lookin for a crit

Critique quickly please.
working on this for class want some last minute thoughts.
** are names i haven't come up with yet, any ideas would help.


I went out to the farmhouse where Dundun lived to tell him about the fire.
Such phrases are not often composed by our proud tongues, a humble American had crafted the hearth from steel and love. It was a gift to my brother ** who'd accepted it as a kind gesture from a man who didn't know his own gift, who had been beaten by the struggles of life into thinking he was of no more value to anyone than the next iron worker in a time of technology and microchips.
His words were themselves small, 'here, it isn't much, I wanted you to have this, don't really know why I made it.' Steel bound with love, set upon a pile of dry memories from many fires burnt in its smooth cold dome warmed by the smiles of old friends sitting around it.
Dundun had taken to sleeping in the farmhouse, he'd made a small space for himself in the loft and took in the warm Summer night breezes and slept under the speckled host of the sky. Dundun would have fits where he spent time away from everyone else as if to take a break from unfamiliar stares. he would return only when the glances became friendly again. at least that's what everyone else said he did when he spent his nights in the here.
Me, I always thought he would retreat to the safety of solitude when he became agitated, a retreat for their safety and not his. he would spent time lifting his worries like burnt offerings from the tips of Marlboro Reds. they were blue dusk hazes that enveloped him and told him that this too would pass.
Dundun saw me walking up from a distance and came down to greet me a short ways from the farmhouse. we all respected his time here because for whatever reason we understood that it was sacred to him and we dared not ruin such holy a ritual with frivolous talk that served only to sooth our own cares and not his.
dundun walked up and read the sorrow over my brow a shame bandanna of bad tidings. i felt shame for delivering such an ill wrapped gift.
'What's wrong?'
'dundun...'
'is everyone alright?'
we tried as best we could but there was...'
where is he?
'we took him to the hospital.'
'let's go then'
last words has he flicked his last cigarette away and walked to the truck with me. he already knew why i was coming, as if the cigarette had whispered the news like a silent herald cherub tickling his ear with quiet songs.
'there was a fire dundun. we were asleep and the next thing we know the house was filled with smoke.'
we ran out of the house and everyone swears they heard ** get up. ** ran back as soon as we realized he was not in our number. he had passed out feet from the bedroom door, he hasn't woken up yet.

My Ma's Garden- a work in progress.

That year my mother grew flowers outside my window,
garden shades of purples, reds, and whites. Their subtle
triple palette interplay of pigments that showered
from my window sill onto the garden floor that washed
the door step post like silk crowned corollas gaurds.

Together mixing between their floral trinities a soft autumn
redolence that served to calm my mien as it rode in
on a cool falling breeze that wiped my sullen latter day brow
and swept me away from the heat wave haze to my lotus lands.

I loved the first autumn days when it began to grow cold
and the night brought crisp northern winds that caused the trees
to shake awake from their dusk hour slumber and rustle up their
silent branch dance in the night washed glow of golden shade.

These soft lit memories come back to me in the late night gleam of
inspiration songs that send me back to the latter days of summer
because it is now i remember the end times and can't help but see
your porcelain white skin blush as if you had your own incandescent
filament that sends my pining heart into a steady rhythm buzz.

From Pinsky Poem- First Line

The figured wheel rolls through the shopping malls and prisons,
sweeping up fast paced shoppers and sticky hand cleptos
as they all entertain their discounted lives with meaningless
object passion for the glittering fresh molded plastic of

the window shop items they absolutely must have.
Buying rushes that render the masses ransom to their piling mounds of debt.
Swipes, swaps, they never seem to stop their syncopa-pation movements
Of the buying delirium trigger snap of angry grab hands flying.
In the frenzy, zombie hunters in search of manufactured sustenance

fly by racks and stacks as recycled air brushes past their face,
over dead skin and scalps letting them believe they are free
when they are really bound prisoners to their shopping mall convulsion craze.

The figured wheel rolls through the shopping malls and prisons.
Catching in its spiral spun spokes the haunted prisoner
inmates of blocks D K N and Y, until they carry out their sentences.

I made a map of her honeysuckle eyes.

He stepped through the door.

As she swung around, her hair swept for her the twirly path that her face would take, so as to see clear the iris beauty and snow white purity that comprise her skin soft visage that he will come to love.

Her gaze caught his stare and the space lit up with the glow from her eyes, as if the lights in the room were themselves shocked by her beauty. Her radiance radiated on them nuclear booms, causing them to flicker bright in wonder and sending spark pop signals at his piny heart to flutter.

They sat for hours and talked and he thought if he could just listen close enough that he could hear her heart. So he quietly learned her dreams and wants to know which route to take as he embarked on the path less taken, the road to her soul that is often mis-taken for a narrow little hole.

