Showing posts with label downstairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downstairs. Show all posts

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Art of Being Neighbors


My neighbor from upstairs
stepped out onto his balcony
at six-fifteen on Wednesday
evening
looking
like he never got up
for Wednesday-he was
up-stairs, as I said
while I, in the garden
down bellow dirt level
watering and weeding
while he, squints
in critique at his canvas
tilting it and his head-
waved with two fingers
disheveled hair
and a puffy face
at me squatting
I may (as well) be making
mud-pies-
I told him
Happy (late) Birthday!
he shrugged it off and
stammered about-
surprises, bottles and friends,
his cheeks match my
roses.
May I see-asked I,
knowing he needed an eye.
He obliged-
and it was
*magnificent*
and so-the guilty party
was forgiven.




Image of painting By Carl Geist, 1906 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Downstairs Lairs


There are no basements in California
even so, the ground gasps and trembles
panting
in subversive growing pains, like mine
in a Rack

And I attest, above me, there's no rest
while downstairs I have dwelt
digging deeper,
while building up

Below deck, I amble
in underlying
immersion
Fathomless and zoetic

In my dungeon with my dragons
I learn to expire
and practice breathing fire

Stomping and romping around the moon,
only echoes left from the rite of passage
steps ghosts long to hear, in a heartbeat

Up there, herds and hoards stampeding
and suspend on high chords
holding up the roof by
ceiling the cracks

Beneath it all
buried in a netherworld
with the worms and bugs
the cold wet earth blankets
a dry eye in decay

Musty, misty, sodden and steamy
I will be the first to drown
when it all comes down

I reside below, with no where to grow
sown in subterranean.



Image By Vert (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.


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