Meal

The idiot boxes have grown smaller
And ubiquitous.
Unavoidable, static channels of small dimensions
But vast reach.
We had a conversation, you never looked up.
There is no point in conversation anymore.
We have nothing to exchange.
This is how evolution proceeds,
Old flesh becomes new,
The bone structure metallic.
I will prepare this meal,
And whether it brings any measure of joy is irrelevant.
Someone or something in the endless reach
Of cyberspace
Will have found a better way to make it
With colors so bright as to be unreal
And words more crisp and assured
Than mine could ever be.

Two Excerpts from the Crow Journal

Crow waits violently.
Who cut all the barbed wire
   tattoos off of thousands of arms?
Shards of flesh, little skin books.
That was then, this is hurt.
Crow waits.
Crow will sew the sky together.
Crow will shape the sky.
Crow will string barbed wire
   together, remove it from
   flesh, make it something else.
Crow will do this at
   the appropriate time.
Crow waits violently.

*

Crow there you go
throwing glass perfume
grenades,
dancing on tinderboxes,
choking a wailing saxophone.
Crow there you go
and here I site,
growing fat drinking water.
One of us will strip naked
and crawl into bed
One of us will refuse
to release final words.

When It Becomes Clear

My wife cannot hurt me.
My friends cannot hurt me.
My parents cannot hurt me.
My in-laws cannot hurt me.
My co-workers cannot hurt me.
My financial advisor cannot hurt me.
My boss cannot hurt me.

The cats, the turtle, and the fish--none can hurt me.
The barista in the cafeteria--she cannot hurt me.
The guy delivering Amazon packages to my door yesterday--he cannot hurt me.
The elderly lady in lavender who bumped into my shopping cart and then
  apologized profusely--in no way can she hurt me.

Only my children can hurt me.
They wield a power all the more dangerous because
  they do not know they possess it
  and if they ever deployed it
  it would be by pure accident
  by pure unawareness
and this makes it more devastating
than any planned attack
could ever be.

I could, if needed, walk away from most anything or anyone.
But before such power
I am unguarded, helpless
  as a newborn who has yet to take their first breath.

Greeting

Her mouth filled with honey
Left by countless bees.
Hydrangeas in her hair, bruise-blue,
Darker than they should be.
Darker than the muddy light can account for.
With her jagged fingernails she carves
A set of instructions into the soft wood of the
Table before her, a tiny shudder rippling through
Her shoulders, dying before the writing
Can be disturbed.
The flutter of wings outside
Heard through the cracked window
Tell her to hurry, and hurry she does.
The instructions finished, she tastes the honey
For the first time, her jaw aching as she
Opens the door to greet the wings.

meditation

all the language around me
is either lecture or therapy-speak
the occasional stray hair of business-speak
there is no conversation
no communication
just stiff, locked words like soft bricks
they build a wall that sometimes flexes but never gives

not for the first time sitting at a stoplight
i had the thought that i should learn to meditate
followed by the thought that it might be ok
if i never heard a word uttered by the human voice again
or saw a word typed out on a screen again
it's a silly thought, a despairing thought, a frustrated thought
but during stoplight moments it feels like truth

i want to find where language is alive
but i don't know where to search
or perhaps that's an excuse
i often think so
and then i return to silence
so when words do come
they can carry the weight of heaven

but heaven is another form of death
and i'm back to dead language
to no conversation, no communication
as much as i love poetry
it has yet to change the world
and that's a horse
i'm not going to start betting on

meditation
is starting to look good.

Gato Negro

We bought wine by the case, then
Gato Negro, acidic and cheap, little plastic black cats
Hanging from a red string
Trapped by the seal
You collected those cats in a chipped dish on the windowsill
When you had enough you strung them together
And hung them beneath the window
By the time we got a real cat, tortoiseshell not black,
They were gone
I never asked what you did with them
You might have told me
Probably I have forgotten
Your eye for detail
Was always much better than mine
As was your ability
To put things away
When they were no longer needed.

16 Lines, Tuesday Afternoon

You begin with discipline
One of us cannot be poor
You begin with a question
One of us will ask for more.

This is how it is divided:
Yours, mine, theirs
A house with four corners,
Three levels and no stairs.

For each mention of health
Seven candles are lit
We feel the dissolving inside
The bones no longer fit.

We thought that we had years
Stretching before us, warm and strong
We have found the path to be cold
One of us always wrong.

take a pitch

He needs to take this pitch, the radio says

I shut the car off before finding out if he did.

By the time I’ve finished grocery shopping and returned to the car the game is over

No comeback in the 9^th

I’m barely paying attention anyway.

I would do well to take a few pitches.

I turn the postgame off and try not to think about whether next week’s groceries will require a dip

                into savings.

