I'm tired.
Again.
I'm tired of being in this place,
this vacant, empty place
where it's just me
and a burnt joint, stained walls
and floors that splinter your feet when you walk.

I'm tired
of sitting here without shoes,
with filthy clothes
and a visage not even a mother can love.
I'm tired of it,

this house I guess I built
on a country road someplace
in the heart of Missouri,
surrounded by the obese.

I fear I'll have to move,
uproot everything, find
another street,
another city,
another state,
to call home
but I can't.
This house is me.

I want to die.
I want to place that gun to my head,
loaded with hollow point lead,
smooth brass,
and squeeze the trigger.

I want to burn it down.
I want to see the flames reach 300 hundred feet in the air.
I want to see the two neighbors from a mile down the road
huddle up in blankets across the street
and revel in my tragedy.
I want to see them.

I'm destitute.
Again.
Nothing to offer but a cup of water,
only the thirstiest would drink from me.

What more can I do?
What more can I be?
Was it any different when I did the right thing?
More of the same thing, I think.
Just a few more interested faces peering in, thinking
"this is a nice place, but I wouldn't want to live here."

Everyone, same thing.

"Nice place, let's find a better one."

And the slums are full of people.

I'd guess I priced myself out of the market,
but I'm giving myself away.
I can't give more than I have.
I can't pay someone to live here.

my head is splitting
from the top down.
There's pressure, an ice pick
slowly sinking, crushing
the fragile spirit I have left.

I can't be alone.
I can't be alone forever.
I can be in solitude. I prefer it at times,
but I can't be alone.

I can't have noone to care for.
I can't just care for myself.
I don't want the world.
I don't want houses and cars and abundance,
I want just what I need, nothing more,
but my needs are unfilled.
I can't be alone.

the soles of my feet are raw.
My face has the palor of a corpse.
Beneath my smile,
the flush skin,
there lives a zombie.

depraved, cursed
with a hunger that can't be filled,
doesn't know how to be.

they won't love you for who you are.
they won't love a zombie.

no one loves a corpse. No one wants a shell.
Corpses are buried.
Corpses are burned,
tossed out in the air in sadness
or in celebration depending
on the wishes of the deceased.

and those who die alone are left on the side of the street,
treated with indignity.

the homeless?
tossed out in a pine box?
would they have been eaten in an earlier day?
our peaceful world, our thriving society does them,
does us
the favor of letting us live,
but for what?

Is a life void of love worth living?
Is a life with no passion sustainable?
am I to be angry or sad or depressed because I won't die?
because I chose life? and choose it again and again despite
that it's proven itself hostile to me?

why won't I die?

maybe I still have that little silver piece,
that slice of hope,
lost up in the rafters somewhere.
maybe,
just maybe,
there's someone out there who'll move in
who'll see this beautiful house,
beset with neglect,
spurned for it's rough exterior,
overgrown weeds,
and give it life, love it.

do I have a time to expire?
Is God so cruel that he'd give me
just enough of a taste to keep going?
Is THIS LIFE?
to be dragged along the road
behind a truck for years,
hospitalized, healed,
and returned to the pavement?
Is THIS LIFE?
to be tortured with glimpses
and tastes and visions of happiness
to have them eternally shuttered up
as soon as your soul begins to be lifted?
Is it to have your legs endlessly kicked from beneath you?
to have love, peace,
regularly torn from your grasp?

what happens to those who don't learn?
Who struggle? To those Who can't make sense of things?
What happens to those who don't know
that it's their own choices that shutter them up?
What happens to those who do, but can't change?

Is it always starting from scratch?
from square one?
Over and over?

Is this life?

