A bushel of love is a lot of love,
to hold in your heart for someone.
And since your heart can't hold it all,
it spills out and touches those you hold close.

Amazing thing about love,
as a friend once said to me.
You can't hold on to it,
and the more you give, the more you receive.

It's a funny thing this love,
builds tolerance where there is hate,
builds laughter where there is anger,
builds joy where there is fear.

I wonder how many need more love,
how many starve for it.
I wonder what the tiniest bit of it
could make happen for a lonely person.

A tiny bit isn't a bushel, you know.
But given away it will overflow another bushel.  
Bringing light, happiness, peace, and joy,
just from something, you can't hold onto.

Don't speak to me of those droughted days
when you reigned over me for twenty years.

Your dark clouds planted themselves
above my garden like seeds wanting
to rebirth a strangled youth.

I sickled down row after row:
your bindweed, your choke pear.

Purple flowers strung about my neck;
those bitter fruits, I swallowed whole:
a peck of yoke, two bushels of anguish.

Daddy takes me to the greenhouse,
behind our rotted trailer, deep in sovereign backwoods.
Marsh voices, thick like tupelo honey.

The coo of a loon, hiss of a cottonmouth, shiver of a snapping turtle.

The silver of swamp lilies lip the land in wild haze,
a veil of ochre moss tickles my nose like gauzey ginger ale
and soil clings to my ankles like a lonesome hound.

Daddy’s greenhouse is a shed, a haven.
A milieu of magic and fleur-de-cannabis
where pixies pull my curls and gnomes dance
under mushroom parasols.

My hands dip into a hollow of muddy earthworms.
I feel akin to the yellow blood of a butterfly
or pale jade of perplexing geckos.  

Daddy is a shaman.

He trims holy blooms that come from spirits
who sing in the wind like the whippoorwill at dusk.
Snipping sticky bushels, he pads tufts into his pipe,
carved in the shape of a sullen armadillo.

I watch him inhale.

                          His breath
                                               stiff
                            as a braid of mangroves.

                      He exhales a ligneous cough.

                              I don’t mind,
                                                   much.

The sun bakes down heavily on a plastic micro planet in Orlando, Florida
where crowded trams drop American bushels of tourists into an alien world.
Quickly fantasy comes alive
through a corporation of disguise.
The workers mask themselves in a drapery of familiar life
-like costumes to charm little children’s hearts.
They smile wildly, carving a clear dimple line on the but of their cheeks. Walt’s Disney World
must have driven every one of America’s circuses out of business.
The flying trapeze is too elegant,
people now want to be strapped in,
buckled up and whipped around
to forcibly experience the true velocity of entertainment.
Even the participant’s attire is geared for this third world oblivion. Neon ***** packs rest like bloated kangaroo pouches
on fat sweaty old lady’s round hips, their plump fingers
holding on to leashed harnesses reined to their child’s small chest.
This is vacation,
strangers of people in massive conglomerations
with confused expressions and burnt faces.
Even the food seems wickedly unnatural,
like an artificial order of burning plastic and sour dough surprise.
Waiting is the enthusiast’s pastime as parades
of anxious voyeurs are captivated by a trance
fixation of lights and whistles.
They line up like schools of lemming,
plunging on rides,
one by one.

This is the place
Where memories are made
And dreams come true

Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight
made his pallet on the threshing floor
where all day he had worked, and now he slept
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

The old man owned wheatfields and barley,
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded.
No filth soured the sweetness of his well.
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.

His beard was silver as a brook in April.
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said,
Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them.

The man's mind, clear of untoward feeling,
clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes.
His heaped granaries spilled over always
toward the poor, no less than public fountains.

Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen.
He was generous, and moderate. Women held him
worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome,
but to him in his old age came greatness.

An old man, nearing his first source, may find
the timelessness beyond times of trouble.
And though fire burned in young men's eyes,
to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light.

