From Autumn 2009 - January 2010

 
Read.  Write.  Listen to tunes.

Ponder ruin.  Do things

and repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

This is the pattern of my life         nights

until I sleep.

Go to bed.  Get up.  Repeat.            This is

the pattern of my life         nights

until I sleep.

Wake.  Stretch for breakfast.

Everyone is even-steven living,

out of blue.

Reach for evening.  Ponder nothingness.

Fondle doom.  This is the pattern of my life         nights

until I sleep.

*

I eat and shit my life in one breath.

Mold and cold are clothes

among others.

The noise of these other passerby’s this

holiday weekend annoys me.

The sitting, flitting, shitting gnats annoy me,

but they’re home, too.

*

A train of thought I’ve ridden enough and could

and should jump the track of

again.

This luxury tests the soul.

Gently lift a scab, and have a davenport adventure.

Bubbles in a can.

Say soda-phobic,

soda-philic.  Fill a cup and cup

a full sip.  Satisfied lips

and tongue and

throat and

burning stomach.

Flea head.

Itch scratcher.

Running brain.

Burning rain.

Pin a tail on a face and face

a tale, telling eyes.

Hiding slides, though.

Slid into a rough—

Patched a very large—

Held the whole load, then—

Sunk and sauntered, autumn-wise.

Want to wander back to the party, though,

walk the fine line between intriguing

and insane.

*

Flow, like a kill-yourself run across

an icy street of madness, in a state of paranoia

over toilets.

Float.  Knock back salty stale depression and guilt

over laziness allowed to blossom.  “I should’ve never existed”—words

on many tongues since pain and regret began.

Soared a moment.  Been sunk a month.

*

Everything’s medicated,

leaved, lifted, fixed up, improved—

roving around with nowhere to go.

For every trip a place, for every sweet spot

a viscous cycle, and for every pot of tea

a trade.

It’s all mulled,

heaved out, shifted, mixed up, stabbed—

the intruder rubbing in his stain.

For every god an altar, succor of the hour turned

suffering life’s devotion.  In a flood of stolid life-givers,

a pallid observer stands up

and objects.

The world has mulled

over this pill.

Take it or

leave it and leave me alone, or

play me a lullaby, and stay

the stain.

*


Now it’s time to go home,

(riding time,)

and bleed what life has fed me,

through my makeshift paper hole,

take the lines that have been read me

from a day’s page in history, and

repeat them my own way,

make a marvel of papier-mâché,

with some glue and painted cliché.

*

He wakes up, and pets
a metaphor, wanders into the bathroom, and
ponders mathematics.

She flashes a quotation mark smile,
tiptoes softly through the kitchen in slippers
of cliché.

Something here is simmering like
a simile.

Another opened paper to
dress the issue.

Another pot of coffee to
stain the taste.

*

A thing to think of, think to say,
left alone, it runs away,
but turn the page, it stays and fades,
and molds into the rug
of ages.

It plants itself in the floor of
Life, and as the fabric frays it
grows in vines and intertwines with
every strand.

*

The day is sun and shine and I have
written dribble over less.  Yes,

let me hear your deepest outpourings,
heart poured out on the Corn Squares that I feed on.

Not very deep in the bowels of this house, there’s a
sibling quibblery, over trifles until

one tears a thread from one of the other’s dreams.

There’s a happy couple, carrying on and waiting on
the day their marriage has aged like wine

or dynamite.

Dent my tin man’s heart you won’t through
giggly, passing effervescent scenes…

*

How much leeway would you give
a poet,
for perpetuating inspiration through the ages?
What lusts
would you allow him to feed, if he feeds the world
what?
What if he’s a confessionalist?  Would you have to
eat the plate it was served on?  What constitutes

a poem?
“The sky’s the limit.”  What constitutes

a work of art, which you frame?
      “One person’s trash…”

Shall I just      toss these scraps of paper
onto a large, blue one, and call them fish?
      Or maybe waves?