I know what it's like to have a warm home.
Mine has been cold for years.

dark wood calm

dark wood calm
white tail walks
alone in the forest
he let his head down
low to the ground
feet crunch leaves,
no finesse
light beams stab
the eyes of the buck
he stares
drawn to it
braced
a voice
calls out in a language
he can't hear
the strange clicks and hums
of human tongues
and a shout
he leaps
ten feet in the air
white tail flashes behind him
gone, hidden
by the ivy and the oak.
he went close once
against his better judgement,
drawn by light,
stunned with beauty
he let
the curious appendages of men
caress his back
he ate.
his hope realized.
he sat
in the company of men
he sat
and the day was calm
a shot
he lept
hind legs buckled beneath him
working but only barely
they followed the trail of blood
for two miles
lost it in the stream
his breath came shallowly
for weeks
he stared into the darkness
leaned heavily
legs dangled over the precipice
and he panted
he didn't slide
weeks.
he walked through the pain
thirst dried his tongue
he walked to the edge of the water
leaned down deeply, drank
he limped.
months.
alone in the calm
in the fog laden field,
the cool morning

"Are you Mr. William Stafford?" "Yes, but...." Well, it was yesterday. Sunlight used to follow my hand. And that's when the strange siren-like sound flooded over the horizon and rushed through the streets of our town. That's when sunlight came from behind a rock and began to follow my hand. "It's for the best," my mother said—"Nothing can ever be wrong for anyone truly good." So later the sun settled back and the sound faded and was gone. All along the streets every house waited, white, blue, gray: trees were still trying to arch as far as they could. You can't tell when strange things with meaning will happen. I'm [still] here writing it down just the way it was. "You don't have to prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready for what God sends." I listened and put my hand out in the sun again. It was all easy. Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came, Why It came.

—William Stafford

I think.

That thought is unworthy, though.
I
can't be sure.

It's somewhere... masked
by the sable space
inside me.

To you, void,
one word:
who?
I ask that with reservation.
Don't want the answer.
I have the suspicion
that you may be dangerous.

Worthy and true...
This thought...

More likely, it's what others
see as their great deep blue;
the thing that seethes and throbs,
that sea inside them
teeming with a trillion
planktons of thought;
with sharks,
with the rare blue whale,
the orca, cunning porpoises,
sea turtles

small in the expanse.
Drops in the great bucket.

Perhaps my sea
is at night;
new moon,
clouded sky,

only the distant candles of dead men
borne on the rafts
of the ship wrecked, abandoned,
cut through the darkness like stars.
They float lonely,
greeted only
by the sound of lapping waves.
One by one,
they lift up their last candle
and die out.

Candles burn to the hilt.
The matches are used up.
Daylight never comes.

No rain water.
Nothing to catch it in, anyway.

The sharks
circle silently beneath them.
They wait
on the big wave
the rogue wave
or the storm to
dump the dead
into the sea.

The wasteland is
as barren for them
as for the silenced.
The silenced;
they thirsted.

Yeah, I've been heavily considering just picking uip and leaving for someplace I've never been. I've got an itch, and it needs scratched, dammit. I'm fully prepared to let my life just fall apart, while I go live another one elsewhere. I'll only have marginally less than what I have right now on my return... If I return.

You should totally come. Dash it all. Chalk it up to youthful whimsy. Chalk it up to capitlizing on opportunities before you're tied down with real responsibilities (house payments, kids, marriage, etc). Chalk it up to spontaneity or whatever makes you feel free. Chalk it up to whatever lets you see the world with new eyes. What's it matter in the long run? You're only in your early to mid twenties once... This is primetime.

At least, that's a large part of my reasoning. I feel too young to be absorbed by the freakin rat race. I'm never going to make it through the glass ceiling anyways, so what the rush in getting there? I'm not jaded yet, dammit. I want to see the world naively while I can.

Adendum

And yet, I resist. I'm torn between identifying the resistance as reason or fear. Both are logical, both are probably accurate, but one of the two is more dominant.

Then there's the idealist in me, the part that screams: I want to do something that undeniably asserts my indivuiduality and vitality. Something that places me in a situation I've never been in so I can see myself for the first time again.

I've become too much a part of my surroundings, and unless I do something about it, I'll fade out. I'll wither and disappear. I'll become a gray and frail shadow of what I could be. When I'm old, I want to be entertained by my memories, not haunted by the vacccuum of routine. My fear is that I'll wake up one day and wonder why I even bothered.