I pray to the sun god a lot. For warm skin and fresh basil.
You pray to the stars. You pray for the sky like a yawning mouth. You pray for my father. For my sister and the parts of her she keeps hidden. You pray for people who are terrible at hiding, too, who leave themselves open, ripe as peaches. You pray for fall this year, for the harvest, that it will be consummate and yield bushels and bushels.
You pray that you won't forget anything important: keys; your mother's birthday; how to just keep breathing even though you're convinced your heart is shrinking. And you pray that you will live your life loosely, forever outside. You pray for that tightness in your chest to go away and stop bothering you at night, and for a scythe like they used to use for farming.
You pray that God is real. The Sunday school God who loves you and killed off his protagonist so that you might live like a soldier, unsure of what you're fighting for, but fighting nonetheless.
You pray that God is real but you have serious doubts about any creator who allows colorblindness and then makes the world and the sky and girl you love look like this.

The Harvest of Life Exchanging Itself

     “May I help you?” – More busy in my voice than hurried. A woman points to a quart of peaches she's been studying.  “Sure of herself.” I had been thinking,  “She won't buy anything else.”
Such delicate fruit—one at a time they must be placed in the brown paper bags. I've gotten quick at it.  Then the Standard: “Couple of those are pretty hard yet; Leave 'em out overnight in that bag, and they'll be ready to eat... Anything else?”

     “No nothing more,” small shake of her head.

     Late afternoon at The Farmer's Night Market in Scranton-- the intense bustle of of the early day over –  with its frenzy of bills and change and bags; a new line of faces every sixty seconds, waiting to be waited on.  Questions, peering, turning the fruit to see if one side's as good as the other, and it always is as the Michaels sell only premium fruit at their stand, where I've been “City Help” for two years.

     “No, we won't have cider till after Labor Day when the Miltons come in.”  Funny, I'm starting to sound like a farmer – even know the apples by their different tastes, appearances, and order of ripeness.  There are summer apples, fall, and the winter keepers; and a smaller, rather homely variety, MacCowans, are the best for eating.  I like Cortlands myself.  They remind me of making pies with my mother – the smell of dough and apple skins – the little scavengers waiting for the cores

     The customers have thinned now, scurrying like loaded pack mules – off to their trunks and station wagons.  I can even read their minds!  They're planning dinners, canning pickles!  Roasting corn for cook-outs, planning novel ways to prepare the bounty.  I know these things.  I've been a customer for twenty years from mid-July till Thanksgiving.

     Wiping my sweaty forearms on my jeans, I try to get rid of the prickly-itch of peach fuzz – small price to pay for the afternoons's sweetness.  Then leaning back against some crates, I watch the edges of the canvas shelters flap – storm later?  This place, I was thinking, not much changed from the markets a hundred years ago-- the gathering of life to exchange itself.  We city folk – dependent, fume breathers and asphalt beaters.  Machine-like, silly with wealth or lack; paying, playing, dining out – driving our bad-*** cars toward some goal – never enough – just to wait for old age on the steps of “check day”  Not that farmers don't have their desperate years.  Weather can't be trusted, and there's always the hosts of gnawers, crawlers, and rotters – the unexpected that comes with living things whether cows or turnips.

     I've seen it here: life exchanging itself.  The early yellows and greens of lettuce, squash, beans, and berries; ripening to August corn, tomatoes, and feathery bunches of dill.  Then descent with cooler days to pears and apples, corn, and squash. Late September brings the Indian corn and pumpkins, cider, bushels of potatoes, frosted concord grapes, and zany gourds.

     With the return of Standard Time, come the bare bulbs that light the stands of produce.  At Ruth's the sign reads: “Order Your Capon Here.”  There are hams and roasts and sausage for stuffing.  The winter apples – “Stock up NOW!”  Ideas for holiday decorations; recipes exchanged.  Bushels and bushels for the canners!  And, one farmer sells those branches, heavy with scarlet winter berries for the city doors...  “We close the Wednesday before Thanksgiving”  I always buy those berries.

