There is a laziness in the light

while evening shadows crouch in fear

behind too much sun, still breathing heavily,

pushing their way, like pain.

________

Windows marble and cut the

dusk, more raw for her energy.

She pants, lurching over a tired prow,

pinching the hours before a Marco Polo

entrance. An ache of greying green sprawls

out on the dirty floor, like boredom.

________

What dalliances lay their grievous joie de misère

under tables of discontent? What mis-

matched lyrics to over-sung songs

ever find their way back to tired voices?

They strain through candied throats the coughed up

suggestions of music more real for its yearning, like lust.

________

Perhaps if Hemingway’s whiskey’d voice, husky

in remonstrance, bellowed his last lines

first of the last first tale?

Told last, would it matter less?

Through Tequilla’d sight, he climbed to heights sufficient to

claim a boastful repast and only good came.

Let’s invoke a simpler meaning to all that hides. Conveying

messages in the unbidden shivers of quilted days, like drunk.

________

“Steady on,” the curtains answer, chilled in

the gossip of an impatient midnight. “Nothing is

yet. Just memorize what couldn’t be found

among the bones.” There will be

another branch to add to another tree,

that only cares to know

what happens afterward, like now.

________

Picture found here

Bent shoulders squeeze tight against the

seven-layer’d Sheol, curtained against

a world, upturned, and studiously

oblivious to a two-breasted sparrow,

with shark-teeth and winter’d schemes.

Words, like rainless clouds hopscotch over

solemnities, trinkets, experiments, names.

They jostle for supremacy with other shelved

things, like those good ideas, old friendships,

and Dad’s breakfast table dreams – the talk

of little boys of unwhisker’d pedigree.

Watch a man’s skin curl under

flame while doing your nails, and then shrug

away the smell before answering

your phone. It could mean playground

talk, pajama time, and networking to

stop the voices.

Still, hiding there under the clock,

breathless and stoic, that pushes only red and

black and the carbon of sweaty

palms, are the patient lines on an ambivalent

face. Come the creaks and queries and

counting petals on the tired

sidewalk. But garden variety promises, wrapped

in gum wrappers are stuck in pigeon shit, refusing

release into the Cadillac morning on a

farm truck day. So, flow down trucker

tears, leathered and unbidden,

like remembrances of the somnolent road.

Those kind of tears.

Image: Circe by Wright Baker

There is a place,

under the porch where the rattlesnakes are snoring

with one eye open, the other one hungry.

…

  There is a time,

when the lush day-damp dissipates into a certain thinness

of corduroy dreams pushed up against unpainted walls.

…

  There is a place,

where the shadows have darker shadows

and light is the unwelcome uncle, drunk before drinks.

…

  There is a time,

after 1963, when the streetlamps meant something

more than the start of a restless evening.

…

  There is a place,

where rye ‘n water and pickled herring and asparagus spears

shared secrets to little boys of parent parties.

…

  There is a time,

sandwiched somewhere between lunch money and

shit wine in a coffee cup when dime-store dreams were enough.

…

  There is a place,

of a certain ripe solitude, a kind of naked jamboree

when conversation stalls but silence takes over.

…

There is a place. It was not then.

There is a time. It was here.

Silence, except for the insistence of ocean.

Backdrop for seabirds, arguing in a grumpy rain.

I let contemplation keep company with

a stubborn fire warming wet wood,

hungry for more than it is willing to give.

Morning.

These mangy hills, full-cliffed, sprung from

the deep places of the earth,

thrust their faces out to greet

a colorless sky, too dark to laugh,

too green to die, but not too proud to cry.

Spring.

There is a stooped and bent feeling,

cast abroad in the air, breathing heavily.

A tangled scene, untimely brought,

coils itself, unprotected against the beauty of

a moist, unsatisfied wind.

Oregon.

Is time dependent on that which we invent to measure it? Or is it merely how it is perceived? Is it what we build in, around, through and in spite of it? How different, really, are the past, present and future if we embrace none of them?

The future came and went far

too quickly to be remembered.

It left me with my foot stuck

in a borrowed door, jimmying

a lock on a broken chain

draped loosely over the sloping shoulders of

today. It ran past me backwards and

jokes still waiting for punchlines, mouthing words not yet spoken, songs still unsung,

How odd to see your own head from

behind. How disconcerting it is to

build wasted efforts, futile undertakings when

outcomes are clearer than their inspirations.

Mistakes made shame the steps

yet untaken. How lonely to stop

singing notes yet uncomposed in

company unmet with hands still

red from clapping out rhythms never danced to.

_______________

I want to think back with delight

on the future, lived, loved and

remembered in the mirror of these

moments spent writing of others spent,

yet to come – the moments reconstructing yesterdays.

But, alas, such is not our lot;

a die caught and counted before the cast.

Final pages on stories told

make little sense pasted in

the wrong book. Words, once read,

cannot be unread, only forgotten.

Horizons, once past, only open up more of the same,

yet to come. Horizons look the same

from every direction, once we awaken to

the great vast blue that envelopes us.

________________

Only when we’re drowning is any shore

a welcome shore.

Pictures found here and here, respectively

_________________

Fluent

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

__________________

Your arms are so long;

I can’t see where your hands should be.

Do your fingers point away or

back toward me?

Are your muscles taut or loose?

Supple or soft, sufficient to hold,

implying an embrace? Or is there sinister intent

in your outstretched arms?

What is in your eyes?

Do they look aside, avoiding my own

while mine nervously look elsewhere, too,

unsure of beginnings? Of the road ahead?

Your pavement lies cracked, unsure,

            like the radiator of an old truck;

                        built for much more but now holds little.

But the truck looks good.

The skylines too often block

            the yearning view of skies made black.

                        As black meets blue comes green,

the color of your gold.

Starched Mayflower collars,

            unbending to wind or laughing or failure,

                        press the god-filled soil from your boots,

on the necks of your serfs.

The voices loud, the words are tall,

            writ large across your branded skies,

                        the songs are sung by those with guns for fists,

and stripes of nettles on corral courtiers.

My own soul, distanced, but tempered by time,

            finds grace such temperance allows, to swallow

                        the seeds of discontent in the hearty bread

baked in twin kilns of need and desire.

So, stretch out your long arms.

Grab hold of one made larger, broader,

Arms made to embrace or crush are at least

around my shoulder.