If you were me:

You would feel a golden hue softly glowing, and warmth.
Flashing bright light, ice cold touches, pitch dark, confusion would be by you , but you would be the golden glow which slowly grows and dims.
You would smell cut grass and sawdust. You would sing sadly at times...
You would see oceans, mountains.
You would see waves of wheat looking weeds, golden in the sun like its healthy cousin.
You would feel alone in a beautiful place.
There would be moments of longing, and moments of peace.
There would be visions of snow falling from the night as you look up into it, the flakes lit bright as they come.
You would see horse gnawed fences and horses face to the ground, always just away.
You would hear nothing.
You would gaze into the sky often, only in brevity.
You would feel ability, and you would feel lack of it .
You would know that things wll be all right.
You would hesitate, but you would go.
You would feel.
You would feel love.
You would feel to cry sometimes, and you would feel to laugh.
You would feel wounds He suffered for you.
You would feel wounds you've caused others.
You would feel how much some love you, and wish you would feel how much you love them.
You would feel about little things and think little of big things and think deeply of all things.
You would think about glaciers and trees and life. You would love beauty.
You would be melancholy for its charm.
You would feel hope and it would come on the wings of a dove.
You would feel steel in your soul, covered by flesh and flesh inside it.

I let the iron rust on your machine.

I stood upon it, stamped my feet,
and watched water drip down
on your cool, calm world.

Only the clearest expression of my love, darling.
Only vivid honesty.

So large, sinking,
in a quiet place,
Sweetly filling holes...
sweetly
circuits
gently vibing
gently
in the holy dark
(vibing for me).

pretty metal eyes,
light behind them,
dark with depth,
will drip oil
when the rust
cankers them.

I tell you this
regretfully.
It was a beautiful piece
Of technology.

You walk each day, your bangs
in the breeze,
eyes turned skyward,
books in your arms;

I watch you, alone in the world
at the bus stop,
cold in morning gusts,
bundled tight
against groping old men of the snow.

You are an ember.
A quiet one, faithful, contributing
heat in the company of large coals.
You die alone.

What are you? Who?
The answer comes on the cusp of a whisper,
and is forgotten. You find
yourself again, in the same place.

You sit with your hands on your forehead,
Wrestling with being.

You are your own jury, you,
who sit at the cafeteria tables, teasing
each other and absorbing
each other. You
who walk sweetly in the path of duty, assured
of your place in the world. I see you. I know you.

You are no stranger to me, when you bury your face in a screen
or, when you look ahead, eyes steeled against me,
a potential source of pain or rejection or
disappointment.

I am your companion.

Slow plucked tune,
humming away in the back;
still. The air,

resonant in emptiness,
resolute and demanding,
relentless in silence,
somehow warm;

whose calm tendril wraps,
arms, in wisps and wafts,
invisibly hug me;
gentle, gently…

In great comfort, untroubled,
I recline on airliners; onward,
to California or,
to Mexico, or New Zealand.

No, its when
I see you happy under evening
shade in the arms
of the ones that you love, that I'm struck.

Or, when
you laugh, carefree,
like the wind
or a sheet on a line on the beach.

It's when
you meet me,
anticipation as
a glint in your eye in the sun,
a sparkle
from the star that shimmers
down to you
that I could be love.

With interest;
when you hold out hope for me,
rely on me,
yes, when you
want to
be with me I fear.

On happiness

it bubbles out of me like
a brook by a fawn in the forest

spilling over the hedges
flurrying, bouncing off the rocks
and sweeping down the
waterways, wildly flailing.

Exultant, spreading
through my being,
a wildfire heat,
searing the tips
of my dried reeds,

blackening them, of them,
building a fertile ground for
the trees to come

I am aware of the fleeting nature of flame,
how the light burns out.

On hope:

I sat in the company of friends, today,
I was loved,

but, the evening found me silent
on the horizon,
caught me, searching
the overcast skyline
seeking or, rather, dashing
myself against the clouds

I hung limp in the low light
damp, beneath the cloud cover.

There is no place
for a man of the sea,
a man of hours.

Perhaps, in the company of
angry schools, swarming, simmering
swelling in the depths,
a man of the sea, an urchin
man o war, steeped in brine,
and selfish.
will linger in the current,
moved, and moved, and moved.

I glide through the plankton fields,
the fertile plankton fields,
the clouds of living things,

on feeling overcast:

I'm caught in fleeting moments;
rain on a window I
wash away.

My eye's glimmer's
dulled by leaden clouds,
weighing down on me
onus added to my burden.

My face is the face
of an ox,
dull and desirable
for what strength it provides-
left to sit out in harsh weather.