Good-byes are brisk and sweet – cold breath steams the air.  City and country marking their seasons –  their lives by the market.  The warm greetings of July, “So good to see you again!”
...Marking their lives.  Our children grow so much between the markets.  Generations exchange.  This co-op started eighty years ago, 1939.  For so long, it was the last and only, farmer-owned, open-air market in Pennsylvania.  

     Generations born; some pass or retire in the winter.  Nancy never seems any older than her smile.

     The vegetables always look the same – they're not.  They are the children of last year's veggies.  I suppose if I were to come here for the first time, I would think everything hereå has always been this way.  And, perhaps, I wouldn't be so wrong.  It really didn't seem so different or so long ago in late October when I first watched the farmers huddled around kerosene heaters in parkas, rubbing their hands together, drinking soup and coffee to warm them – stamping a little – pulling off their gloves, reluctant to handle the freezing change.

     “Can I help ya?”
     “Yes... Where's the best place to store potatoes for the winter?...I'll take that one...Yeah, You got it!”

     Dust rose from the spuds, tumbling from the basket to paper bag, and I propped them in my red wagon on one side of my infant daughter.  She was bundled in a plaid wool blanket and wedged between the corn and apples.  Her cheeks were pink with cold in the midst of orange, red and yellow – the colors of life exchanging itself.

i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.

ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
  it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
  only the children of the vandal.

iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
  of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
  blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
  to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
         we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
     to our locomotives.

iv.
  the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
   of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
   it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.

v.
  somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
   the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
   flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
    belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA

   and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
    yet i am

        not coming home.

a late harvest in Brigadoon
plucked from good earth
by strong hands
hauling
uphill, until
a gentle
*****
rewards
a stiff
back; easing
a grateful
burden
that levitates
famine

[ bushels ]

now
ziggarats
in a root
cellar

a Sumerian skyline
of parsnips and rhubarb
with fennel minarets

where Gilgamesh slept
in a pantry of pagan loot
underneath a corner room
at the very back
of a round
house.

where four seasons bunk with an almanac

mason jars of pickled beets
breathing their own blood
hanging gardens from the ceiling
of the Underworld
like fliers of missing children
on telephone poles

i go outside and wander off

you stay home

On a Sunday evening right inside Cartwheel Theatre the crowds somehow ignored the curtains as their spectaculars turned into their favorite pair of googly eyes
They set sight and aimed towards a rather refined looking gentleman with a marble pebble tie

Ah! Adonis! Then crowds were astonished!

The audience suddenly collapsed into a bore as their actor had a lead role of having a smile like open doors towards thick fields and bushels of grains and having a long right arm of direction pointing towards the lazy boys and reclining girls

Ah! Adonis! Whatever happened to the curtains?!
"this is a repetitive act!"
"I've heard of this before!"
"why are the old acts better than this week's?"
"predictable!"

Adonis noticing all eyes aimed at his cheek bones sang; "it is not I! I pity you who lost their recognition to the real show paid all your life to take a peek at a rather fragile fellow pale as I am, I beseech you; go beyond this curtains and forever stand in awe!"

He was out in the field
Trying to earn a living
He did this every year
Nothing had ever been given
The sweat poured off his brow
Humidity was overwhelming
The Sun's rays like hammers was beating down
Being on the verge of starving was compelling
Making him work that much harder
For he was paid by the bushels he picked
Every night he gave God thanks for the farmer
For he was very fair, although very strict

The man stood up for a moment stretching out his worn out back
Sweat dripping from every pore, he took a look around
He stood there counting his blessings, not the things he lacked
He was determined not to let this poverty driven life get him down
He continually worked so very very hard, he never slacked

His eye's fell over the field that stretched out to the horizon
Through the dust and haze, beamed his beautiful smile
For in his mind he could see what use to be, the mighty herds of bison
The Indians like him just trying to carve out a lifestyle
They where also unjustly exiled

But none of that mattered, not on this sweltering day
He knelt back down to get as much work done as he could
For his children where hungry, their bellies would not get filled by the Sun's rays
He was a better, taller man kneeling in that dirt, those that knew him understood

I am running
Brushing bushels of roses and daisies and sunflowers
Treading ground tread to the degree of infinity by lives lived before me
Through the green fields and under the arms of wise, old trees
And I stop under one of them

I settle down and take a seat
Quick breaths become slow and purposeful
Taking in the life around me and breathing out, feeding it
The orange, red, purple sky above looks down on everything, on me
My breath fuses with the waves of a life continously complimenting all that I see

I tried to tickle my vegan fancy
With bushels of quinoa and kale,
I was told no meat or dairy
Was the healthy Holy Grail.

