Spray,
A poem by
SHERMAN ALEXIE
<>
man sitting on gang chair during daytime
somebody has left orange peels
on the food court table and I wanna
find the ******* who violated
the social contract, who left
this sticky mess, who thought
their little life was more

imporant than the little lives
of the rest of us, but there are so
many ******* in this airport
and I know that I'm one of them,
I know I've disgusted strangers
multiple times in my life so
I just pick up those orange peels

and toss them into the nearby
garbage bin and I wonder how
any of us disgusting humans
fall in love with any other
disgusting human

and our toenail clippings
and rashes and skin tags
and waxy ears and acne
and bad breath and greasy
farts and belly button bacteria
and crotch humidity
and rank body odor

but it happens all the time
people constantly fall in love
and I bet that somebody in
this massive international airport
has, just a moment ago, fallen
in love with somebody
they've just met and isn't it

amazing how many people
in this terminal have climbed
naked into bed and sweated
into the pores of their lovers
and received their sweat

in return and, wow, think
of how many people in this airport
have conceived a baby and how
many of us have seen a baby being
born in all that brutal beauty, look
at all these women, these mothers
and think of how they wrecked
their bodies in the name of love
and think of how we parents

have welcome our children's
**** and **** and ***** and spit
into our lives, who've had all
of those body fluids splash into
our hands, splatter our faces,
and spray into our mouths,

and so here I sit at my gate waiting
for my delayed flight and I see
a homely man and homely woman
curl around each other like one
hundred orange peels and I smile
because I'm mostly okay
with this world awash
with all that is awful
and all that is good

Soft Rock Music
Old and New
No social media
Fan or Air conditioning on
Cold drinks standng by in great Thermos
Phones silenced
Hugs that go into the night
Amazing and loving moments
Easy and gentle

Of late:
this "silence" conceptual haunts,
an irregular daily daunt,
coming evenly but oddly timed throughout the 24 hrs.,
writing Psalms and Sonnets demands sacrifice, sweat,
tears, no blood as of yet,
   but who's to say, that it will
not be eventually requisitioned

in my life,
there are long intervals of intramural silences,
when afforded,
the art of contemplation assumes templar control, and my senses
to overdrive go

somber somnolent,
ironic that,
in the periods of deep surficial calm, creation is raging
in the fibered tissue of my neuronic cells, and though,
outwardly still, my heart chest pounding me to emit the
inner contents and context
of the 4 W's  of every moment of my existence

(who, what, when and why)

the quietude of silence
is never whole, notions fly in, runabout, then depart, without a word of farewell, leaving not a trace behind, and the potential poems shrivel into stillborn drivel, leaving only an undisputed but an undistinguished stain, a fact that they was, were, conceived, but the mind's  body was not fertilized sufficiently to see them nurtured to expulsive birth fruition, a less than subtle reminder that even and every state of being is regenerative even unto the very last breath,
when it is no longer...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.