I'm native
to inclement conditions.
It has not made me hearty.

I'm not the stallion
sought after,
yearned for;
not the sort that wars begin for;
none to die for me;
no, I'm found ghostly,
resting heavily,
by the road,
alone.

in the water
a gaunt boat slips
from the grasp
of displacement

below

the ghosts of old men tend to their aches,
preferring the comfort of wrecks to
the frenzy of the middle aged;
the productive people searching
for ways to escape
their common predicament.

The young
ghosts fuck off,
scaring schools of fish
and startling the wind above them,
sending it flying into oblivion,

if

I can be cliche for a minute
whose to say that
things fade in death?
perhaps they just slip from our view.
Life, if nothing else, feels constant.

Its left to the children
to sit, eyes ablaze, and greet the old
ship slipping, falling
like a feather falls,
through the water.

There is a curled bird,
being claimed
by the earth. The sun
breathes no life into it.

Its blackened beak is
bent into its wings,
snapped like twigs,
posed as though
it were preening eternally.

except for the morbid, and
the curious child,
there are ants.

My hand drifts downward,
a summer leaf
escaping from the confines
of the branch.

It flies elated, moved
by the breezes for a moment, apart
from anything, flush with
photosynthesis, infused with
life and free.

The moment is a life time.

it has forever, once fallen,
to reflect.

But reflection lasts as long as restlessness abates
and yearning returns, and aching,
longing inflames the limbs;

when its bleak and humid,
bleary sun beating down the spirits,
suffocating, smothering the fleeting sense
of hope that flickers;

when the worn out car, cankered, rusty,
a friend to the peeling picket fence patched
with chain link,
unforgiving and rough, yawns,
weeds scratching unabashedly
at its overexposed private parts,
vulgar and unkempt
does it cringe,

and look back at the branch,
once an anchor, a home, and feel again to be a part of it?

Does sadness drench its frail body?
Stung by awareness that
long before the living leaves fall,
it will be muddied, half eaten,
fading into the ground?
Where is solace for the leaf who escapes the branch?

I spun in circles
yesterday, and let my feet down
dangerously on the wet concrete.
(I left my shoes inside)

I'm focused on this keyboard, like a tv set,
glancing up in intervals,
occaisionally lifting my
eyes. I'm wrapped in my blanket, hunched over, on the floor,
shirt off, and tired. My eyelids
have sandpaper lining, soothed surpsrisingly, by friction.
and weight.

My hands are gentle, fraying on the cuticles,
fingernails trimmed and uneven,

My eyes are shy in the mirror, unless
I'm looking indirectly at them. Then, I stare for minutes.

Hours are almost fiction.
They slip away like a woman taking her leave.
They don't quite vanish, no, I do.

I am prone to wander. I stuimble off down the avenues of my great concrete city, my
massive metropolis, my ghost Cleveland, lonely. It has pigeons,
stirred by the occaisional pedestrian. There is a sky,
but all is quiet. The buildings are empty.
Maintained, well groomed gardens,
parks invite the avid, freewheeling lovers,
the balls to the breeze motherfuckers I despise,
and I welcome them. There's room,
for thousands, millions, maybe.

I see a gray paper in the cold gutter, washed over with water
and other liquid refuse gliding to the sewer, which leads the way to the nearby
river. Water has walkways, too. It wanders in the form of the cloud, and
I mimic it. You'll fiind one wrenching itself and pouring itself out when the air is harsh,
deeply drinking when over other bodies
of water.

I am a mockingbird
repeating only what I hear. I am no great God bird.
You won't likely find me in the air over
you. But, I am a bird, and I have wings.

On universal behaviors:

I am the yelping dog,
aware of his master, aware
of his home, yet prone
to run.

Vauge, like sunscreen wishing it wasnt

wasted on a place that doesnt see the sun,

on the sidewalk,

the street skin,

formed from the cells of those that once lived in it.

Entity, living,

not breathing,

Very, very ugly, my friend.

I love you. Leave me, dont go.

I see. And you. Fight. The undercurrent. Cunt.

I am. . .. . . modest redress. Is all I seek for

my wounds. They are like yours. The product of loving fists. The sort that would set you

straight if you could see where you were going. What do you see? Air. perhaps,

I see women eying me with desire thinking

to themselves that Im something worth fucking. Im not.