But I was sad and hungry
With every burger I declined,
See me toss away my salad bowl,
I’m in a sirloin state of mind.

I filled my fridge with veggies,
Bean sprouts and legumes,
But I dreamt of pancetta
And links of sausage to consume.

Breakfast was plain yogurt
Lunch was collard greens,
Snacks were roasted edamame,
****, they’re just soy beans.

I was getting much too skinny,
My ribs were protruding,
I became short-tempered,
And was dark and brooding.

I covered all the mirrors,
I looked so pale and pasty,
All day I would salivate,
Craving something hot and tasty.

My vegan days are over
Enjoying pork chops, ham and bacon
I thought veggies were the answer,
But it seems I was mistaken.

Feel free to live off plants,
If you are so inclined,
But I’m firing up the grill,
I’m in a sirloin state of mind.

FIVE geese deploy mysteriously.
Onward proudly with flagstaffs,
Hearses with silver bugles,
Bushels of plum-blossoms dropping
For ten mystic web-feet-
Each his own drum-major,
Each charged with the honor
Of the ancient goose nation,
Each with a nose-length surpassing
The nose-lengths of rival nations.
Somberly, slowly, unimpeachably,
Five geese deploy mysteriously.

Maud And Star Mirror
Surazeus 2011 01 16

Little Maud walks to wooden barn
where she milks a cow in early dawn
then trudges back through thick mud
in freezing cold to castle kitchen hall.

Flash of light from thick wet muck
blinds her blue eyes for a moment
so she kneels and grasps a long stick
and pulls star mirror from dark dirt.

Dunking mirror in freezing stream
little Maud washes strange object clean
and gasps to see round silver disk
that reveals face of a beautiful queen.

Hiding star mirror inside her cloak
little Maud steps inside hot kitchen
where large Alis shouts you ugly pig
what took you so long to bring us milk.

After baking fifty loaves of bread
and dicing seven bushels of turnips
little Maud runs to her small shack
leaning against towering castle walls.

Little Maud gazes in shining glass
with awe at beautiful elegant queen
whose eyes are blue as summer sky
and hair is gold as shimmering wheat.

What strange painting is this she smiles
full of magic from hand of a sorceress
that she moves and talks in time with me
and always smiles at me like a friend.

What a pretty gown of scarlet silk
sewn with pure white pearls of light
and what a bright tall ring of gold
studded with diamonds and rubies.

Little Maud hears church bells ring
so she steps outside her frail shack
when a dozen women in white robes
whisk her away to a warm bath house.

Washing her clean in tub of water
and dressing her in a scarlet gown
they braid her long soft golden hair
and place a crown on her bowed head.

Riding a horse with attendant ladies
little Maud gazes in mirror surprised
wondering why they treat her so well
as if they thought she were a princess.

Galloping from woods of wild crows
tall man on a horse rides to her side
then grasps her braids with a shout
and pulls her down onto dusty road.

Shouting as he glares into her eyes
he cries so you refuse to be my wife
declaring you are far above my station
because you are granddaughter of a king.

I sent you a letter with a romantic song
hoping to win loyal love of your heart
but when you rejected my proposal
I rode straight to Flandria on my horse.

So I am a ******* because my mother
was daughter of a poor flour miller
and you are too high and mighty for me
then you can reign over wind and dust.

Just because you are a great princess
granddaughter of wise King Robert
and descendant of Charles Magnus
does not mean you are better than me.

I am good William Duke of Normandia
and though men have tried to **** me
a hundred times since I was but twelve
yet I reign supreme over all my land.