They sat in the hazy filled place for their own little eternity, spending their forevers up to put together their love struck jigsaw with their slow step dance

of get-to-know-me-get-to-know-you-while-we-learn-how-to-love

in that specific way we each individually desire.

Eventually the time caught up with their runaway puzzle game and he walked her home.

They went slowly to draw out the last bits of endlessness from this night of sparkling dreams and murky streams that made up their knowledge banks of each others lifetimes of 'thanks for listening' conversations they just had.

The quiet meander walk that has two bodies bump and stop in the awkward slip where

my hand☛☚touches yours

and we don't know if we should hold on because it'd be a pity for you to get away.

So finally their single hand digits locked and formed a warm little stone as they strolled home hand in hand in a city too dark to care and understand that as he looked at her merry go ring eyes and said 'I really had a good time' he meant I love you and think I comprehend but want to know who you are. In that way that is only possible when two people become the same one and their number 11 pair becomes a #1.

The man on the moon

The man on the moon is out tonight for a brisk dusk walk. He's wearing a top hat made of sleak black clouds that covers one side of his face, it is tall black and wide at the brim.

I resolved to take a drive and find answers, to find myself, to find her (hand in mine). I drove past my history to see where I went wrong, to try to look at my mistakes and perhaps solve this puzzle that has become my life. I drove past the good times and they just reminded me of that which is now gone and may never be again. I saw your pretty doll face and bright ocean water smile litter the road side and I almost pulled over but drove on instead. That was how our interactions remained an almost salvation doomed to near collisions of my so-close-but-so-far timing. For all my searching I have turned up empty handed and the end of the day has arrived to find me open palmed raised to the heavens in silent prayer. I have found no answers and her face is but a glimmer in the light of the setting sun colored soft white orange and shiny blue rings.

I would remain alone in this dusk glow of flowing thoughts were it not for one. So for all my dream chasing all I can claim for this day is it's night guardian, he is the man on the moon. His once large and smiling face has been distorted to a crooked grimace. His countenance no longer bright and white, has long turned a weak and sickly yellow. His eyes have sunk in, dark and cold, looking down in despair because he too cannot find his long lost love. He sits alone in the night sky, cloudy hat tipped to one side to hide his scarred face, while a sorrowful tune fills the air. He sits alone in a sky of deep blue, purple, and red and stares out blankly.

He mutters: There's great evil. Where's it come from? We are being robbed, killed, and left alone in this desolation.

He looks down at me and asks only one thing, have you passed through the night?

He answers himself, I have.

For friends I have the sleepy sunset which without fail dozes off mid conversation, words lost to and empty sky with teasing glimmers of stars too far off to hear my mournful cries. There is empty parking lots that withhold their advice from me, stone faced sitting across the night time nothing land. And now I have you a weary man searching for things unknown lost like me in this shroud of red-blue hues that cloak our soul.

This is the man on the moon and we are each others only friend, final passengers on this lonely midnight train traveling the lotus landscape of dreams and long forgotten dusks…

Have you passed through the night?

It's the rainy season.

I remember when I was young we had all gathered around the television to watch the last game in the semi-finals. The WINGS had just tied the series a result of lazy final periods and bad ref calls made for an uphill battle. The city was in an uproar and we all walked taller as we watched ordinary men became something more. We sat and glared at the screen, a silent mass of people trying to will the team into victory through glass and radio waves. We sat there and tightened at each shot, you could nearly hear our bones grinding as the tension in the room grew.

The final minutes were winding down, with seconds left and a power play for the DUCKS we had the puck in their zone. There was some smart passing and the captain was winding to shoot the puck.

Just then from the blindside

CRASH!

…

 

 

I was heading into work on a cool rainy morning; the type of morning that I had secretly enjoyed all my life. Wet, grey, cool, all things that made me feel sharper and more alert than usual. Only close friends knew of my fondness of such days. Perhaps I liked them because I felt like the world itself mourned my losses with me or that God himself would give me these days to unleash some pent up emotion. Either way this weather was my favorite.

On days like this people would always ask how I was doing or how I felt, typically with more genuineness than usual, I suppose they saw a sadness in me.

 I was never very good at hiding it, a curse from my family line, emotional but unable to mask it.

I would always answer; "I'm fine, just tired" or any myriad of other excuses that you come up with over the years.

Sense no one ever really cared what your answer was such a response would usually suffice.

 

I was driving home stuck in traffic after a long day. It was long perhaps because I felt like more people than usual asked what was wrong and I had run out of answers and excuses.

Poor Graham, I didn't even answer him on my way out, too fed up with the nagging question and tired of telling little lies, those mount up and begin to feel like big ones after a while.

 

Before I got home I liked to stop for a coffee and since the weather was getting worse I decided to have it at the coffee house. I picked a window seat so I could people watch and look at the rain fall. People were running in so as not to get wet but it didn’t work.

