"hocking" poems
I have been in Pennsylvania,
In the Monongahela and Hocking Valleys.
In the blue Susquehanna
On a Saturday morning
I saw a mounted constabulary go by,
I saw boys playing marbles.
Spring and the hills laughed.
And in places
Along the Appalachian chain,
I saw steel arms handling coal and iron,
And I saw the white-cauliflower faces
Of miner's wives waiting for the men to come home from the day's work.
I made color studies in crimson and violet
Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset.
2k
**** blocked by
wannabe rock stars
in tube socks
standing on the block
like the 2001 Rock
ready to drop candy *****
and knock blocks off of
those who would mock
**** strap wearing
disk jockey’s –
cocky cockney Spock impersonators
lock glocks in boxes so the foxy chicks
won’t flock to the professed
smock of Sherlock Holmes
or dock their paper ships
on the jagged rocks
jutting up from the oceanic
tectonic plate –
frocks adorned with Reeboks
shock the locksmith
busily hocking his shops’
noxious fume makers
while the unorthodox musk ox
in bobby-socks
gently rocks
to the sounds walking out from
the talking box –
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 3:13 PM UTC
I thought of you today when I noticed the dirt underneath my fingernails
And when I felt the wind in my hair as I flew down a hill on my bike
And when I stared at the Hocking River again as it gently swirled downstream.
When I realized I’d be going to bed early and
When I thought about sleeping alone,
As I do almost every night.
When I decided to go the long way home.
When I sat down on a bench, ate a granola bar, and sipped away the rest of my water.
When I threw my shovel aside and dug with my hands.
When I wiped the sweat from my brow.
When I looked at my Aloe Vera plant and realized I hadn’t watered it in a while.
When I watered my Aloe Vera plant.
When I left the dinner table before the rest of my friends to call my grandma
Who once told me that you and I should get married.
When I laughed at my own thoughts
And when Ani DiFranco came on my Spotify.
I don’t exactly know what I mean
When I say I thought of you.
I don’t know anything exactly, I mean
What if the universe jumps erratically through temporal space,
And each moment only seems continuous cuz we only remember what came “before” it, as we say?
When I say that, when I think about that,
I guess I’d call that thinking about you.
I thought about you when I thought about
Getting ice cream
And when I thought I got a splinter,
Neither of which
Actually happened.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 11:23 PM UTC
It’s the most bountiful time of the year.
All retailers are crowing
The profits are growing
They smile ear-to-ear
It’s their greatest time of the year.
We people are hocking,
To stuff our kids stockings,
Wth jewels we bought all year long.
We want to make sure
That we can insure
We don’t take a parental step wrong.
It’s the bankruptingest time of the year.
No one quite gives a ****
That the whole things a scam
To sell clothing and beer
We go further in debt every year.
We’ll fight to pay rent
Nearly thirty percent
Goes to pay all the interest off.
We take extra jobs
Like all working slobs
All year we don’t dare get a cough.
It’s the most co-dependent of times.
It’s all about image
And holiday scrimmage
As if we’re not a victim of crime.
And pretending we saved one little dime.
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 2:45 PM UTC
Ash from two cigarettes on the stone pylon beneath my feet,
I **** yellowbrown into the Hocking.
My stream meets the river on a riptide,
Carefully crafted from the funneled remnants
Of melted snow and torrential rain
Just to give off the illusion of chaos.
Forms of spectacular watermotion grace the noonday clouds,
And despite their haste, too high on molly,
There’s something hanging in the stillness beneath the mudbrown surface—
Some epiphanic moment that rapidity and angerwaves
Refuse to force out of sight; some
Strand of smoke, still floating upwards from the dampened cigarette ash
Abandoned twelve hours prior; some
Slurred-drunken word, tinged anyways with meaning.
