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611 · May 2014
Cavern song
r May 2014
Echochochocho...


r ~ 5/23/14
\•/\
   |     Shhhh. Hear that?
  / \
608 · Oct 2017
Crave
r Oct 2017
It's Sunday
past Saturday,
past Friday,
past another night,
a sigh,
my father up
in the sky,
the cold,
the question, the who,
the why,
the human blood,
that heavy load
and cold again,
and heaven
in full size,
the cross, the nails,
take care, first
take care
of your crave
and decorate
your room
like a tomb
with low light,
a spoon,
and a stone
with your name.
605 · Apr 2014
My Old Man
r Apr 2014
I remember the last doctor appointment that I took my father to. At the VA, of course. He wouldn't go anywhere else. Said he didn't like doctors in general, but at least these ******* didn't tell him that he needed to quit smoking. It's been a few years since the old man passed, but I recall so clearly how unfazed he was that day. How accepting of it all. How he remarked to the Doc so matter-of-factly "Of course it's spread. That's what cancers do. Just like us, they do what they have to do."  He never asked how much time he had. He knew. Told me not to tell "the girls". My sisters. **** fine old man. Always did just what he had to do.

4/2/14
605 · Mar 2014
U Scorpii
r Mar 2014
Black sand morning sky~
   Scorpion strikes from the south
   Orion hides now

r ~ 13Mar14
Scorpius nicely visible in southern sky this morning at 0445.
604 · Aug 2018
The art of leaving
r Aug 2018
In these parts
sometimes a man
will walk into a bar
and say something
he’s soon ashamed of
then leave with his friends
paying no attention.
(Or knowing when to say nothing)
r Feb 2018
If a person is quiet
enough inside,
they might just be
able to catch on to
the table of contents
of what it is
I’m trying to say, to
get to, to put away
before it's way
too late, and I don't
mean to
confuse you,
like before men
could speak,
they enjoyed confusing
one another
with signs,
they enjoyed this
as much as
a mirror enjoys
an image shine,
or the evening,
like a ship, enjoys
a sapphire grave,
but that's not what
I'm trying to do,
I only want you
to hear what I have
to say one more time,
just one more day
before it's weight
becomes way too great.
596 · Feb 2018
Picasso blue
r Feb 2018
It may be just a Picasso
blue period
I’m going through.

Or maybe it’s only
Winter’s darkness
not letting the clouds part
for the light of the Moon.

Why am I so sad at heart
whenever I write of you,
my woman of sorrow?

You, wrapped in your robe
like a blue, blue Picasso.
595 · Jul 2013
Your Love Could Be
r Jul 2013
I feel abused
My heart is stilled
When you're amused
My heart I spill
A heartfelt bruise
My love is still

Enough to fill
Your golden cup
Emotions milled
To grind enough
My heart is chilled
Your words are tough

My heart is kind
Yet you can't see
My love so blind
If I could be
Your man to find
Your love to be

Your love I'd be

r

Jun 1
589 · Apr 2014
Cradle to Grave
r Apr 2014
All this sentimentality.
A sign I'm getting on?
Or have I always been that way?
Getting on, I mean.

I cursed like an old bar keep
when I was only five.
Killed my first bear
when I was only three.

Or so they tell me.
Seems even then my memory
wasn't what it used to be.
Excuse me my sentimentality.

r ~ 4/2/14
585 · Aug 2018
When morning comes, slowly
r Aug 2018
It is summer -
a quiet night

- the silence
disquieting

all those lights
out on the water -

- stars, like floating
diamonds

moon, you big old pearl
- my lifebuoy

a driftwood fire of dreams
to hold me -

until morning comes
slowly - like a sad-eyed model

- tired of her beauty, wanting
more than a moment in the sun.
584 · Sep 2013
Trying to Sleep
r Sep 2013
Before HP when trying to fall asleep
I imagined a blank white wall
It worked for me fairly quickly before HP
Then scrabbled letters started appearing
Keeping my brain from sleep
Now I try to envision a black chalk board
But the squeaking of the writing
Keeps me awake in dark
Eyes squeezed tight
Thanks HP
580 · Mar 2020
Sundowner
r Mar 2020
Lately
life seems
like a waking
dream
and I’ve been
sleeping
my days away
awakening
to a sundown
setting in
my window
and there’s
this feeling
in the air
so real, surreal
a real sundowner.
Stay well, poets.
578 · Nov 2013
Thrasher (10 w)
r Nov 2013
There is always at least one song
that stands enshrined.
r   12 Oct 13
Happy Birthday, Man.  Keep on Rockin'.
Neil Young (1945 - Forever)
Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

                   Thrasher
They were hiding behind hay bales,
They were planting in the full moon
They had given all they had for something new
But the light of day was on them,
They could see the thrashers coming
And the water shone like diamonds in the dew.