Let’s say these

      dice      represent

                  icy chance.

Let’s say the board is

      the dance floor of life.

Cold/hot romance the issue.

Jangle keys and a lock unclicks.

Jangle keys and a car begins

to exhale.

*

Red and yellow lights play across the windows of houses,
Merry Christmas faces, facades, whatever.
I feel like I could stay out here forever.
My cell phone’s display no longer works.
The clock on the sidewalk says—

When I think of all the lovely
word combinations I’ve stolen
from potential future generations,
I’d like to lift my glass and propose
we share the rights.

I grew up,
and then I grew a little older.
If you think it’s tragic that I’m not
the person I used to be, just wait—
I think I can bring him back for a moment—

it would be the biggest thing to happen all
minute
in this room.

*

It’s January.
A plumber comes to fix the kitchen sink.
I’m numb.

Life is little.

*

He fights his way to the top of the hill,
through the terror and the turmoil,
and when he gets there, at last, all alone,
in his profound joy, he utters
an inane phrase.

*

He wrote another piece of verse, just a-
nother day at his desk, before
the accident,
and rode a dash mark into the sunset.

He rode the bus most every place,
until one day one swept him off his feet.
And no one wept.
Just a            back-of-the-bus lone stranger.

He’d been caught in accidental stares.
Thinky struggles, troubled moments, misconstrued as
bedroom eyes.
He never meant to charm or scare a soul.

He left behind fragments of a brief life:

his pieces of verse, like shards of glass
or garments used to clothe his issues with
life’s naked state,
scattered in cyberspace,

a modest living from his job, and people he
saw little, who hardly knew him and
he didn’t care.

And he was
hardly missed,
quickly replaced, except

he was behind on his payments.

*

You wake up to the social motions
with tired eyes.

You ponder longer the washy minutiae
on your window panes than philosophy,

politics, or the news of the day.
You’re on a kind of autopilot, but at least

it hasn’t steered you wrong.

Your nosy social circle says you’re being lazy,
and need a kick in the face.

Apparently the cycle nowhere
has become a race.

*

Life’s like a buffet.
People take what they can get
until they can’t anymore.

You can have dessert first if you choose.

There’s the one taking a little of everything—
      --oh, he’s “high on life.”

There’s the one taking platefuls of one item off the menu—
      --pizza addict!

There’s the one taking nearly nothing—
      --that hollow sparrow, that holy saint!

There’s the one with platefuls of everything—
      --yes, he is appreciating life in all it’s bounty.

And all of them are full.

And there’s the guy
watching the proceedings, the
walks of life, the
clothing, the
selections.
When he goes home, he
wonders why, and
jots them down, anyway.

And something, call it “God” if you will, or
      whatever, bids him write of himself.
Not oddly self-serving/self-offering.

Life is the people at the buffet line, as much as
what’s on the menu.

“Just the buffet for today.  Tomorrow we’ll
see a place where people’s hearts
and shits and snotty noses
are on display.”

“What’s this buffet?  Can I get in?”

*

We are the wall people.

The poodle won’t have to fetch the ball,

if it bounces right back.

We are the wall people, the pond people.

There is never any shortage of fish.

We eat little.

They propagate madly.

We don’t even have to fish, they just

pop up and plop into our nets,

flopping in shock.

We have seen the world in our pond.

We’ve had visitors from the outside.  We

used to be the more thoughtful, philosophical ones.

Now, we take our early, ill-earned rest—it’s all relative, anyway.

Just that, there’s no meaning.  We have seen it all,

eaten it all.

We are the wall people,

pondering wheels.  We hope that

death is an accident.

*

We saw you in your prime,
when we were children.

We’ve known you while you’ve aged,
grown down just a little.

When you’re finally all washed away by the waves,
or utterly drowned,

we will be the splash just behind you.

*

You can push me into a corner.
I’ll still be there.

You can shove me into a closet.
I’ll still procreate.

I am the shadow of an object in the path of light.
I give weight to an otherwise sane existence.

*