Pyramids

how much it is so
the gravely inken barns pass by our youth
bolden and brayen
seamless to the tongue yet erring to go
and all the condusive flow
that gives lectionaries the bile to blow
into the weeds of the cartoon show
and its wavy little wake
those sharp left corners
just below the glow
over what we know and below what we don't
and the trance incidental
where nothing isn't
no need to decide
and the arbitrary maps fall into place
to believe a distance
no more than a stork could be found
and a butter burned stone
enticed by night's shimmering knees
and its flickering leaves
those shadow drinking pools
driving the dead to stool
further than coins can swallow
and the baby bathers toss and throw
while the mind quails between the knees
and the oceans bit their mighty roar
strong as mite and bit of tongue
the tarengers wake
what the tooth throwers left behind
and the docks hid their shores
behind the quail signs
tossing the nines
inside the pyramids of my mind.

Denis Streeter   3/16/15

Hidden ways

I head down my hallway
Dust mouse scurrying the floor
A Gryphon screaming after
Scatters me off my toes
Growing plural
Jumping keys playing fortissimo
Cocoa stirring cups
Some sleepy nightcap
Souls wrestle their dreams
Hips joint their confusion
Eyes twinkling moonlight
Wobble their sockets
Second life electric
Startled synapses
Another planet in the brain
Unknown to our origin
Fossiling ancestors
That deep matter
Submerging then rising
Kissing our flow
Sets it aflounder
Torch to our waking hours
Watching over our days
Our daydreaming deep
Its dark humor rise
Reading each sign
Each human encounter
Light filling and draining each vessel
Searching for some understanding
Inside each unknown dream life
Some continuum wanting love
Exploring all directions
The heart moves discrete considering variables
Or so says the mind who does not like to share
Just learn and take credit
The heart moves some internal know
Head and heart misplacing metaphors
To gather in a basket and sort later
That history leaking our dreams
Scurry our pavement
Dust moat our minds to gryphon conclusions
Playing our keys
To our belief
Wandering living pastures not dead to dreams
Wakening our human condition to yearn
The gravity of our journey
The hidden ways we read and misread others lives

Denis Streeter  3/8/15

Description

He wore a tink tank top
Toggled as normal
Whispered as blind
He tore a nice schnoggle
And the blitters were fine with him
He wore a blintz blind poggle
Some bin biffered pants
And a shortle that accented his eyes
But it was the bliblepin that truly set him apart
It was three inches wide and four inches long
Skin as floffle as bawn
His nose was as high as his inch was long
And when he swallowed all you could hear was the boffle
He was a wide sort of chap, yet three times long
You could say he was dimensionally challenged
But I say he was a work of art, no matter how you bloffle
His intentions were always blime though his works toffle
You couldn't fault him for being obscure
With a name like Flifflefloff
He wore a wig of blintz blance blind
Really more blaff than bloffle
But he was keen as a hair piece
That he toggled as normal
Some thought him rather noffle nawp
Others thought him lorm de lime
No matter which, he continued to flaff fliffer his way
But nobody said he was flawn
Oh no nobody said he was flawn
He was a simple man yet quite complex
Some found his manner flounder
Others found him mix de mor
But no one could account for his bliblepin
It was too much yet too little
Sometimes when his biffered pants shortled him
He would tink and not tot
Women would worfle and why
With a name like Flifflefloff
But they liked his schnoggle
Even though he was a wide sort of chap yet three times long
They could tell he was dimensionally challenged
Some were rather flawn by his manner
And drawn by his blime and toffle
But he didn't know what to say as he baffled away
He hid in a bloffle when he was feeling less than blaff
And then he would blorn and not blern
But he was a blerf of arc
Oh yes.  He was my blerf of arc.