And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light
Trying to catch an hour on the sun
When I saw those thrashers rolling by,
Looking more than two lanes wide
I was feelin' like my day had just begun.

Where the eagle glides ascending
There's an ancient river bending
Down the timeless gorge of changes
Where sleeplessness awaits
I searched out my companions,
Who were lost in crystal canyons
When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates.

It was then I knew I'd had enough,
Burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
And my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don't understand.

They had the best selection,
They were poisoned with protection
There was nothing that they needed,
Nothing left to find
They were lost in rock formations
Or became park bench mutations
On the sidewalks and in the stations
They were waiting, waiting.

So I got bored and left them there,
They were just dead weight to me
Better down the road without that load
Brings back the time when I was eight or nine
I was watchin' my mama's T.V.,
It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode.

Where the vulture glides descending
On an asphalt highway bending
Through libraries and museums, galaxies and stars
Down the windy halls of friendship
To the rose clipped by the bullwhip
The motel of lost companions
Waits with heated pool and bar.

But me I'm not stopping there,
Got my own row left to ***
Just another line in the field of time
When the thrashers comes, I'll be stuck in the sun
Like the dinosaurs in shrines
But I'll know the time has come
To give what's mine.
576 · Oct 2013
Confession
r Oct 2013
Forgive me Father
For I have sinned
Has been 100 years since my
Last confession
And 10 seconds since my last sin.

r
574 · Sep 2013
Wondering (10w)
r Sep 2013
Wondering
what you see
when you don't look at me
r  24Sept13
r Feb 2014
Another Staph Meeting day
Power Point bullets fly my way

r ~ 18Feb14
566 · Nov 2017
Winter's white sheet
r Nov 2017
Cold days, dark nights,
yield memories left
like headless corpses
on some ancient field;
seasons and years,
blood, sweat and tears,
the chains and links,
those things that bind;
blinding sharp beak,
black murderous bird,
winging over peaks,
leaving these worldly
lows below behind me;
my dying wish is for
restful bliss in winter's
white sheet stiffly lying.
565 · Oct 2013
Texan Muse (10 w)
r Oct 2013
The words he wrote
could make a fence post cry

r
560 · Jul 2013
The Ebb and Flow
r Jul 2013
In his eyes
I see myself
and in his smile
I see you
will he forgive us
will he forget
will he remember
what we put him through

The ebb and flow
the rising tide
no room to run
no place to hide
it's all behind me
it's all before
I finally made it to the shore
We finally made it to the shore

r
Mar 1
560 · Jul 2013
The Abyss
r Jul 2013
Forgotten bliss
Fallen in the dark abyss
Throw me a rope
For to hope
I can climb
Back in time
Bliss remembered
Love is tendered

r
June 14, 2013.  Repost of another lost.
556 · Jul 2013
Last and Final Words
r Jul 2013
Men may think they have the last word
A statement of their measure
But it is the female of the species heard
For they alone own the treasure
And thus the final word
553 · May 2018
Bridge
r May 2018
***** Joe's got a ways to go
before he can climb up
from beneath the bridge

He's not been the same
since after the rain
of rockets on Robert's Ridge

He stopped spending his days
living life in a haze
of a VA induced nirvana

He forgets he's a Vet
and the checks that he gets
goes to his sweet Suzana

He keeps his head clean
with a fifth of Jim Beam
and clears out the bile in his liver