Wish they'd catch that at the first. They dont.

They do catch a hard glance, one of fear and hesitation, the sort

that's best suited for the enemy.

I am my enemy.

I am my enemy.

I twitched; this ursine fellow;

vile nod. Let it rip pieces off of you, peel you like old paint.

Eyelash crackling, snapping off like the edge of an icicle.

Its a knee jerk response. To fall apart, I think.

You walk each day, your bangs

in the breeze,

eyes turned skyward,

books in your arms;

I watch you, alone in the world

at the bus stop,

cold in morning gusts,

bundled tight

against groping old men of the snow.

You are an ember.
A quiet one, faithful, contributing

heat in the company of large coals.

You die alone.

What are you? Who?

The answer comes on the cusp of a whisper,

and is forgotten. You find

yourself again, in the same place.

You sit with your hands on your forehead,

Wrestling with being.

You are your own jury, you,

who sit at the cafeteria tables, teasing

each other and absorbing

each other. You

who walk sweetly in the path of duty, assured

of your place in the world. I see you. I know you.

You are no stranger to me, when you bury your face in a screen

or, when you look ahead, eyes steeled against me,

a potential source of pain or rejection or

disappointment.

I am your companion.

The thing that

touches my mind more than

anything is

the thought of improvement.

I could list for you

a list of

my personal projects, but

you wouldn’t be thrilled by it.

Still, it is my life.

I often curse Gods creations.

I’ve found them wretched, burning and burning

like a ball;

to me they are sometimes the sum of all bile.

I find them churning, and falling over each other, tossed around

by spirits and vicious unheard laughters

haunting everything.

I find them,

they find me,

wish they wouldn’t. Fuckers.

This is how we do

when the sunshine burns your skin off.

It’s as dangerous as drinking too much. Excess, my fellows,

is the pillar of all society, tempered with moderation.

The soul is in excess. The drive, the run.

Funny how it slips away when you get it.

Angry, maybe.

Like a child interested in other things than you,

or a cat obsessed with its solitude.

I sit on my hands and wait

I’d imagine if my mind wasn’t mired, again the word, in peat moss,

peat, or muckin mud fuckin mud. Mid shipmen, floating ocean,

the flotsam on the waves. Immobile on the skin of the sea

static, like your tv unchanging on an empty channel. Let a bird drop down

on either and your peace is disturbed. It’s gotta eat, right? Perhaps.

a ratifying witness: I see a darkness

Its good to be in love.

Im happy for all

of you in that great state.

Im somewhat burdened

By the thought

of undying connection

spanning life. It must

Be the borderline in me

Speaking. Its

the fairly volatile

part of me

that resists the notion.

The part of me that

in anger throws profanities

at a slight slight,

my interpreter of events,

my own personal prophet.

Allusion requires awareness at a level

Im incapable of right now. It requires something less solemn than I am prepared to offer;

an imagination that isnt mired in the

peat moss of my own personal post-fall Eden; the place

I cant get to, dear friend. It requires something a little more living than

I am prepared to present. Instead, my present

state of mind is somewhat akin to the deer you'd see on the side

of the road, or the condemned with utter lifelessness in his eyes. Indeed

Im dead.

You could watch my chest heave. If you would, watch it rise and fall like

bread baking in the oven interrupted by the bothersome child. Ill tempered, my chest rises and falls with the sun of my consciousness. My living water tap spouts in bursts; justice for picking the desert as my home. It is my head on the curb, biting, waiting.

Its a damn shame, too. It came with such a pretty face. At least the eyes will be untouched, when the jackboot comes cracking

down, dimming the already dead world.

Final moments; my future, my past,

My history awakens within me a sense of something stronger

Than I am prepared to present. Dead, fuck, dead.

For those who gaze skyward

Helium mind,

angry at the clouds,

obstructions.

The mans eye

view from here,

from the ground up

looking to the skies

looking to the stars

through the ozone

layer, resonating

out past the stratopause

and the spheres,

Finds me in a sleepy mood.

Trust

The green vine

simply, sweetly

climbing.

Face

the erring

bedridden fool.