Flipping his cape with an angry growl
William turns to leap back on his horse
but Maud grips his arm with a smile
and kisses his mouth with eager desire.

Pressing close to his heaving chest
Matilda slips hands behind his head
and opens soft lips to taste his soul
and two hearts beat as one wild hawk.

Leaving him stunned with wide eyes
little Maud leaps back on her horse
and smoothing her long scarlet gown
she smiles and rides forth to her chapel.

Sitting in chapel by sparkling river
little Maud gazes deep in star mirror
and smiles when she sees William
appear behind her with flushed cheeks.

William and Matilda sit side by side
in small stone chapel by crystal stream
and drink together from holy grail
smiling at each other with loving eyes.

A cold, dark desert begins
When a faint peach light saunters over the horizon
& climbs the sky,
Leaving darkness to shadows and graves.

The chaffed branches of bushels,
Barely lingering along the threshold of life,
Find solace in crawling growth
As the glow reaches dusty twigs,
Making them as networks of smoker bronchi.

Faded green cacti hold posture sharp,
As totems of harsh-landed culture,
Serving as solemn landmarks
In a flatland of mixed dust and rock,
They stand tall
All for a breath of young desert air.

While quiet hue spreads,
Passing each towering rock & mountain,
Even quivering lizards,
Waiting to be sunbaked,
Change to pink-yellow glow
& scarcely move
As the sun soars above
sizzling rigid scales,
Until the glowing horizon becomes a burning, lit land
Under a radiating Arizona sun.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)  
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

Evergreen tree,
Burning red bushels
Of bark, branches open,
Cloud robed against, beyond
The mighty blue mountains,
Sage colour, rages of green,
Teems immortal as the sun,
Where great eagles landing
To nest in the towering
Chapel of a giant body
Adorn, what was always
Regal, everlasting, true,
Spiraling to the citadels
Of the swirling heavens
And even your crown,
A thrusting spire.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)   
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

HOW much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.
  
And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?
To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.
  
And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.

"I carry the star on the heel of beaten boots, the beet red road longs for the touch of stars. "

She motioned to her nose and informed him of the blood, he cupped his face before examining the crimson drops and saying “my nose bleeds sometimes, I suppose.” She agreed and walked away, into the corner of the room; she stood there and took a sip of beer. He held his hand beneath his nose for what seemed like 4 minutes but was actually only two. The blood began to pool and he sauntered to the kitchen and then turned around and went to the bathroom and closed the door.

Outside the apartment block were two lovers. Kissing under starry smiles as the broken door swings wide.

Staring into the vastness of the starry skies, he could see that all was lost and without thought or pause, held the barrel to his skull and pulled the trigger. Upon witnessing such an unprovoked and horrifying scene she ran from the car and held his body close to her breast, removing the gun from the ground on which it lay. She mimicked her lover’s action and ceased to exist along with him.

(It was all a dream.)

They held each other close, with heads together and a murmuring sigh from each of their stomachs. He mumbled into her ear “I promise I won’t look back.” Starting again on his journey, gently rejecting her body from his and refusing to make eye contact our traveler took to the cornfields, marching with intent and brushing aside the vast bushels as if he were a human scythe but he hesitated as he reached the great fence at the edge of the property; standing still he fought himself with a rigorous internal monologue before turning his head half way. She looked on with angst and hoped he wouldn’t turn fully. As he reached the point of seeing the house from the corner of his eye he snapped his head forward and gallantly marched into the woods and eventually to the desolate road from which he ventured a week earlier. The scent of Emilia in his nostrils, the finest ******* he had ever abused, the sweetest cacophony of noise, her voice in his ears, ringing like so many bells on the shore of some obscure beach in Britain. His thoughts turn to home and a solemn sigh was enough to shake, rattle, destroy his brittle bones and cause him to fall to his knees on the dusty road, screaming out to the clouds above him; wishing his mother was by his side. Tristan was lonely and the sadness of a life alone crept over him and held his shoulders in a way no person ever could or would.

