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r Feb 2018
Most nights
I reach inside
my mind
trying to unwind
those thoughts
like twist-ties
that bind
to keep the loaves
of bread
free of mold
and fresh;
un-plan the long
planned plan
of mine
to choose the time
of my demise;
and sometimes
I try to listen
closely to
the constant ringing
in my ears,
the rhythmic singing
whine and changing
tones that turn
the sadness
churning, the waves
of emotions raging
in my ocean,
blue as the bottle
kept by my bed,
sleep my quest; sleep
eternal, the rest
of death I beg, leave
me alone, leave
me one more night
of breath to breathe.
737 · Jan 2014
In Memoriam
r Jan 2014
Sitting alone staring out the window at the frozen air and slate colored sky with every inch of the desk covered in stacks of paper like strata of life.  Book shelves impossibly arranged so that no one would ever decipher  the code of the last 30 years.  Wondering
what happened, but knowing it didn’t just happen.  It was the long road taken to this place where the bland stale toast
sameness of life had become boring  and without sweetness or flavor. All of those years now behind and the
memories all that are left to mock.  What to do now, hotshot?  Now that this is all that has been
accomplished.  All of this and nothing.  Which drawer did you hide the bottle from
yourself in?  Seems so long ago, but was really not given how many years it
kept you company. Let’s explore those drawers and see what can
be salvaged of the past.  Let us toast you in memoriam…

r ~ 24Jan14
Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), and A.H.H.
And thanks to Diane whose Banner photo knocked this one loose.
736 · Apr 2018
Splintered
r Apr 2018
All of these words
formed without breath
is magic against death
and all of this ends
with to be continued
I wave so long
with a handkerchief
to the horses on the range
of my dreams
and every scene is sculptured
from wood with splintered
fingers ruptured
with the blood of my brothers.
731 · Apr 2020
Black Lilacs
r Apr 2020
Black Lilacs
blooming -

a blossoming
of grief -

dark fallen pollen
on the breeze -

I can see it falling
all around me -

there on the wall
for us to see -

April will be
the cruelest of them all.
“ April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land...

I will show you fear in a handful of dust...

...And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls;...”

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922.
730 · Aug 2018
Blue, like a rug
r Aug 2018
This bed
is a sad cafe
and morning
a table
I drank from
like a legacy
of one who once
loved
a woman
in a blue dress
draped
on the floor
like a rug
by the door.
725 · Jul 2019
Shadows
r Jul 2019
The same sun
that gives life
to a chrsyanthemum
a red rose, a vine
climbing a live oak
also cast shadows
against pale stones
and tall white walls
of a mausoleum.
723 · Jun 2014
Night thoughts
r Jun 2014
in the dark

i sometimes feel

the cold sharp edge
of night's dagger

memories are bled

forgotten pain
is good to remember

the sound of cheney's voice
speaking of war
with his new bad heart.

r ~ 6/22/14
\•/\
   |   Can't fix a bad heart
  / \
723 · Jul 2017
True divided light
r Jul 2017
Night I call you
portal of silence

the true divided light
of the moon through
my window leaving

shadows like crosses
of time, that old bandit

on my wall, the panes
stained, broken and sharp.
r Dec 2020
Some nights
I crack a window
to let out the stink
of darkness

unsheathe my knife
and think of carving
free my eyes

tossing them high
into a pine
so that they can see
all that isn’t going on
around me

instead I let the sharp
hard winter winds
of black starlight in

to fan the flames
of lonesome desire.
709 · Nov 2017
The way I wait
r Nov 2017
Left with no last goodbye
tossed by the wayside,
a finished cigarette flicked
out the car window,
sparks bursting apart
like the light of our love
all to pieces by the side
of a dark country road

The burnt flavor of her
still inside my lungs,
riding on my tongue,
in the breathless hesitant
last long goodnight kiss

Loss is what I see
when I look into the sky
tonight, no trees reaching
its leaves up for me

The burn of her words
is in the way that I say
but I loved you,
the way I wait, the way
I hold my breath to listen
for her footsteps in the kitchen.
709 · Jul 2017
Night gardener
r Jul 2017
Who is that man
in my doorway

