she sits.
I knew her from the drugstore,
when she was blonde.
Legend has it
that she was fired
because she never smiled.
I liked her, automatically,
‘cause her eyes had seen lives.
Today, she’s mystery.
With the blackest crown I have ever seen.

The ice cream truck jingle
I was ten in shorts and runners
Star streaks in my eyes
The sigh of the leaves all a-glitter
saying here- here is everything

You said but four words,
with round eyes and arc of hands,
and I love you, now.

I feel it in my heart of hearts. We're not alone. Among the untold trillions of worlds in God's wide wild universe, we can't be. To think that they can't come here, given the limitations of light speed, is provincial. We're limited by the yardstick of our own knowledge.

Fix things.
Clean a mirror.
Switch pillows.
Allow the cat into your room.
Vacuum the rug
with that perfumed powder.
Have your morning coffee outside,
if you can.
Solitude and loneliness
are not true sisters.
Be your own best company.
Keep Niagara at bay,
just for today.

On a roaming evening in a town called Twelve, the houses were all of glass. One could see, as one passed, the cold and the warm hearths, the worshippings, the pointing fingers. The quick caresses or the coldness of turned backs and folded arms. The street of shops was all dull metal, windowless with risings of sooty smoke . I heard the hiss of pavement rain, and stopped for a slowly train. On a lime-lit billboard in a field of wild rice, broad brush strokes said SEVEN, a devil’s tail pointing straight ahead.

Ms. Bug-

Were I to give you a small pencil,
would that you could trace your wanderings.
Are they to a purpose or,
like the bumper cars,
do you move at the caprice of dumb luck?

Do you pause to consider
the import of watchful things?

Or dilly-dally
all the livelong day.

Losses-
The spelling
The language
The surety of the next move
The inner hum,
then the melody

A matte screen is good-
it allows no reflection
of the slacking jaw,
the black openings,
the fixed stare
going going gone

In the end
we're chaperoned by gravity.

A watched pot never boils. This is your punishment. The Gods writhe their displeasure. There will be no more coffee or instant noodles for you.

😆

She watches, bemused, then walks away as I keep up the stirring of the hot pot of milk and cocoa. I covet that clunk of spoon, milk-muted, because of a recurring dream in which each of my teeth is tapped with a tuning fork. Like a drip on a hot burner, I make myself into a very small world.

~Forlorn~

Dreamer
Have you awakened
from a theatre of tears?
You know,
you smiled and cried,
as did the players
who once were yours.
Sweet one,
may this day help your heart home,
and give respite from your tireless search
down the winds of the world.

😆

🌟

We all wanted safety.
Father, from trouble’s horde.
Mother, from father.
We chickens, from the storm.

All of us were running,
and love was hard pressed to keep up.
Adolescence held confusion, guilt,
and strange desire.

I looked for yellow bricks,
on the cusp of a fireworks life.

Getting an eye popping medical bill even though you have health insurance... it's the American way (cue hysterical laughter)

Anyhoo, I got books, I got t-shirts, I got art prints... full list of links in bio and pinned post. I gotta go lay down 😂😭

😆

living barren lives
staring down the cold #barrel
of futures unknown

#vssdaily #barrel

~We steep in the familiar:
That intimate cave that the tongue finds, years after the bloody extraction; the tattered dog-chewed shoe that you won't throw away. The off-key whistle, often practiced. The sock smell (supposed to bring on sleep).
That one nail you let grow longer.~

Night splints hold teeth in position,
I believe.

There is a baseless fear of dismemberment,
of awakening without the sum of one’s parts,
like the cave of a missing tooth.

I lie in bed running, and too fast.

Of what do predators dream?

~What is God's truth today
Not mine nor yours
Must we divine the mechanics of a knot
as we take small sips of vinegar
then a full-throated swallow
This gut hurts
yes~

In the gallery,
I walk alone.
There are none to hurry me
or rudely rouse me
from the trance.
No one to share with,
you say?
Ah, but it’s fine.
I know you will be here.
We just haven’t met as yet.
I’ll wait by the old mill stream,
on the gaslit cobblestone walk,
under the ivy sky.

Would that I could reach back and crack the great secret- hold the hand of a three-year-old who could not open that glass door; sit with the boy who went to camp and sat apart; tell true tales to a confused teen; buy that diamond another time.

To those who say "S"
through a chosen tooth,
the tongue at the roof-
you thrill me,
and I smile with an eye.

Does the young oak
look upon its ancestral leaves
with reverence?
No, but so I imagine.

My left knee feels robotic,
foreign,
so I stumble home
to write
and sit.

Hi Denise! Feeling a little guilty for not keeping up here. Twitter has been my (Home) for quite a number of years and it’s been hard to leave there. Thanks for your kind words!