It’s only 3:30 in the afternoon.

Beneath the Kindle I discover an Easter card that my in-laws

                gave me last spring.

My in-laws gave me an Easter card.

That’s the kind of people they are.

The card is full of puns

The world could use more people like my in-laws

I should throw the card away or store it somewhere

But I leave it on the end table beneath the Kindle

It’s found a home there and

There is enough rootlessness as it is.

My hand shook this morning but it’s steady now

I had two cups of coffee early like I do every day

Maybe it’s not good for me

But I do it anyway

Gear up for the known

Still the shaking concerned me

I imagined arthritis and dementia, aneurysms and heart attacks

I told myself I’m 42 and in decent health

Take a pitch, that’s what I should do

Look for the curve, look for the change.

I had an out-of-body experience on my 18^th birthday

Brought on by LSD

I looked at my rag doll body slumped by the toilet

There was a pile of housekeeping magazines on the floor

My arm draped over them

Like I was hugging them

I was deeply unimpressed with myself

I thought about Naked Lunch which I was reading at the time

I wanted cosmic spies and talking assholes

Not my silent body hugging housekeeping magazines

I realized I could die and even though I was out of my body I still had no idea

                what death meant

After a while I figured I’d better get back into my body

Didn’t want to die and leave my fellow partygoers with a problem

Didn’t want to die hugging housekeeping magazines next to a toilet

I was most of the way back in my body when D. came in and asked me where I’d been

I moved my lips and my limbs

Thought of the Stephen King story “The Raft”

                how the colors hypnotized the kids

                just before they were eaten

I told D. I was admiring the colors

It was a stupid hippie thing to say

There was no way I could take a pitch then

There was so much infield to explore

So much outfield to traverse.

Fear tastes like tangerines.

I don’t much care for fruit

I eat too much salt

Salt leads to aneurysms

Salt leads to excessive exit velocity.

Harry S. Truman was not a folk hero

He was a stubborn idiot who thought

The mountain would never harm him

That belief got him buried in tons of hot ash and mud

His lake ejected into the air

When the lake landed it was choked with dead timber and poisonous gasses

There’s nothing noble about becoming a myth

There’s nothing romantic about ignorance

Reid Blackburn and David Johnson died in the line of duty

Their deaths were no less painful but they weren’t ignorant

Their work gave something to the world

Harry S. Truman was a hook for sensationalistic TV pieces

I felt bad for his cats, though.

Take a pitch.

Every seven years or so I spend 3-8 months in a state of anxiety

A continuing panic attack

Convinced my heart is about to stop beating even though it’s beating too fast

Convinced I’ll forget how to breathe

My chest tightens and hurts

I think I’m getting dementia

Sure that I will soon be unable to string words together

My daughters will look at me

Their eyes sad and scared

What happened to our father?

They’ll think to our earlier discussions about how the body is just

                a wagon of meat

And they’ll realize it’s true

This blubbering idiot in front of them

This empty meat bag

Was once their father

Is still their father

But he seemed fine, they’ll say

He was laughing and joking and singing Def Leppard songs with us

Until he wasn’t

What is mom going to do now?

This is selfish this is unfair this is a mistake

Where’s our father, where did he go?

Curveball.

Change.

Heater.

How naked we are in front of love.

The bones in my hand hum to think of it

I want go to Jupiter

Naked, pleading, desperate

Take a pitch, take a pitch.

I’m going to name it even if it’s just out of the frame

I’m going to name it even if I never sleep again

I’m going to name it and change the pillowcases

Burnt toast smells like childhood

Char on the teeth and tongue

In future years the char will get rave reviews

                in the foodie publications and websites

But for now it is just grit in the mouth

Scraping and wonder, longing and butter

Take a pitch, spitball, butterball

A mouth full of spiders

A handful of dried leaves

Crackling as they are crunched in a fist

Seasons circle back and eat their own tail

I still love autumn

Even when everything hurts

Even when everything is breaking

The playoffs start in October and it is

                even more important to take a pitch

If I can just steady my hands

Erase the swirling in my eyes

If I can just take a pitch

Then I have a chance

To stay in the lineup.

red birds

red birds will fly out of the east and destroy Paris in a night
crossing guards will turn, shocked, at the oncoming traffic
a lullaby will be hummed in the hopes that whiskey will soon follow
comic books will become yellowed, their lettering too small to read
a disheveled man with a scraggly beard will offer an apple to a young man gassing up his car
a couple will decide they can no longer make a go of it
a new gender will be created and then forgotten
vegetables will become less healthy than meat and grains better than both
the substructure in the thematic basement will collapse and all will suffer bee stings
in all the words a few will be prophetic but no one will get paid
compost will be a more useful instrument than the nail and microchip

those that can light candles, will
those that can sing, will
those that can smoke, will
those that can cut, will
those that can plant, will
those that can roll their tongue, will
those that can snuff candles, will

there may be a summer
there may be a fall
there may be a winter
there may be a spring
there may be one of these or none of these

red birds will fly out of the east and destroy Paris in a night

Well Buk

Well Buk

Things aren’t going so well

Almost ready to pull some of your books down from the shelf

Well Buk

Things aren’t going so well

And here I am writing a poem

The more things change…

Bullshit, you’d say

And you’d be right

Buk, I’m sitting here in a house I might not be able to continue to afford

(You’d laugh, O you’d laugh!)