Denis Streeter   3/2/15

Still

It wasn't long before I stepped out the door
My counselor had arrived and it seemed like
I could see into anything before it even happened
I could see every pebble in the pavement
The exact geographical location of
every storefront, billboard, and the water tower
I loved the water tower
I told details of every location I visited in extraordinary detail
My counselor listened and we walked
It wasn't just the neighborhood I could see into
It was the whole universe
All my synaptic connections popping my head
And when it was so bad I wanted to die
But I didn't want to die
I said universe
I said the craziest shit I could think of
And laughed knowing how crazy it was
How embarrassing it was
I just wanted to survive
Just to survive
It was a crazy game where
Saying universe in the tiniest voice
And then universe louder until I was shouting it
Was my way of saying how bad it was
My head was a maze of numbers calculating everything
Nothing would compute
And then I was back at the entrance of my condo
Shouting universe universe universe
Shouting names of people I loved, thought I loved, might love
I was pure unfiltered
And I thought I was going to die
I was fighting with every ounce of my energy to stay alive
Then the police and medics arrived
I was flailing out into the street
Into oncoming traffic
It took three or four men to restrain me
My head banging the pavement just to feel
My right hand pounding the pavement until it could not feel
My condo neighbors came out
Didn't know what to make of me
I was fighting for my life
It took three or four to restrain me
They tied my hands together
They tied my feet together
Restrained my head
Lifted and strapped me into a guerney
Drove me to Northwest Hospital ER
I'd been there a week earlier
This was worse
The food, the care, the screaming
I would feel better and then I would think I was dying
I would push the buzzer for help
It seemed like forever for them to come
Perhaps I was screaming
I kept ringing and no one would come
But they did
And then I couldn't remember
I couldn't remember
They wouldn't let me have paper
I forgot everything a minute later
I forgot everything
I was restrained
They wouldn't let me have paper
And finally I was feeling better
I didn't think I was going to die
But I still couldn't remember
Finally I got paper and
I recorded everything
Nurse names, their titles
My friends names, their phone numbers
They took me out of restraints
I got paper
I looked over the room
Figured out how everything worked
The hospital bed
The equipment
And I knew everything
I got everything wrong
I got everything right
Everything half right
A world of opposites
And yet I knew I was half wrong and half right
I couldn't tell them apart
Everything
Everything
Needed notes
I left Northwest ER the next day
Taken to Navos Mental Health in West Seattle
I took forty pages of notes the first day
Just to remember
I couldn't remember
There I connected with the writers
The brainiacs the super intelligent
The broken ones
The food was horrible but I learned
There was nothing to do but exercise and learn
It felt like a twisted vacation
You could say anything and no one would remember
It was the ultimate freedom
The men and women were separated
For obvious reasons
Still the attraction was there
But the meds messed with my sex drive
Over two weeks and nothing
Getting better I wrote less
Remembering more
Helping others fit in
Sometimes backfired
Mostly helped
Who to trust
Who to stay away from
Letting go to
Guide those to their type
Perhaps allowing their self-destruction
To keep myself intact
Moving through each step toward freedom
Three weeks later
What I learned
I'm still learning
I am still
Learning to feel

Denis Streeter   1/26/15

laughters jungle

leasing castle stormed rooms
searching mirrors clowning climb
emptied desert of desserts
lending least for last on scales forlorn
cattle morn and bladder fed
sensing wind in bends of time
lion roars tempest smile
too small for a forlorn kiss
too long for a sentence sign
walking blight in lines of winter
washing words undressing
confessing to pros in an unknown rhyme
lessening forgotten tongues
printing proses in plays of sand
as sea land slumbered
lasing the least to lease the lass
tune as a tin can cupboard
twice as drawn and blind as pine
watching leashed lords lime in lie
tired as puckered shiners
blessed and cursed in crime
sure as glass and tossed as time
testing silence in tubular song
addressing tightrope as wims
monuments in mime
bent of phrase in rapt remind
crissing crosstones
crimpled as chrome
laughed in firth
bent as bind
tumbled of sign
meeting malarky

Denis Streeter   1/19/15

Whirlin the box

Teetered boatwise lie of long
Sly as caterpillar cry
Filled with doubt and promise
Resting compunction in river ryes
Twice as rhyme and short as wyse
Lyme rose earth light
Taffish rabbit sun pie
Hiding the aftermath rhyme
Soon as stealing time
Bleeding noses to fool
Blond lit blind
Drifting with the tripwires
Tired in the wintry sun
Gone by noon
Rafting by drafters
gnarling neurons
And the tired primes
True as the catfish wobble
Hounding hugs of wine
Justin the color of blind
Tween the tweed
Foodle the prime
Sugaring otherwise
Wasps drain flies sticking to moonlight
That forward backward cling
Sheet shouldered in
Shades lesson stars
Follow door sky
Whirlin the box
Justin the blind

Denis Streeter  12/27/14

it's what's become of the sandwich

it's not the people
what's become of her
back to my favorite bar
wondering who's governing her brain
no that's all I want to eat
she was delicious tired
just one or two scoops
all the dressing
dandelions with the neighbor's dog
and the weed breaks
all the way down to the cushions
and the hours say why
when the stories dry
mud bound
of giraffe sticks
into comfort zones
rewording the words
I took on the cushions
but then it got easier
disaster looms in the credit card debt
easter spreads its bunny wings
loose on the cousins of tomorrow
and the bombs break
taking down ships to Titanic humility
oceans shiver greed
shovels beneath the sandbox below

denis streeter