SONG REACH

Were you never
To hear my song
Again
Would its melody reach
You anyway -
Transcending sense
And sensibility -
Toward six degrees
And telepathy?

-jim hill (12-12-2016)

TOILET TOP STILL LIFE

On a bottle 

That has,

Wrapped 'round it,

A ribbon threaded through a

Fake pearl,

I see a Playboy bunny. If it

Weren't a bottle but

Hugh Hefner's neck

It would be a befitting

Bolo-tie of branding.

He could wear it 'round 

The Mansion

Dressed as he wants

In robe and slippers,

Refusing to age.

To remain 

The adolescent boy

Preening in the sheen

Of magazines

In wealth 

And comfort,

Joined and

Held together 

In an empire 

Of sticky pages.

-jim hill (12-2-2016)

BUSY HANDS SWIFTER FEET

You say Jesus

Like He made 

Your lips; like Muhammad

Guides your steps. My

Myths are more random,

Less informed by sacred texts

More thy word of

Mouth. 

Buddha wore your bridal veil

Like a bib,

feasting

On your homemade vows. Glory

In numerous virgin births

And ascending saints, better now

For what they are than what they ain't. 

-jim hill (11-14-2016)

THE UNFOLDING CHAIR

It spread out before me
A vista
A view I hadn't seen
But I'm not one to really look.
I mean really look. All I
Know is what I've been led
To believe:
Cryptic messages de-coded
And interpreted
By smarter brains than mine. I
Mean if I do see things
They don't connect with
Larger dots
From a bigger picture. They are
Like little vignettes
From domestic scenes:
A maid pours milk
A man lights his pipe
Contemplating, it seems,
What he cannot know
Has never seen.

-jim hill (10-28-2016)

NUMBERS

1.

I live in the here and now;
You, the there and then. What
Happens happened -
Is, in fact, happening. But what
Is, was, and is again
Between us 
Has only the sparest
Relation
To time 
Or its segmented systematic
Constructs. It is.
That's all

2.

If this were a song
It would disrupt
And violate - your world
Whose world? You ask 
In a sing-song voice
That I not sing again
Sign again - after all,
You say - keeping a 
Sort of peace between us -
It's all been sung before and
I'm tired. Go back to sleep
Sing in your dream
If you have to.

-jim hill (10-28-2016)

GIRL SECRET ZERO

Her secret zero was such

That anything void of value

Resided in a register: a complicated accountant's ledger

Where red 

Battles black to a draw. Nobody wins nor do they lose as nothing is ventured towards capital. Suitors find

Her calculating, not cold - 

distant - at a safe remove -

An overlook where she sees

All sides and leaves nothing to chance. 

As days grow into quarter-centuries, her vetting

Takes on a studious fervor. There are height v weight ratios, lies 

Discovered during the interview processes, with the barrage of questions more probing and invasive with each successive candidate.  Her life has now become Fort Knox, a sandbagged battery where she reigns as administrator, work-drone, and CFO. No product is made , but security is upheld as a corporeal goal, no wage; rather evaluative sin. Fortresses often die from the eroding of infrastructure, the walls too high to remain upright. She was her own Fed, Fannie Mae, and other stalwart pillars - too big to fail; not to fall.

-jim hill (10-5-2016)

MORNING IS A LONG WAY

As a boy I dreamed, I think, just to dream.

I've learned that now,

Instead of breathing to live,

I live in a paralytic's paradise - 

Luxuriating in the labor to breathe.

If it's true Someone said the dash on our 

Tombstone is all we have, then a mad dash is what I'll be.

-jim hill (9-1-2016)