Most days he can be found
with his head on the ground
and his thoughts out on the river.
553 · Sep 2017
A drowning violin
r Sep 2017
Tonight, outside the storm
rages while the silence
inside me is as deafening
as a drowning violin,
I am as lonely as a lost feather
floating on a wandering
wind, my thoughts as painful
as a heartache wondering
when the beating will end
and love has turned cold,
passion has left, and when
the wine is all drunk I'll become
the insatiable leviathan
sinking ship after lost ship,
the salmon who drank the river
dry, the sailor who swallowed
the sea, until my forgotten
lover's face is seen in each breath,
and crystals condense
on my heart and my hands,
and the night is as dark
as a stranger’s stark shadow.
r Aug 2017
Today I watched
a lump of rock
swallow the fire
of the sun
and tonight I saw
someone somewhere
toss a box
of diamonds high
into the sky
I swear
it's enough to make
a grown man cry.
551 · Sep 2017
And the day before
r Sep 2017
Some call him a dreamer
   quiet, sad and deeper
than water in a river
    after the floods come

    dark like the light
outside a widower's curtains
   when the moon hides
behind clouds gray as yesterday

and the day before
   and whatever sorrow
tomorrow or
  the night has in store.
550 · May 2014
Painted Morning haiku
r May 2014
Morning comes slowly/
    White paint on a blue canvas
    Lofty masterpiece.

r ~ 5/7/14
\•/\
   |
  / \
541 · Mar 2014
Smiles
r Mar 2014
I stopped fearing you
the day you started smiling at me.
Why?  No, not pride.
I swallowed that with whiskey
and spat it out time and again
many years ago. Stupidity?
I hope not. Maybe just a bit
of the lizard part of my brain,
but not the flight half.
I'm simply tired of running
and fighting seems like a
much better way to go.  So,
hello and welcome to my show.
Reap when you are ready.
I'll not weep.

r ~ 28Feb14
538 · Sep 2013
Words of Woe
r Sep 2013
Woe is me
Things I can't see
Things don't make sense to me
Woe is me
538 · Mar 2014
I'll Go to Bed Now (10 W)
r Mar 2014
And dream that ya'll
have grown a sense of humor.
537 · Sep 2019
Wasted, spent
r Sep 2019
In so many words
it comes down to this
time wasted, spent
a million regrets
and not one red cent
of it worth a ****.
535 · Oct 2013
The Rivers and the Clouds
r Oct 2013
Wake up rivers
Water is falling
From many clouds
This morning

r
529 · Dec 2019
Can't rightly say
r Dec 2019
I can’t rightly say
what’s gone wrong
when I try writing
on these long nights
my words all suffocate
like lightning bugs
in a moonshiner’s jug.
522 · Feb 2014
The Happy Habit
r Feb 2014
Of all of the habits that I have claimed
  The ones that could have maimed
The ones that could have killed me
   Should have stilled me
And those that will eventually
    Somehow I missed the habit of simply
Being happy
    The habit of greeting each dawn
As another day won
    Like my sweet Daisy
Rolling on her back in the grass
    Beneath warm sun

r ~ 21Feb14
522 · Aug 2018
The ditch of your past
r Aug 2018
Like old friends making up
after too many years
of the fine and high lonesomes
it’s time we get shed of our ways

So take a deep breath
and listen up
all you bad hombres
I **** you not

You may have run off
into the ditch of your past
and let love spin like a wheel
until an old man came by
looking for pop bottles
and bagged it all up

We’ve seen a lifetime of days
sweating blood for nothing
and now this is the night
of nights to do something

Keep your boot on the clutch,
steady, and ready to drive through
the fog of love’s misery or mystery,
the happy, the heartbroken, a sly
smile and a flick of a tongue on red lips,
your truck hitting smooth on all six.
518 · Oct 2017
Painting the whispers
r Oct 2017
Notes of rain
on a tin roof
mystify me

I try to put words
to its meaning

As if it is a calling
I listen to its tune

There, sometimes
like a scent of remorse,
a violet storm

Or a flash of a smile
so brilliant it pains

Night stirs the colors
about me with its ladle

But I can’t paint fables
or the whispers that follow

Dreams of love seem so real
for such a short time

I mean to imply something
larger, more inclusive,
grounded and wild

Something that reaches back
into stories we can never tell

Because we are the arc of them,
we are their breathing

Beaching ourselves on lonely shores
wanting only to be saved.
512 · Mar 2019
More than nothing
r Mar 2019
That thing we had
I’m sorry that
I walked away before
giving it or us a chance
to even dance, to
become something, sadly
still, my heart
I’m happy for the
more than nothing
thing we had.
509 · Jul 2013
Travelin' Man
r Jul 2013
Travelin’ man, giver of song
Wherever you are off to
Don't make it too long
A whisper of your shadow
A glimpse of your song
Tomorrow is new, yesterday gone