Whisper on the shore bound breeze;

Leave the shadows

fighting on the wall.

The flicker,

The candle,

The flame.

1.

Frosted glade

ice sparkling suspended

In the air;

the marshmallow fluff

Depressed branches;

Deceptive.

2.

I bear the weight of snow.

that’s a poetic thought. I bear

and bear, and bear.

To myself I bare my burdens,

flashing them briefly to God.

I hold in my hand the tokens of

my many weights. I turn them slowly,

gazing with the gaze of ownership.

3. Lonliness

A wiccar basket

In the corner below

A home.

I know what the east wind felt like

on the plains,

the dry earth.

I know what it felt like

alone at the edge of the city

with uneasy anticipation

waiting for machine thunder

to roll in the sky.

I sat peaceably.

watching the window

in earnest.

A flash

fell gently on

the still

of

my town,

next door.

In a box

my size,

arms by

my side

immobile.

Then the east wind rained on me.

A fierce wind. Strong and fierce.

The kind that carries cattle across

State lines and drops them,

sucks lakes dry.

The wind that throws homes

to the ground

and tosses babies

arbitrarily.

I felt stac-

atto vibrations

rumbl-

ing. Echoes

carried off

The sand.

I knew what flashes meant.

And daylight came in instances.

A blink that lit the city up.

The glow of the city changing.

A quiet red and orange,

quiet human red.

And impact, and impact, and impact, and impact

in wicked cadence and

a searing flame.

And impact and impact

An echo

An impact.

These things,

Hammer beaten,

Saw knicked,

Stabbed and scraped,

Are my dearest friends.

What am I to do with them,

Rascals, and vagabonds.

Roaming where they ought not

Punishing the cities with

Their presence

Spitting out the vilest contempts.

These, mangy and refused,

Partners in unspeakable evil,

And participatory in holiness,

Feel more than I can say.

I think I let my mind drift, mundane and

Wholly wholly ugly.

There was no rhythm in

The only place that mattered

Murder, darling sweetie pie

sugar and the tasty, dainty

milling

That creates us

I’m a brooder

shuffling my feet and

fingering my chin.

I'm found upon the floor

And I would sing the song

Of Whitman - genius that evades me

Constant effort. Will you egg me on?

O vicious, vagrant, circle how, they relate?

The garbage truck sweeps roads for filthy pieces.

I’m the thunder and din of

Eagles on the mountain side.

I, the tiger?

I, the gone,

He who went,

The been,

He who was,

The is,

The flagrant,

The fighter,

Foul, full of soul, and

Bleeding.

I would offer peace treaties.

You’d do well to trust me.

Feel the fire on your face?

The flame that trickles up your arm?

Scalding paths are only there

To anger you.

Murder on the country side, my friends, and fire in mans bowel.

Where hase it I I ii iGone??

Al Jezeera, oh my favorite gospel. Selected primarily for your vehemence.

Ah, refreshement from the She Seneca sha sha Hebron.

Incredulous, I write for what, my ego? I write for writings sake.

My sop I hand to you now, do what you will quickly.

I vacate the table.

Write what you want for your sake! For your sake! To hell with the world of letters! To hell with the judgments inexorably passed upon you!

To hell with you! To hell with Fuck! With one! With anger, sentimentality! With indifference! With echoes and echoes of maladroit inadjustment! Adjunct! Attorney! Prefect! Praetorian! Roman! Citizen! Awake and let the dust that settled on you fly! There’s a sky above you! Fuck it!

this would reach across the stars to feel the tendrils of the Milky Way and other galaxies, floating masses

I need more life. I need more life. To experience life. And lliiive it itt …. .. My heart is fallen.

Smoldering coal drops on white cloth;

the edges glow, ash along the rim.

The carbon drops, leaves holes

like rot in a spotless plane,

the canvas of a good soul.

Present, like rain,

it splatters up, splashes on you.

Soaks your feet.

The grumbling sky spits.

Grimy newsprint flips in the wind and

swims in the gutters.

Water, exhaust

mix in the smog.

Tires hiss along the roads.

I am drunk

With the rain.

I sit in solitude

waiting, hand on mouth,

in patience.