He woke up and the voice on telephone that was curiously at his ear told him that his mother was dead. He went back to sleep. He woke again and wrote a novel. He then deleted the files from his computer and went for a walk in the park as that used to ease his depression during childhood. The trees were black and the sky was still blue. It was odd, and his nose was bleeding. Back home he woke up the computer from its dormant state and opened various sites in a cyclical manner. The hours passed and his back began to hurt. It was 7:43AM and the computer monitor became inexplicably brighter as the sun followed suit, pushing through the faded curtains and seeping through the gap and onto the wooden floor. He refreshed the web page and sighed. Nothing was happening. The world was over. He sat straight and slumped over before dragging himself across the room and falling from the chair to his bed. Asleep again and no dreams were had.

The world outside the window stood grey and as motionless as the icy waters when Lethe freezes over. The world outside is dead. All of these people are now one.

I keep dreaming of you in that strawberry patch
we had – my backyard, 2007.

The barn was already haunted so I planted my nightmares
in bushels of berries for others to ingest –
you know the old fairytale about watermelon seeds,
well, it also works with spores of sadness.

I wish you could have seen it,
but you must have some time or another. You picked
me from a lineup of a hundred black-haired
offenders, most with blue eyes the color of a package
of ramen noodles or Pepsi cola cans.

Suggestions that I vend my fruit, their ovaries,
were fortified between phone calls from state-over friends
I just did not have the ovaries to do so, no strength:
it would feel like the hair being pulled from my scalp

before I even knew you.
Present day, it is easy to understand why –
I keep dreaming of you in that old strawberry patch
choosing to taste and love my sorrow
over someone else’s happiness, as if it were beautiful.

SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star..    .    .
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.

There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west.

Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold.

(A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.)

I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold..    .    .
Better the blue silence and the gray west,
The autumn mist on the river,
And not any hate and not any love,
And not anything at all of the keen and the deep:
Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor,
And the new corn shoveled in bushels
And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows,
Umber lights of the dark,
Umber lanterns of the loam dark.

Here a dog head dreams.
Not any hate, not any love.
Not anything but dreams.
Brother of dusk and umber.

I miss my old hair clippers
I had them since before I got sober.
at the rehab near Philly, I would trade rollies for head shaves
until I learned that I could shave my own head without a mirror.
that was ok with me,
I saved on tobacco but I still had my cup and bowl out.
like an anchorite begging for alms by the road side.
some 3000 shaves of the head later and I don’t need a mirror
for much anymore.
I set the old clippers aside and I don't know where they went to.

When I wake up the sun is going down.
I do my shopping beneath the cold chalice of the moonlight,
cold glistening, somehow still reflecting of the Sun
even though
I said goodbye from
my window to the early evening dawn
9 hours before the burning
of the midnight oil.
I chant and ring my bells
so I don’t drift back to sleep.
but I can still smell sulfur so I
Aum and pray and ring the bells a little louder.

I found God on the carpet once.
It only took me 14 hours to pick through
every crystalline crumb that glistened in the kitchen light.
the next morning I had a half soup spoon full of the Almighty
but the hook and the plunger swallowed Him whole
and with haste turned me back to dust.

sometimes I’ll make a to-do list
with every strike of the pen another performance for
the bushels and the bones,
I like grocery shopping at night.
normally there are only a few souls and
old drifters wandering about and
they usually keep their eyes pointed down.
sometimes I practice small talk
with the clerk,
endeavoring to exchange appropriate
amounts of eye contact throughout.
personalities and performances and
I am so tired of caring.

when I’m waking up the sun is going down
but monica gave me a hand full of vitamin D and
a fire in the hearth and
sometimes the world
Is like a seven pointed centrifuge.
the heavy particles are all hitting the
chalice walls and I’m spinning so fast
all I can do is look up and breathe.

The swallows are singing swooping for the
Black Madonna and the Popes of the white smoke.  

God jumps from the sky to the spoon to the corkscrew
and L/L research put up a new tweet:
more from Hatonn about the bitter wine, and
this being quite a dense illusion for the thickness of the veiling,
and the chakras being tuned like strings on a harp
to be plucked by the Hands of the Creator.