his shadow
smelling like grave soil

face cold as a dead star
dark as a pond full of oil

his hair floating like weeds
eyes blank as a book of good deeds

turning slowly with grace
like a boot tied to the end of a lace.
709 · Jun 2017
Five a.m.
r Jun 2017
Life's not so bad
until just before morning
when I see a dark man
driving a black Cadillac
take a cigarette from his lips
and throw it out the window
watching it go all to pieces
all over the road.
701 · Mar 2018
Indecision
r Mar 2018
Take your sweetness
and bury it deep,
for now is the time
that fire is needed;
hide the tenderness
where you'll remember
to never forget, for
the only fear to fear
is the wild running
through your veins;
take your boldness,
your coffee black nerve
and steady hand squeezing
a hot coal without a flinch;
take your bravery,
your sea legs stiffened
against the storm
of indecision;
take your bright eyed stare
into the dark clouds coming,
take them and nod your head
with downturned lips
at all you were afraid to be.
694 · Aug 2018
Valhalla’s Landing
r Aug 2018
I’m making a boat
nailing driftwood together
maybe I’ll make it across
and maybe I won’t, you know
because nothing floats forever
still, it’s good wood to toss
on a pyre when I’m standing
by a fire over on Odin’s
Valhalla’s Landing.
691 · Jan 2018
The chant
r Jan 2018
Once I spent a winter
with a poem; everyday
in the woods at work
I would say it, never
writing a word until
I had it down in my mind;
it became what I called
a floater, a work song,
a chant, until it sounded
just right and undramatic,
and then I wrote it down
in the dirt with my boots
without changing a word
leaving it there for the birds
and the worms and the roots.
690 · Oct 2017
Waiting on the Dark Night
r Oct 2017
I'm going to pour me a drink
and wait for the Dark Night
to lace his boots

That old bushwhacker has 7 wives
2 trucks with good tires
1 with a flatbed for hauling

In the morning I know
I'll find crumbs on my table
and mud on the floor

And that pint by my bed
that's mostly full right now
will be a big swig short

Nothing is going right
these days except that low-
down you know who I mean
and he's moving right fast.
690 · Apr 2018
Struck and born
r Apr 2018
The clouds, then the years
drag through my hair
like a plow traveling through
this sandy gray soil of mine

There are many theories of time
like words that can pass
into the mouth of a Mason jar
and stay there forever, and last
like a message at sea floating far

How is it there are trails
you cannot follow for being
so **** dog tired, something
now, and not was, returned
from so many journeys

I have not set my foot down
in this nest of copperheads
to break the eggs or be bitten,
this is simply where I wanted
to be struck and born.
r Sep 2019
Somewhere, someplace
I lost my way along
the way, searching for
the extraordinary
forgetting the more simple
things, the everyday ordinary
like the words for a bird’s
heartbeat, the color of water
in an estuary, the calligraphy
of the grocery list, an apostrophe
like an old man picking cotton
a woman long forgotten
drowned in the vagueness
of the ocean, a blind poet
comparing the sun to a rose
light slipping through blinds
hidden behind silk curtains
burdens born by mothers
worn and weary, left alone
the name for vines that grow
on silent children’s stones.
688 · Oct 2013
Ten Word Tuesday
r Oct 2013
It is Tuesday
Not quite
An amusing
Day I find
683 · Jan 2014
Tooele County Days
r Jan 2014
South of the Great Salt Lake
In the Valley of the Skull
Living was make or break
And the days were always full

We walked the desert dunes
In the land of the Goshute
We slept beneath the moon
Drank water from desert roots

Living on borrowed time
Waiting for the sun to rise
Youth was our only crime
Happiness was our disguise

Tooele County days
Counting days till we deploy
Striking camp in a haze
Shoulder arms and **** the joy

r ~ 23Jan14
Thoughts of my long ago days at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.
681 · May 2014
Two Strings
r May 2014
Paul,
   Paul
you plucked those two strings
and **** near took
me to my knees.
Knocked the breath
right out of me.

r ~ 5/9/14

The Black Guitar

Clearing out ten years from a wardrobe
I opened its lid and saw Joe
written twice in its dust, in a child's hand,
then a squiggled seagull or two.

                                                    Joe, Joe

a man's tears are worth nothing,
but a child's name in the dust, or in the sand
of a darkening beach, that's a life's work.

I touched two strings, to hear how much
two lives can slip out of tune

                                                then I left it,
brought down the night on it, for fear, Joe
of hearing your unbroken voice, or the sea
if I played it.