I’m thinking of that late spring night in Spokane

In that shitty apartment with the shitty roommate

I was drinking Boone’s Farm, strawberry I think

And the shitty roommate told me to turn on the radio

He’d entered my name in a drawing because he’d already entered himself earlier

So I did

And the DJ said my name

I’d won $50 without doing anything

Mentally I was already converting that $50 to Boone’s and Lucky Strikes

When the DJ said as a winner I was now entered in a grand prize drawing

Big deal, I thought

But damned if I didn’t win that grand prize a few days later

A thousand bucks

Used it to get out of Spokane and start this life

Went from Boone’s Farm to wine with corks and gave up the smokes eventually

You woulda laughed, o you woulda laughed!

Well Buk I quit writing for a few years there but started up again

Stories this time, rarely poems

Been doing it for over a decade now

Nothing like what I wrote in those Spokane days

When the ghosts in my haunted head were much more interesting

And I could feel the vastness of the stars

I still feel that vastness, sometimes

The Grim Reaper touch isn’t that far away, probably

Which is why I think it was probably dumb to give up the smokes

Win some, lose some I guess

But I tell you Buk

Spokane was some fucked-up shit for sure

Yet I miss the realness of it

Everything seems so vague now

Guess that’s what they call maturity

I miss the lover’s touch and the fire of mind

Don’t really miss the Boone’s Farm, though, or the shitty roommate

Call it a draw, then

This is an old man poem, Buk

A looking-back poem

I thought I was an old man then

I guess we all feel old, all the time

I wrote a story last month, Buk

Pretty decent one I thought

Got all ready to submit it

And realized it didn’t have a happy ending and the kid didn’t live

So there’s no market for it

That’s how it is now, Buk

Happy endings are good

Weird endings are ok

Bleak endings don’t have a market

The kid in Cujo would make it today

And no one reads poetry

Shit Buk, maybe I’m not doing so well

But I’m still writing

This poem is in longhand, even (like those old Spokane days)

My handwriting is terrible but at least I don’t have the shakes

I curbed my excesses, Buk

Decided I wanted to live after all

So I can’t complain

But I tell ya, Buk

I really miss the smokes.

--4/25/16

intricacies

What does the wolf see?
The wolf is busy reading Bolano and listening to New Order.

What does the lamp see?
The lamp prefers Bordeaux and finds whiskey disagreeable.

What does the common cold see?
The common cold would remind you that common is not a derogatory term.

What does the bed see?
The bed has the sheets pulled over its eyes and prefers the weight of two over the weight of one.

What does the milk see?
The milk is lonely, everyone it knows has some degree of lactose intolerance.

What does the cat see?
The cat has no need to tell.

What does the air see?
Loneliness and regret, sadness and one-sided conversations.

What does the wolf see?
The wolf is not a wolf. The wolf is over-used. Backwards the wolf is flow.

man is the animal

man is the animal

light a candle, light a candle

spraypaint hearts on brick walls and the foreheads of those who would kill

death comes, death comes

is there a white light? is it a black void?

my death will come too and i won’t have a say in it

i don’t want a say in it

birds painted on the flesh come to life and fly free

birds escape from my wounds and return as falling snow

angels are mathematical, man is the animal

angels carry their own candles

man burns his hands

i detest war

i hate empty platitudes like "support our troops"

i don't believe that you can defend my freedom while working for those who wish to take it away

those three lines were spoken by another but state it better than i ever could

we kill, we kill, we kill

man is the animal

what saves a heart? what creates a heart?

rub a little dirt in the blood

it’s no longer possible to hide in the forests, they are almost gone

every tribe starts out in love

tribe of one, tribe of many

tribe of hearts

a pulsing heart feels so strange in cold hands

galaxies are born out of violence

the universe was born in violence

humanity is the universe seeing itself, the first evolutionary step

can we give birth without violence?

who defines the cleansing aspects of destruction?

man is the animal

a cool drink of water to each killer

lay them down in a circle of hearts

give them more than one book

point out the stars whose light is only now reaching us

we are all travelers

we are all tired

we are all tribe

man is the animal

--11/13/15