And the birds are singing, glories to

The Almighty

And my heart is breaking with the weight of

With the weight of

Breaking

With the weight

I, with weight,

Am breaking

Broken, breaking

And my body still remains

And the Heavens change again

And stars fill void

Upon void and I

Am patient

Waiting

While

The air, with thunder, breaks upon me.

In the clouds that fill the earth,

That fill me

I wait.

Glory, fill me

Horror, industry,

And love all fill me.

Trembling souls are dying

On the lawn

And trembling heathens in the mine-fields

Spare none with their weeping

While the waning days

Turn light to dark to light to dark

And there is trembling in its constancy

A low vibration

Sharing sentiment with

the fearful

Home

Home,

Would be filled

I’d hope

With something rare.

Oh, love, and love, and love

lone things tremble when

the others turn away.

They stretch and stretch and stretch

while God makes them wretch and wrench

and twist and injure

the only bit that lives within them.

Saying healings coming,

but the sun hasn’t risen on the east in years.

Hasn’t risen on the west,

but wind comes chilling the wet and weary

And the east wind, havoc in its hand, comes with the scent of dead men

On its breath.

Saying healings coming

Coming

On its way

Well when?

And then, and then, and then

The earth in constant night and deep winter

With the birds frozen to the lines, even

Currents stilled,

Is turning slowly as the sun dims and dims

On striving men that

Only meant to draw it close.

Tender shoots that die before the snow,

Young apples never ripened,

Old men stalwart with their fires

Old cars, new cars, poison in the rafters

On the bridge, the Golden Gate, the desolate

Are frozen to the windows

And the skyscrapers reach up still

braced against the acid rain

but all that comes is snow.

I told you who I am.

Let me tell you what I know.

I told you.

And before

I go

I'd see you smile.

I'd watch the light light

on your lips;

a finch on a wire, pleasant,

full, with a song

for the weary.

I’d watch your lips

and they'd be

a hushed piece of intimacy

tender

that captures itself

in quiet company and is moved

in all directions like a drop.

(as I am)

I'd see the sky,

I’d see the sky

and it would rest on my shoulders.

I'd square them

and the night would fall.

Your drop would be, to me,

hope.

Let this page come out of me

I wonder if you’d want it when

You saw

What scrawled across the bleak surface

Of this white plane.

I’m a traveler, maybe, somewhat stationary

Traveler.

In relation to the people of this

World, I’m something of an

Atom.

In relation to the controversial

Swirlings of the racial divide,

The oceans, constant storms seem so distant

With a flash of lightening only in the night at

Distant intervals.

I don’t much know the strife,

Don’t much know the strife,

Of the oppressed

Except

By expectation.

A leaf on a tree of millions,

I would fall to be my own tree.

As a shaker’s grain of salt, I come out.

I would be the shaker.

I would be the body, but I, the ring finger,

Am what I would not be.

I would be oppressed.

Dare, I say, I am what I am.

Autumn turned her back

On us

And we all rustic

Relived

The aching moment that

Became us as snow fell,

As wind pressed against us.

And then,

We whispered to ourselves

And we, all fallen, cold, like

The bare trees,

Naked like the bluejays

Made our ways

We made our ways

And walked our paths

And trod the earth

And trod the earth

And found our homes.

Baby blue is

Marketable in

Distant markets.

There are dreams that

Feel more real than you.

Wash, wash, wash, wash

Thats all there is

To it

If you really think

About it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait

Is all you

Ever do.

meditation on home

Fog is often

Found

In the lonely

Valley

That is always

Quiet.

Logan II

There is a pall upon the sky today.

The dreary fog above us is

an echo,

somber, offering its tears.

The leaves are downcast.

We are buried in white ribbons.

We echo dark visions.

Ghosts, and ghosts, and ghosts,

plus five,

good brothers,

future farmers of America,

some stalwart souls,

sons and fathers.

Beyond that I’m not sure.

Just this;

I think

that if they chose they’d end

another way.

I saw two men today
they ate together
father was an old mechanic
he wore coveralls and
brown saddle shoes
worn with his age
as scuffed up as him
like they never left his feet
I saw them in reflections
(the window shined them back)
son was wide
his shirt stretched tight
his gestures demanded
yet laughter skipped across his face.
mechanic watched his cup for what might come
he gazed, I saw
with heaviness
from age, perhaps
from private burdens
and still son spoke on
unheard sigh shuddered
they left together

sometimes I would feel another soul and so I sleep
I make my place a comfort
but no man
no man can breathe submersed
no man
no man can steal his heart
no man can

I've read the poetry of
langston hughes, a consummate
american,
no doubt.