The Black Guitar, Paul Henry
http://www.serenbooks.com/news/paul-henrys-the-black-guitar-is-the-guardian-blogs-poem-of-the-week
680 · Jul 2013
Your Kindness
r Jul 2013
Your kindness is the kind
That most people are blind to
Your caring love is blind
To all the pain that binds you
I wish I were the kind
Of person that could do
The things that make you you
The things you do
For M.  Re-post from May 21, 2013
677 · Aug 2017
My love in the city
r Aug 2017
When love comes to visit
she only stays a few days
at a time; her work in the city
is important she says, so
she brings her satchel of books

I wait at the crossroads
where the bus lets her off

Then we go to bed to dream
where she sings and hums
before morning comes

When she gets up
and pulls on her jeans
and goes out on the porch
it's so early you can see the moon
and the sun; I go to work
while she lays around
to read and do what she does

The days go so slow
and when I get home
she's baked some apples
and painted my bedroom blue

The next morning
I take her up the road
to the bus; we say so long

She never talks about her job,
so I leave her  alone.
r Jan 2019
The old wives
from the mountains
used to tale us  ;)
that if you tell a lie
when it’s lightning
you’ll wake up
at midnight
spitting blood
which makes me
think I must’ve been
talking in my sleep
last night when
the storm blew through
loud enough to
shake the house
and wake the dead
so I woke up to
smoke a cigarette
and let my dog go
outside to take a ****
when I saw a rose
pretty as you please
there on my pillow
I swear, I think I dreamed
that I was the President. ;)
673 · Aug 2018
Shade
r Aug 2018
Shade, go away
knaves, your shadowy
hands are made of clay,
simple worthless dirt.

Darkness, be gone,
night belongs to poets alone
to cast their bones where they may,
worthy words, their poetry.
Or something like that. :) -
665 · Oct 2013
You Make Me Crazy
r Oct 2013
You make me crazy
Make thoughts hazy
Can't concentrate at work
Sleeping is a quirk
You make me crazy
Keep it up

r
664 · May 2019
End times
r May 2019
Fire and wind
of close bullets
tornados, floods, rain
I. C. E. with eyes
sharp as barbed wire
dead souls walking
those pale corridors
with an odor
the color of bone
and skin off the backs
of the poor
in their pockets
like rawhide, they are
rolling, rolling, rolling
***** of dung along
carrying briefcases
full of batshit
and other secret
pestilence yet to come.
664 · Jul 2017
The art of shipwrighting
r Jul 2017
I am drawing water and a ship
to carry me away, a black
ship with good timber
and no rotten planks, a ship
everyone will have a turn
at the wheel, a ship that never hears
the sad song of oars sang
where the only prayer is the wind
to carry you through the leagues
of loneliness, a ship to guide you
down sleeping rivers through
passages of lost swords, the songs
of the graveyard, oh sweet Jesus,
a blessed ship bearing his wounds,
a ship of dreams sighted by the blind
riders that put out light and darkness,
sailing constellations named for the broken-
hearted, the artists, and poets writing deep
blue poetry for the Captain and the crew.
663 · Apr 2014
Saints and Sinners
r Apr 2014
I haven't drank in ninety days
Way to go you fookin' saint
You haven't killed in thirty years
But St. Zachary you ain't.

Her husband sells used broken cars
I get to kick the tires
While he gets soaked at all the bars
I'm putting out his fires.

I'm pleading down to purgatory
As Satan winks at me
Though punishment be mandatory
I'll not burn for perjury.  ;)

r ~ 4/27/14
\•/\
   |
  / \
649 · Jul 2013
Time the Final Rhyme
r Jul 2013
Some days are treasure
Some days we measure

Seconds that don't rhyme
Tic by tic time is time

I don't look at clocks
I don't own a watch

Time is time
The final rhyme

On purpose
On the surface

Birth till death
Counting breath

Time the final rhyme
Time is only time

r
Jun 23
646 · Feb 2014
Keel
r Feb 2014
Faded snapshots through time
Where each moment was real
And the world was all mine
Straight and strong was my keel
    
r ~ 28Feb14
Keel-- believed to be the very first word in the English language recorded in writing.
642 · May 2014
Come Morning
r May 2014
Come morning,
when darkness lifts
its veil of mourning,
the warm sun gifts
her day to praise
with sweet refrain
on a grassy grave
in the mountains.

r ~ 5/10/14
641 · Apr 2014
The Falls So Long Ago
r Apr 2014
Thinking back on that day
so long ago, I always have to ask myself
if my recollection is true.

Did the sunlight and the spray from the falls
really create a rainbowed halo above you?
And did the trout all rise to the surface
at one time just to feed on your beauty?

