by Rick Young | Oct 30, 2017 | Song
I was standin’ on the cusp of a whole new cycle.
I had made it to the mountaintop, was talkin’ straight to Michael,
when a big wind up and tumbled me down like a human sack
and I woke up to discover I was three lives back.
Three lives back. I was a caped crusader.
Three lives back. I didn’t know Ralph Nader.
I worked each day just like a dog but only made serf wages.
And once a year I might eat hog. I hate the Middle Ages!
A man works ten lives to evolve and seems to be on track.
But one bad break and, "Sorry, Jake," he wakes up three lives back.
Three lives back. I’ll miss my comfy houses.
Three lives back. I’ll have to live with louses.
The only benefit I see so far is peasant blouses.
And three lives back, I did have several spouses.
by Rick Young | Oct 12, 2017 | Poem
Illogical pit stops
Waste deep in the forest,
Infecting the shrine zone,
Project our dark skies.
When under the curtain,
Where nothing is certain,
While staring at shark eyes,
The festival dies.
There’s no calibration
Or central location.
The law is erased by the lie.
The wailing wind sings.
We’re out on the wings
Of these things we know
Never can fly.
And they tilt toward goodbye.
by Rick Young | Oct 9, 2017 | Poem
Tiny blue crystals were everywhere:
in the sand, on the rug, even in the tub,
minute, translucent, thin as fingernails.
We thought that we should clean up.
But this was not our fault.
There were too many, and increasingly
more the more you looked.
And they moved, sliding away from touch,
even popping airward like dandelion puffs.
They formed indecipherable patterns
on the walls; and at the mere thought
of vacuum, broom or mop, they multiplied.
It quickly turned from fun to frightening.
When we went to the authorities,
they said we’d trespassed in a forbidden zone,
but would not be prosecuted if we left quickly
and forgot what we had seen. Tell anyone,
and you will be forever haunted, they said.
Just go now, they warned, And burn your clothes.
by Rick Young | Oct 6, 2017 | Poem
I suspect birds
are spelling out signs,
would we have the time
to connect them.
Thousands of windshields
pointed toward the sun
cannot blind the cloud god.
And the ants only steal
as a favor.
We should walk a foot
in their hole.
Not that neon
is the curse of gasses,
but spare me
from your fast food wars.
All these screaming
cell phones in the wind
make me long
for the company of rocks.
by Rick Young | Oct 5, 2017 | Poem
He falls down a lot. But that’s cool.
Just smokes a cigarette on the ground
and mumbles something existential.
He’s got a nickel- plated whiskey flask.
But he can’t find it. Must be in the pocket
of an old zoot suit, somewhere.
He’d play his horn, except his teeth fall out.
He’d snap his fingers, but he broke his thumb.
The broken hipster was hot back in his day.
But now he just seems dumb.