He spoke of oppression and
the american dream. I felt
his words reach into me and grab hold, like
a musician holds his mandolin,
singing something free
to me as a
lullaby.

I, too, feel a part of America.

I feel the rope burns
of the impovershed
with them.
I take my place in the majority.
Squarely.

I feel a part of the real America.

Waking each morning,
bleary eyes crusted
with sedation,
filled with soft lethargy,
comfortable and sweet

I understand so little.
So I go

and meet my bills.
I battle them, embrace them,
hate them, embody them.
I dedicate
myself to them
completely, the purest fidelity
towards them
pouring from
me, a winding path
into the economy,
the great study of humanity
that consumes this nation,
consumes me.
I am tired.

on troubled hearts

I woke up at 4 am this morning, no reason
for it but a faint pain,
not unlike tennyson's vision. Except,
I did not see an angel floating heavenly above me
eyes fixed upon me enraptured,
adoring. I saw an empty room,
with barren walls, and a bed
with no sheet.

Its a dim buzz,
the sort you'd find below a
street light, in the dark
in the dead night.

it draws the life
from your eyes

you watch,
no passion, heavy
with your heartbeat a
soundtrack,

your jaw will tense
and hold

stare, past the glaring light
see what your missing
look to the fields, to
the sihlouettes of trees
and the faint light pollution
of the nearest town

move on, past the creek
at the bottom of the hill
through the woods, past
the dead stump and
the fallen tree bridge,

bless the deer beds
with your scent and move
ignore the trickle of the brook
tumbling, and glide
through the branches.

you can step up off the rock and float
to the leaves
to join the owls
keeping watch for food.

the ivy,
climbs you sullenly
and secretly. Press
your lips to the bark,
and spit.

Its dim, the stars
provide no light.

the leaves blend into
the hides of animals
hyenas, in ohio,
preposterous, but in
dead wood night,
you feel them
breathing.
they move.

you know it. you heard them.

and the faint breeze must be the collected
exhalations of the pack.
they stifle their laughter.
you hope for the moon.
but its cold, and their breath
has chilled your bones.

I think.

That thought is unworthy, though.
I
can't be sure.

It's somewhere... masked
by the sable space
inside me.

To you, void,
one word:
who?
I ask that with reservation.
Don't want the answer.
I have the suspicion
that you may be dangerous.

Worthy and true...
This thought...

More likely, it's what others
see as their great deep blue;
the thing that seethes and throbs,
that sea inside them
teeming with a trillion
planktons of thought;
with sharks,
with the rare blue whale,
the orca, cunning porpoise,
sea turtles

small in the expanse.
Drops in the great bucket.

Perhaps my sea
is at night;
new moon,
clouded sky,

only the distant candles of dead men
borne on the rafts
of the ship wrecked, abandoned,
cut through the darkness like stars.
They float lonely,
greeted only
by the sound of lapping waves.
One by one,
they lift up their last candles
and die out.

Candles burn to the hilt.
The matches are used up.
Daylight never comes.

No rain water.
Nothing to catch it in, anyway.

The sharks
circle silently beneath them.
They wait
on the big wave
the rogue wave
or the storm to
dump the dead
into the sea.

The wasteland is
as barren for them
as for the silenced.
The silenced;
they thirsted.

First new work in a while

he broke down hard again
pull the reins.

he lay spread eagle in
the snow
sick, exposed.
a shiver like a rumbling heater
starting in the cold
morning warming
the home's bones
is all that keeps
him going.

he's long since lost
feeling in his limbs

his instinct
to survive
to stay on life
to ride that crazed horse,
eroded,
lulls him to sleep
a little baby

born again
into the calm face of death
without violence
no fear
with love
with beauty
his heart
beats slowly
more slowly than before
in hours, the setting sun
will slow it more
his breath
grows short

they wait for him
in warm chairs
or couches, rather, busied
knowing
he's got it handled
he's in good hands (his own)

and so
he dies
alone