Turns

All the turns
False turns, too
South when rational wends west
The apparition was there when I looked
Gone when I looked again
We've too many times salvaged but tragedy
from the joy of is
The list of sometimes wins was short
We never turned away

What I can see

I can't see myself
but I can see you
I can't see what's close to me
but I can see through
to the blue and wide
on the other side

I decided today

I decided today
to move more slowly
for all the rest of my days.
More thoughtfully, too,
I pray.

I am the box I came in

I am the box I came in
I sit empty, inhabiting space
My confidence, the stale air inside
My soul, crumpled tissue paper
My strength but corrugated corners
I am used, useful but for to be used again
I am what remains of loyalty
I am the box I came in

Palms Stretched Skyward

Weary songs play the tired sentiment of middle aged men's tears
Strung out across the square where strangers wait on the perimeter
Palms stretched skyward
Looking for a missing God
Eye contact deflected by worn mattress springs
Away from the whispered reflection in broken tempered glass
Splashes of loss manage an escape in a sigh
Too tight girls in dirty sarcastic jeans rout a perfect blue
Nothing to buy, nothing worth selling, nothing to see
Home is as far as freedom, as close as death
Souls on display, hidden from view, and
Everywhere between
Prayers scrawled across the back of a burn victim's heart
Palms stretched skyward
Away
Palms stretched skyward

Letter from a Friend

On the far side 

A field of troubled clover grows 

The reeds are all doubled over 

A girl from Carolina sits alone 

She cries and cries and cries 

The ocean sprays its salt in the sand 

The dunes blow flattened into the sea 

Sentimental contrails banished forever 

The equality of the netherworld 

I read this post card 

I think of you 

On the far side

Who is Watching Whom

There are three invisible shadows
I cannot see the monsters
I cannot see their shadows
What if they find out
A dog is barking
A candle burns in a pumpkin
On the porch across the street
The empty lot beside it
The empty lot beside it
Someone is tying a string to a pole
The wind blows it out of his hand
Into the monster's face
I cannot see their shadows
What if they find out.

It has been three days

It has only been three days
Seems like much longer than that
I have heard toasts that took longer
Put it on my grave stone
He listened for three days
The life of an insect
A healthy tropical storm
It has only been three days
It has only been three days

Bearing Poetry

Writing is the brain's birthing process.
Thought is mere conception.
Talking is but gestation.
Written work is a new, real, born thing.
Each draft is yet another target.
Text provides the visibility necessary for criticism,
usually much deserved.
Printed word is the unwashed face
on your obnoxious cousin's even more obnoxious kid.
You know your kid cannot turn out the same.
Then you see the dirty, snot-faced photographs
of a hybrid face,
a cross between your spouse's and father's faces,
only swollen with baby fat.
You soften.
Your cousin and his kid are not so bad.
Your writing, however, still is.
It is still a squalid, intolerable, filthy-faced target,
to which you gave birth,
in search of your cousin's empathy.

Music is a Train

The drums are the iron outer shell,
steel wheels grinding on steel track.
The base is the steam engine,
the base player shovels the coal.
The violins are the whistling of the wind
through conversations and unsealed windows.
The guitar is the cushion where you sit.
The vocals are the meal.
All of these vary in quality.
But the food is
most noticibly,
most obviously
good or bad.

On A.D.D.

They say, we cannot effectively manage a single communication thread.

We say, they cannot manage the multiplicity of communication threads across which we need to operate.

They are holding the cookies.

I have not been cold...

...for the past three winters (2004-05 through 2006-07). There is generally an early cold snap in October in the southwest corner of North Carolina where we keep the camper. I have fortuitously been in the mountains in mid-October during each of the past three years when that cold snap hit. It is not an Arctic blast, but is usually 30 degrees or colder, which is very cold in the open wind on top of a mountain.

The furnace in my camper has suffered an odd inconsistency. A mouse chewed through a wire on on the camper's heater in 2004-05. I waited nearly a year to have it repaired. The camper heater worked and I had a battery in 2005-06. The marine batteries I use were dead for October cold snap in 2006-07. I was essentially without heat for two of the three years.

The sky is clear and the stars are infinite when winter pre-announces his arrival in early autumn. The black-violet mountain sky carpeted with diamonds is beautiful beyond what the jewelers in the city could imagine. I stood on the deck outside the camper to watch the sky sparkle and let the cold whip me for as long as I could stand it, for each of those three years. I was not cold for the rest of the year during those years when I did so. I have traded my heavy coat for a lighter jacket.

I cannot be certain that facing winter in this way is the solitary cause for me not being cold all year long; I have a much thicker layer of fat than when I was younger. I believe this Old Man Winter Therapy is the primary reason.

I wrote this poem by candle light in my camper - trying to warm up by lighting candles and running the gas stove and oven.

meeting winter

How can you know Winter
if you have not stood on
your porch and met him?
Face him briskly by,
his scratches raking your face,
down your back,
rigid wicked shivers wrack your spine.
The night is clear.
The sky is wide open.
The greatness is greater,
the beauty more beautiful,
than the pain of the cold.
Winter tries with his screeching calls
to wrench this pleasure from me.
All rocks slide down the hill,
eventually.
For now, I greet the old man,
coming over the hill with his creaking bones
and his cane,
flailing at the leaves with his
unpredictable breath
this way, or not, in the wind.
He nods at me a prescient nod,
long knotted hair and silvery beard waving,
and continues on his crooked way
driving his icy winds
across this mountain top.
Later I retire
to contemplate
this poem.

I am in California this year, so I missed the Old Man when he went bolting over the North Carolina mountains.

        I hope
              I
                        have
                somewhere warm
        to go
                after
        I see him
again.

A Flower and a Russian...

kept me company so many years ago. A Flower and a Russian encouraged me always to write.

A Flower and a Russian tried to help me grow.

Consciousness and conscience are but a chorus of voices. The Flower and the Russian have been clear and distinct voices in my mind for nearly 30 years.

A small well-distinguished chorus of two provided a continuous light by which to pen my thoughts.

The Flower blossomed anew this week. I have never been without the memory of the fragrance, not even for a moment.

They tried to help me grow. I hope they succeeded.

I blog here now
       but for the gift
    of light
    given to me
        so long ago
    by
           a Flower
      and a Russian.