As I sat quietly going over the events of the day, something I did religiously almost as if I was looking for some missing clue or reviewing a play with careful precision, I thought about the numerous colleagues and friends that asked me what was wrong today. The last few such encounters caused me to wonder whether anything really was wrong. I continued over the days mental notes trying to find an answer to this question. WAS SOMETHING WRONG?

As I was wrapping up the overview and tried hard to remember the first few memories of the day, ones lost to the routine as I eased out of sleep, I had a thought that shot straight up my spine. As I sat in that chair I had a thought that hit me so deep I didn't think I wanted to have it and tried to see if I could shrug it off and forget but this one was here to stay.

The thought slowly crept up my person like a slithering snake that finally struck just above my left hip and shot pain right up the middle of my back.

Some thing was wrong I thought to myself. The problem was it wasn't what happened today, this week, or even recently, this something wrong was many years ago.

…

 

I was in college and sitting in the union with my laptop and my music playing, jeans a hoody and my hat slipped just to the left in that way I had trained my whole body to balance it. Everything was crisp about my demeanor and the hat threw in the touch of allure that set the entire thing off right.

I was watching the rain fall over the fountain and watched the late students scramble across the campus trying to make it to class on time… and dry.

I had been talking to this beauty of a girl for some time now. We had gone out for coffee a few times and I took her to one of my favorite parts of town, a place that was special to me because. We walked the long streets lined with trees and lanterns (a nostalgic touch as they were only for the look).  Coffees in hand and arms linked together, as if anything could have pulled us apart, we kept pace with our beating hearts and we talked about everything that mattered to us. She would lean into me and my heart would skip every time we found we had a like minded thought or a shared experience. These little moments where you think to yourself I may not be alone on this heap of a rock we call home. That night we stayed awake long into the dark, I swear it was like our spark had ignited the very lanterns along the road which we walked.

As I sat on campus that rainy day waiting the long hours until my next class I thought about calling her but decided against it as she was probably busy or in class but a part of me hoped maybe I would see her walking by in the rain and I could run over to her and wrap my warm self around her cold one. I hoped she would come in to the room so that we could share a quiet silence together and in so doing link on that spiritual level that many people miss in life because they are too hurried or to preoccupied to even know its there.

 

I didn't see her all week.

It was Friday and I was waking up late as that was the only day I could take my "Saturday." My first thought was her face and it was so vivid I thought maybe I was coming out of a dream with her in it and I swear we had kissed in that dream because it was like I could still feel it.

I decided to call her up in a bit to see if she wanted to meet up again sometime this weekend. First, I wanted to wake up and gather my wits before I could call her though.

I decided to call around noon so I would be sure to catch her around lunch and hopefully not too busy.

*ring*

*ring*

*ring*

*rin...*

HELLO?

Hey.

Hey how are you?

Fine. Yourself?

.

.

.

I was wondering if you were free tonight.

Oh no I made plans to visit my family.

Oh that's great. How bout sometime this weekend?

Probably not I have 2 big tests and a friends birthday I have to be at.

Alright I understand maybe next weekend then?

Sure give me a call.

 

I tried not to let it bug me but it did. I wished she didn't have tests or that she wasn't going home for the weekend. I tried to focus on the possibility of next week.

 

I decided to hit my favorite café that night and tackle a good book with my favorite band and the biggest cup of coffee the barista would let me have. I loved going to this place because there was always a steady flow of people and also because it was where I felt like I was connected.

I had been there a while and was making magnificent progress in my book, despite people watching and writing random snippets of thoughts and poems in my Moleskin.

I'm sure people had forgotten about me by then and I think I had overlapped a couple of shift changes by the employees.

I sat up to take in a new wave of people coming in and also I felt a jolt of inspiration that I was about to jot down…when…

When I saw her walking in.

I thought I had jumped right out of the chair when I saw her or that I had floated up off it all together.

I was just about to jump across the room and say hello with a soft hug and invite her over to my little nook in the café

When I realized she wasn't alone.

Some guy who I hoped was nothing more than her friend was walking in beside her arms locked and smiling together, they stepped in united pace as if they were tied at the hip. Their persons were almost in unison and it made me sick.

I recoiled back to my nook, my lair, my cave.

I racked my brain to find an escape.

I didn't want her to know I was there and I couldn't stand to be there.

This better be her cousin my last grasp at sanity rang out in my head!

Things were blurring and sound seemed to be sucked out of the room.

I could only hear the strong thumps in my chest.

I had made it just inches from the door

And my phone dropped.

I thought about leaving it behind.

Of course they noticed and she saw me.

I thought about just running out but for some reason my courage won over my reason.

We made the awkward dance toward each other and we played the introduction game. I had to ask twice who the guy was because I couldn't hear over my pumping chest.

My salvation rang and the ringtone broke the forming silence before anyone noticed it.

I made an excuse up so fast I impressed myself.