On even the coldest days the memory
still never fails to warm my heart.
Funny how tomorrow I might smile
thinking of that day so long ago,
and the next shed tears abundant as the falls
that in concert with the sun
sang you forever into my heart.

r ~ 4/4/14
r Mar 2014
You send National Register of Historic Places Evaluation of the Freeman Creek Site, 31ON076 back to the contractor without payment because the Methodology chapter had no rhyme or meter (or reason, for that matter).  

r ~ 14Mar14
Anyone seeing a pattern here?
638 · Sep 2017
The darkening of stars
r Sep 2017
I don't know what
the limits are
what impacts fragment
beyond repair, outside the web
of what there are words for,
murderous facts that leave mute
witnesses’ souls brittle
inside their chests,
as the thousandth child starves
somewhere in our inhumane
universe another star grows dark.
https://apple.news/Aonwzvwb5RPqSRVKnmc2o7Q
r Jul 2019
I used to view existential
as a meaningless concept
rendered complex when used
in sentences by the pretentious
until I came to realize that it’s
simply nothing but the shadow
of a black dog sitting on a dock
by an old man holding a rusty
old revolver to his head on dark
nights of deep water thinking
man, what a waste of a good
bullet if you pull it, so throw it
in and let me fetch it once again
just like the last time, and the time
before that, or like every time you
have a notion that the ocean is blue
only for you and your sorrow, dude
let it go and let’s go home before
tomorrow comes, for your shadow
is aware and cares for your existence
.
636 · Mar 2018
Final mist
r Mar 2018
You are my wedding
reception for death
a heart beyond doubt
floats in your neck
like a compass
past lovers
holding close
a stethoscope
to my chest
and the final mist
of mourning
in your eyes I
am wondering
will I be missed
or just another
season in your life
passing like
summers turn
to autumns' leaves
falling one
     after
               the
                        other.
636 · May 2014
That time so long ago
r May 2014
Ah, Nora.
I don't know why
I still think these thoughts.
It's been so many years.
Never mind the why of it,
I doubt even you could know.
How you could have taken such a part
of me.  Of us.  All of us.
It's the how that dogs me.
Those years when we were apart,
me busy trying to raise the boy,
you doing whatever it was you did;
those were unhappy years.  For me,
I can say.  For you, I can only think so.
O, Nora.  
It's been such a long time.
Now that the boy's all grown, almost,
what will be left of us?
When you came back, I didn't look
this far down the road.  Here we are.
What can I do?  What's done is done.
Forgiving's easy.  Forgetting, well...
not so.
Nora, Nora,
that time so long ago
that never should have been.

r ~ 5/24/14
r Sep 2013
Poetry is my inscapee
My outscapee
My escapee
All three

r
3 sept 13
Inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889. Victorian poet extraordinaire).   Not sure which is best for me, but he understood the concept of inscape well.
r Mar 2018
For a long time
I've been dreaming
of being the younger me
my heart leaning
into those dangerous places
like the wheels on a road grader

Nights to remember
seeing big lips in the moon
blowing its black and bad sax

Dreams of night sweats
and my lost loves
dancing in the fields
where the moon, a white cow
goes to chew her cudd

Dreams deep in other cities
and towns where photographs
all signed love are slipping
out of the frames of many mirrors

Dreams of an old soured pillow
waiting for its case to be called
shanghaied by the cold sea
a long ways from the mountains
where I once found young love

Dreams of a storm coming
still many miles away
hearing the wind in the trees

The thunder wakes me
like a backfire on a moonshine
run with two trembling fingers
finding me riding shotgun.
629 · Dec 2017
Over easy
r Dec 2017
Night, that cheating wife
of the Sun pulls on
her black *******

the ones with a thong
and glittering sequins
that stll lets the moon shine
singing his silent love song

until dawn comes around
and she slides off her dark
stockings from each leg

slowly one by one
before her husband awakes
and asks her to break
him a golden egg

for breakfast, over easy
my sweet woman
and let the yolk run.
629 · Aug 2017
The totality of loneliness
r Aug 2017
What if love was like the sun
and the moon was the essence
of heartache, a darkness
passing by every now and then
like a coldness that makes us lonely
on a long Monday afternoon,
would it be forever or only, hopefully,
for just an hour or maybe two?
623 · Aug 2017
Subject-less
r Aug 2017
In a photograph
without a subject
you, standing
with your back
to my camera.

I long for a face,
your eyes, a soft smile,
or even just a pair of hands.

I remember us being
so lonely for each other,
and there on the shelf
a girl standing by herself.

Not just the empty cottage
dilapidated, all alone, my love,
you left three months ago
and the old house behind the dunes
now a photographic manipulation.

A wonder of the modern age,
complete with cuts and splices
where you used to sit, an empty
place in the bed, a gaping hole
somewhere above my navel.
617 · Sep 2013
Her Mother
r Sep 2013
She dwells in pain
Her Father
His tears do rain
The daughter
Holds the reins
In pain
And tears
And strength
In peace

r
4 Sept 13
For the sister in my second family. Stay strong, CW.  I feel it.
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