Darkness is upon you
Like a forgotten song
Lost in black water without view
World is awaiting on your dawn
Fear stands close, thin is spread thin
Travelin’ man, travelin’ song
Travelin’ man, come back strong
500 · Jul 2019
Like a bandanna to cough in
r Jul 2019
I could live forever and still
never forget your face, unlike
the other girls who I knew
I was too old and ugly for
but there you were, dressed fit
to **** in your black beret, short
shorts the color of a forest, a Che
T-shirt cut above your navel, a
ragged copy of the Manifesto
in your back pocket, like a bandanna
to cough in, playing the cello
so well in all the cafes around town
a mournful sound like the wind makes
at night when I go to visit your grave.
498 · Mar 2014
Goodbye
r Mar 2014
I listened to what she didn't say.
Volumes and volumes.
No brevity there.
And so loud that I barely
heard her say
Goodbye.

r ~ 13Mar14
r Sep 2017
I do not know whose eyes perceive
my finite movement toward light.

Each letting go, a small cry,
each forward move my life's
migratory assurance of what
none of us can ever know.

The genetic certainty of cells
propels the forebrain
with its stumbling feet,
while a heartache of hope
wins each moment even
as it is lost to the next.

And we must accept
the impermanent flow
that is like air, necessary
and sacred; tears are not
the only salt of sorrow.
r Oct 2017
There is a stranger
you see more and more of
every year, He is silt
in the riverbed,
and the water tables
of your mystery
rise to their final levels,
the spitting image
of your Death

He is selling a bed
that belonged to your father,
coming in low dumping
the boots of your brother
in the high pasture covered
deep in your last winter's snow

Like a flower in the night,
Death drifts over our shoulders
like a boat with no eyes for the oars,
no place for a man's cold hands

The Church has a record of your birth,
but Death keeps its own dossier

When the Moon is pulling blood
from all of its many lovers,
Death is caterwauling with catfish,
a bone in its mouth, shedding
all its skins and secret light,
I, like you, set out a dish
of milk before going to bed.
491 · Apr 2019
Bruh, Moon
r Apr 2019
I can feel the shift
into low now, one shot
one pill, one mile left
to go
I see a light on
up the hill
like most nights
trouble is
ain't nobody
home to talk to
I know
my bruh, Moon
he’s a lonely
old ****, too.
r Sep 2013
Twelve years ago today
The world changed for the worse
485 · Nov 2020
Gathering wood
r Nov 2020
When I think of those days, I only
remember gathering wood in the cold
in my black coat so I could get a fire going
in the cast iron of a gray early morning;
I dream what it is to be a man lying
beside a delicate woman, sad and quiet,
playing the mandolin, looking at her as
if she were a couple of plums together like
a cluster within reaching distance on the branch;
thinking of the lunar dust of her face, and how
her fingers were like feathers; I heard
the silence of the mill wheel not turning
in the stream and the wild turkeys not drinking;
I knew they had hypnotized themselves wide-
eyed and staring into the steel ax of the creek.
r May 2019
Did you see them take the green fields
one by one, now line by line on hills in echelon?

Still, holding ground held holy by their sons;
no longer marching to the smoke and drum.

Where bugler called the day to final rest,
now silence grows like lichen on the stones.

For those who gave their all at our behest,
our memories alone will not atone.

Do you see the fires burning at a distance,
and more hallowed ground broken day by day?

Each new stone laid a fading reminiscence;
each new boquet soon fading into gray.

What better way to honor sacrifice
than to pause and speak their names aloud.

Until the gods of war are pacified;
until our flag no longer serves as shroud.
In memory of those who gave their all.
5/30/2016
And again, lest we forget. 5/29/17
Remember to remember. 5/27/19
482 · Dec 2019
Shining a light
r Dec 2019
If you squint just right -
there’s a new star in the sky
tonight - shining bright
- shining a light on suicide.
My son’s best friend since middle school and  Best Man- to be- for my son’s wedding planned for next May took his life yesterday. He was 24 years old. No one saw it coming. Just before his death he posted a link on his FB page for donating to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
1-800-273-8255

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

RIP, Tristan J.
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