I have to go some friends are waiting for me, it was good seeing you.

I lied.

As I ran across the street trying to focus all my awareness on not getting run over I gave one last glance over my shoulder…

Cousin I think not.

They had found the couch and were locked in the most wretched of kisses I had ever seen.

I went to find a seat in the dimly lit park a few blocks away to compose my thought, perhaps to reason some way in my head that he was not her boyf…

*Nausea.*

I sat there for a long while and the soft warm spring air turned cool very quickly. It began to rain.

I sat there not wanting to take any refuge.

I pulled the tapes in my memory of the nights we shared and walked and talked, trying desperately to see if I had missed something if I had fooled myself into thinking we were connecting.

The scene was frantic as clip after clip was shoved into my recollection and I went over them second by second, touch by touch.

 

I was not fooling myself rather had been fooled.

 

I could feel my chest tighten up as if it was being flooded and could take no more.

There was a pain so strong that for a moment I worried if I was having an infarction.

It seemed the cold grew colder and the park grew darker.

I remembered that tense night years before with everyone gathered around the TV screen watching the final hockey game.

 

…

*

CRASH!

Blood began to pool quickly underneath the heap of man, underneath the wooden stick and the fallen hero. People stood in their seats. There was an audible gasp and some of us in the room were standing as well. It was one of those injuries that you know people don't come back from, maybe heroes do but regular folks… no. This was his true test, his passage into heroism, if he recovered from this he would leap straight into the realm of legend, places few reside and many long to see.

Sweat grew over everyone's brow as we eagerly sought some sign that he would be ok, something to show his real strength.

*

 

 

I could almost feel the blood pooling and I clutched what would be my wooden weapon as I lay there in the cold wet night.

Some men are tried and they are found to be men of honor and valor true heroes of our day.

They come back after a short time to rise above and conquer.

…other men are beaten and battered only to stay down and never recover. Their heroism is tested and found to be lacking.

 

…

*

As they hauled him off the ice on a stretcher lined by his teammates in some twisted scene that resembled a funeral procession he made one last simple gesture. Raising one arm straight up, strong and stiff, he gave a thumbs up. The cheer that rang out from the all the witnesses was like a boom that shook the very foundations of the city. He would make a full recovery and midway through the final round come back to help the WINGS win the cup once more. That year there was magic, with the economy the way it was, with the state in shambles, people seemed to collect as much of that magic as they could. Stored away in little boxes and glass jars, kept snug away for the rainiest weariest of days.

*

 

 

That night I was tested…

And after a short time I got back up…

I recovered.

But not found among those halls of great men, the dwelling places of greatness.

Because in order to be numbered among those…

You must arrive with heart intact…

And I had left mine somewhere in that park that night. It had been washed into some gutter along with the rest of cities rubbish.

 

**

I drove home that night once the rain had let up. I pulled into the driveway of my house. I felt a broken shell of a man and it was all I could do to heave myself to my door and prop myself up against it while I fussed with the keys. I came in sat down and turned on one light.

The feeling that I was nothing crept up around the darkness that remained around the soft flicker of light from the single lamp.

Just then my wife came in the room and broke the melancholy. She found her way into my nook, that little place under may arm right over my heart that seemed like it was made just for her.

She rested under my arm and I asked what was wrong.

She only answered with a single tear, it's better now…

 

 

In my mind the young man in my head walked back in the rain from the park to his car.

As he stepped from puddle to puddle drenched to the bone he saw something pulsating in the sludge at the mouth of a gutter.

*Pick it up* a soft whisper that sounded like the wind as it brushed warm over his ears.

He stooped down to brush it off picked it up and placed it softly in his breast pocket.

 

I didn't believe in magic, at least not that kind of magic. I preferred a more dynamic existence all together, faith that was set in someone who I could interact with and feel, and sometimes in the quiet places even hear.

 

So it was after many years of trial and fire a hero of the truest kind.

For his heart was broken and lost and swept away only that he may fight and win it back again.

Such men are seated at the first seat in that great hall, in the place of honor. For not only do they endure but their hearts are found to be strong and true.

this is my search for our deliverance.

i drive home in this sweet scented darkness accompanied by the soft trickles and tickles of the rain waters falling from heavens high only to leave soft pitters and patters that break to the very core of a man's soul.

a warm breeze brushes my hair back

as if it were your soft hands running over each follicle. that subtle way, that slight touch that sends me between worlds of awake and asleep.

the trees are flashing by through brief glimmers of the dusk light as if to wave their greetings to me from the world of the wildthings

each branch reaching out to lift us up with our broken wings and make us fly once more

fly back into my peaceful solidarity, my home.

i am grateful for their welcome

wooden rattled hommage from the last ones up to see me safely home. my midnight guardians and splendid deliverers of benevolence.

how do you do deep rooted advents of my day's first light?