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

Blogging in earnest?

Who knows? I'll give it another shot at least for the sake of healthy habits.

Today: I woke up, ate, sent money to myself, chilled, read the news, ate, drove, watched a movie, blogged.

Tonight: I'm listening to music, and thinking about putting an end to my procrastination habit tomorrow.

He clings to mother.
She gives her strength to him
despite that the sun has sapped it from her.
She is barren as the land;
the sun burnt right through them.

Flies dance with
shadows on the ceiling
for hours.
Eyes watch them from the dark faces of ghosts.
Their feet bleed.

These ghosts,
are brought muddy water mixed
with laundry water, human waste
from the town twenty miles away,
but its wet, and they are drying out.
They drink with reverence.

They hear a great leader
who heard from his ancestor
of means to save them
from the worst of their ills;

They hear a man
speak the words of God
in a God forsaken land,
and they drink it in.

Doubts come
on the lips of the soulless
from a foreign nation,
but hope is too precious
to be crushed
in the name of science
in a place like this.

A man carries a grenade in a honey pot.

Another justifies the deaths of 18 in the name of war.
Man will do what he must. He does not relish it.
Do not place a gun in his hand to kill for you
then punish him for his judgement.
He is human, too.

I charge you
to stand in his place.
To watch your closest colleague
disintegrate mere feet from
where you stand,
or to lose a leg yourself
in defense of the freedom for others
to criticize your choice
to serve them.

I charge you
to stand in a place
where parents arm babies
with bookbag bombs,
oblivious, innocuous, toddling
innocents.

In the name of Allah.
There is no God but Allah..

Compassion kills.here.

Comfort the crying child,
turned away harshly
by his mother.

Embrace the tender heart of a baby,
gently set it at ease,
and your world is white.

Blinding white, to those with you, and black, and red.
Your compassion defeans, disorients. Wounds.

There are too few philantropists
in this world we live in..
Allegedly, my country is rife with them,
but wages fall like leaves.

We change two hands to four and keep watering
the trees, hoping that money will grow.
But we turn the knob on an empty water table,
and those who control the clouds
are content to let them accumulate.

I am not rich. I am not rich.