This isn’t the density of knowing
as faith is the evidence for things unseen.
I’m still half blind but I can hear them chanting and
I’m just this side of single pointed thought but
facebook keeps breaking my ****** attention.
so I stand here
awoken to  the sun going down over the highway
and the snakes winding up my spine
and a mouth full of Vitamin D.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)   
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

.
Evergreen tree,
Burning red bushels
Of bark, branches open,
Cloud robed against, beyond
The mighty blue mountains,
Sage colour, rages of green,
Teems immortal as the sun,
Where great eagles landing
To nest in the towering
Chapel of a giant body
Adorn, what was always
Regal, everlasting, true,
Spiraling to the citadels
Of the swirling heavens
And even your crown,
A thrusting spire.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
When I was too young to do many things
Well and fishing with my father's
Father, I discovered all kinds of stuff
I wasn't good at, like how to read
Ripples, or tackle slippery eels, or even how to clean
Spiny perches.  'Where are the hungry fish?'
Grandfather would spout at me, all the green pools
Were liars and cheats and patience,
Was another one of my shortcomings,
Not only this, my father hoped his trades
On me, but like a conflicted carpenter
I was in love with trees.

This all left me wondering just what
I might do, that is until I plumbed my first
Blueberry.  In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)  
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)  
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.

Evergreen tree,
Burning red bushels
Of bark, branches open,
Cloud robed against, beyond
The mighty blue mountains,
Sage colour, rages of green,
Teems immortal as the sun,
Where great eagles landing
To nest in the towering
Chapel of a giant body
Adorn, what was always
Regal, everlasting, true,
Spiraling to the citadels
Of the swirling heavens
And even your crown,
A thrusting spire.

On a Saturday morning, one unnaturally warm for the usually brisk Pacific Northwest region, a girl woke up early.
Her first thought was not of the time, 6 am. She had woken up at this hour many times before, every Saturday in fact. Nor was her first thought about the unnatural warmth of the air seeping through her window. Her first thoughts were not of her legs tangled in her blankets, of the large breakfast she wouldn't eat, or of the last remnants of her dreams.
Her first thoughts were of a boy.
As were her second.
Her third. Her fourth.
Her fifth however, was that she should probably get ready to leave.
That summer, the girl had spent every Saturday morning 3 miles up the road at a small farm owned by a family from her church. Her father, the pastor with a history of dairy farming, had encouraged church goers to head up to the farm to help pick the bushels of fruits and vegetables being grown for his churches personal food bank. The girl simply assisted him.

The boy was on her mind every other minute, as she dressed, washed, loaded her allergy medication into a bag and trekked out the door into the misty morning heat. All through the drive she was silent, wondering if he every thought about her. Her father was all but indifferent, speaking of little but weather patterns and permaculture.

The farm was large yet quaint, owned by a woman who evidently had an unfulfilled dream to become a Barbie doll. Farm animals were littered unnecessarily around the property, serving little purpose but to appear cute. The girl supposed they succeeded.

45 minutes of plucking kale leaves offered little satisfaction to the girl, her fingers shaking and *****, aching for contact with the boy who she admitted to herself had probably never given her a second thought. However, this thought was in fact her 67th consecutive such one about the boy. She was unaware of how her 79th thought about him would happen to coincide with the gentle vibration in her pocket. A small blue box with an early morning greeting would appear on her cell phone screen, making her dirt covered hands oddly still.
She was unaware that the boy was motivated to send this particular message by his 104th consecutive thought about her that morning. She was unaware that, much like her, he had thought of little else over the previous month. She was unaware that hours of conversation would lead to revelations of startlingly similar music preferences, opinions and thoughts.

She was unaware how deeply he felt for her. Yet she was all but unaware of how deeply she felt for him. She was unaware that two years from this warm Saturday morning she would be laying in bed at 1 am, rediscovering her writing talent while recounting the beginnings of a love story. Her own.