The lips I kissed after climbing back onto the bridge the night before
Proved to be less than irrelevant (screaming later, as they did, someone else’s name
While I lay listening, still half thinking that
Maybe she’d just gone upstairs for some floss). But
The fact that there were lips there at all,
In the rain
Under the stars
Over the Hocking
Issuing with reverence the words “magical” and “perfect”
Through the darkness of the night and the echoes of Joni Mitchell’s voice…
It’s something worth noting, despite the angerwaves;
Something worth feeling
Despite the noonday clouds and dampened ash.
Now that I’ve screamed at the river and ****** on it with a harshlaugh,
I think I can also
Find a moment to give it thanks.
Because I’m off the pylon now.
I’m back on the bridge. And I’m walking South
With the flow of the Hocking, back into Athens.
And I am finally
(The rain beating against my face, my clothes, my mind)
So very here.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC
he chose to return home
to the familiar sights, sounds, smells
to leave the silent antiseptic Medicare paid
vacation suite behind, for some other sinking soul
he chose to deny the “in home palliative care”
for he said it would be like a door to door peddler
you allowed in , one who would never leave
hocking her wares as if he got to keep them
when she would give the same calming commodities
to a stranger, the very day he was gone
they all said, he would be in pitiful pain,
peeling his skin off pain without the magic potions
of modernity, the ones that brought on Morpheus' sleep,
and lapped up miles he had left
he knew though, he had no miles left
only a few steps, to the bathroom, perhaps,
if his old soldier’s legs held out, perhaps
he could make it to the yard again one time,
to see the ivy he planted in lesser numbered years,
the cool soft vines he watered and ignored,
until the sun turned them a yawning yellow,
then a brusque brown, perchance he could make it
to their home one more time, before the last speck of green
vanished in the dying light
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 10:26 PM UTC
Impossible understanding
All burly reasons how
Sweat and gruff groaning
Very deep inside you now
Pile on mad manhood
Smother you in kisses
Plunging tongue further
Feeling it all listless
Groping, hardening
Comfort letting go
Shocking, hocking
Swallowing to and fro
Testosterone wins
Beats against a chest
Trusting all this thrusting
The room's a ******* mess
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 6:13 PM UTC
I passed by that tree the other day.
The one nestled between two thorn bushes
and just past a ravine
along the upper trail of Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills,
surrounded by two thousand acres or so
of dense forest.
I laughed to myself because
The old birch hadn’t changed since I had last seen it.
But it certainly felt different.
The same gray cloak of bark
covered the tender matter inside.
Golden foliage still swayed above me
like it did on that brisk November afternoon.
Today is brutally brisk,
but I have to admit that I did stop for a second to reminisce
under the once comforting blanket of its shadow.
I fixed my now nostalgic, sepia-toned gaze on the bark
and traced my fingers over the scar that we left.
I remembered looking for the perfect one with you.
It was this one, we both thought.
And so were you, at least I thought.
My cold blade carved into the robust fortress of its surface
exposing the birch’s reddish-tan, natural finish underneath.
It then became our tree,
not just any tree, in a forest, on a planet full of them.
I remembered you telling me a couple months back about
how much you admired trees,
and how I should read Trees. Reflections and Poems
by Hermann Hesse, and I did almost immediately.
“Trees are sanctuaries.”
was our favorite quote from the poem, we decided.
And it was the most relevant.
Our tree had become a grand symbol
that would carry in our memory,
what it meant to love and be loved.
But now its just that,
another tree in a forest
that we scarred.
And that, now, scars us.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 12:04 PM UTC
it's heart
mulled over beating
then it’s name ran at me
i flinch
hocking back spit
arms aim fire
fists, guard our eyes
stay back horrid child
for far knowing
what evil you do
does not stop
the evil in you
the taunting and twisting
on cuts filed under ‘whups'
shall we call them synergies
her smile chews
on my blistering knots
but know in my remembrance
how i’ll remember you
blundering blind in a train station
a dumb bleached blonde
and in everyone’s way
knocking over children
smiling endeared at me
oh but not by me
not the meaning of me
not the feeling of me
you
****
you only ever loved me in the dark
Oct 29, 2016
Oct 29, 2016 at 12:18 PM UTC