"unplowed" poems
High school's unwitting, eclectic crowd --
sweethearts, jocks, "gangsters", A.S.B. --
had universes stuffed in it.
You can clearly picture where you'd sit
during lunch, shaded under a tree
near the bike racks; disallowed
and unaware, the future unplowed.
No one expected a baby
(or thirty), marriages, deaths, the flit
to forlorn bitterness: counterfeit
lives. Your peers had much more agency
and promise than they saw, unendowed
with foresight in a teenage crowd.
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 12:05 PM UTC
It's snowing tonight,
and I think ********* Dad,
when Maryland beats Indiana
and I move to text him.
He's beyond snow now.
So what do I do with these
unbearable photos he took
of me standing alone
in the withered sun
on monumental trains,
I was six or seven,
out by the rusting roundhouse
in Brunswick?
It's been snowing for hours
& I carve a footpath
out to the unplowed street
to watch the shining gray
banks under the amber light.
There is no route to carve
through this silence.
My father was made of ghost towns,
from Manzanar, from the endless
pine-dark of Idaho's rivered night,
from all the unmapped places,
he grew complete in himself.
And even now as I watch
the snow slant and stumble
I am left behind as his son
apart from him and without.
The snow dives into the
night blankness and I wonder
if I had died first, cutting short
this reckless careless crooked sprawl,
would he be writing here?
The smeared gray glow
of the screen across his hands,
the fat flake snow rising
like dough beneath the windows?
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 3:20 AM UTC
Each contain seven pictures
Each drawn and quartered
Third easel'd and painted
The fourth merely this world
and if you add together the dis
continents and containments
The Field
lies unplowed beyond each square of pavement
Black hardwood and rainments
Bishoprics and taints
Elementary you say, we'll ain't it quaint
Four Sevens is enough to turn my year ago
Enough is how much they say can fill up just one
Drawer
well add pluralities of empathy
and subtract my ego thats hurting for wealth
and you'd have some Thing like an object which could represent
Well
Health is just environments inside shelves of disorder
They rarely start me in winter fold fall back to summer
and Spring
A gracious step across lilypads
Strafe not for air covers ground patrols sweep
Submariners are the only kind I know not who they are these
Cheats I take for honest
Honest men I could count on my middle finger
Me and you
Two
Well
One is just a Drawer
On a cabinet
Which I no longer own
and it contains the air inside it
and whatever you put in it
Well I own that too.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 1:00 AM UTC
A pity that your city couldn't find it in
the budget to prop up another "civic win!"
'Cuz the clinic closed its doors at 6 p.m.
for the final time.
When you're wearing out your shoes on their unplowed streets
in the Winter, while they cheer the college football team,
will the ledger sport the error margin for relief?
Or will your hole-filled coat suffice?
Goodnight...
It's so hard to say
if we could script out any other play.
The blocking's down.
It's so hard to know,
when your prescription's low,
what you're gonna do--
or where you're gonna go now.
The new athletic center on the campus gleams,
a glass-and-money beacon. They slashed faculty.
Rent is climbing ladders with the cost of heat
all the God **** time.
Your eye's on midnight pleasure at the liquor store.
That snowy route will wind you by the nice wine bar,
and then past the clinic's closed and boarded doors,
under buzzing lights.
You see him through a window sipping fine, dry whites.
His vote to cut off funding drew his party's line.
His lips are sketching praises for the team's O-line.
That's a city councilman's night.
Good times...
It's so hard to say
if we could script out any other play.
The blocking's down.
Will the curtain fall,
when cooler nights turn cold?
What you gonna do?--
What you gonna do now?
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 2:45 PM UTC
In the beginning there were three seemingly
undeniable Truths ****** upon me
subtly at first, as a cautious lover may
approach his lady's thighs with
tender fingertips and a darting tongue.
As years progressed and Time brought
the growing tide of self-will upon me
unexpected and outrageously violent
this Trinity became a mantra that
surely the Saints must have suffered for
as they in their wisdom created for those
poor souls such as I who knew that one day
a reckoning would indeed arrive.
Recited by rote:
I believe in the Unholy Trinity and
the immutable facts imbued therin
that there can be no Love without Pain
and to believe otherwise is folly
that said Love will only ever be a laughable farce
unless it be bought with power and fame and money
and that the Life one lives should be one way
and the path laid down by one's forebears
is indeed the way it should be.
And then somebody welcomed me
into painted arms with no terms lacking
expectations of anything other than
simple love affection and respect
meeting halfway and behaving like a human being
no need for nice cars and glossy trinkets
and finding my withered hope
a beautiful thing worth rejuvenating.
She found my heart a field lain fallow
for years unplowed and untended
left to wither and return to the desert
wastes from whence it was born.
But now.....
the rains have come.
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
Walking an uneven road,
carrying a heavy load.
With no place for repose-
or spot to unload.
My mind writes an ode
to open spaces and rain.
For seeds, we haven't sowed,
and links of time like chains.
Feet planted in soil, l left unplowed.
the earth beneath us, rough, rugged-
tears drops fall from thunder-clouds.
pouring from- an emptying bucket.
Like memories fade away,
as metal turns to brownish rust.
The past like boulders weighs
upon me, reminders of broken trust.
Aug 23, 2016
Aug 23, 2016 at 11:00 AM UTC
I thought I'd write you a letter
It's to tell you goodbye, even though we've never met
There are so many things we've shared
You've written about all of them, how could you forget?
Prosaic gravity pulled us together
You know you felt it, but to which lonely globe have you fallen?
The air is not the way you remembered
But what you learned to breathe, was the awakening pollen
I want you to know how I will leave you
Your heart will be half what it was, but I will only take the backside
You thought *** was a gift I wanted
So why did I paint black walls black again when I was on the inside?
You can’t answer that question my love
You felt less than a woman but that was because I was less than a man
The mistake was your beauty
If you had only spoken first seduction would not have been my plan
The pilgrimage you made drove you mad
You reveal your sickness because you are consumed with passion
You cannot avoid me my love
You have to give me everything so that you can be full of reason
I made love to you in the ocean
Everyone could see us but there was nothing we could do
I wanted to terrify you with exhibitionism
But instead it's me who has to live with the salt burned residue
Tell me now that you hate me
I know you do, but remember I only took the wall that is shadowed
You feel as if you cannot give again
But he will see the façade I left and believe the field is unplowed
Never ask me why I am the way I am
You could never explain yourself to me even though you tried
Both of us would rather write about it
Than say things with eyes that will only feel like somebody lied
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 12:10 PM UTC
I woke underneath the blind illumination
Where the dazzling stars sleeps behind the clouds
The wide flashes of light draws the sight
But left the strata-cumulus unplowed
The gaze changes as the sky rolls above me
All I could see is the embracing darkness' existence
Like a lover's ballad of delight and tranquility
Where light and dark shatters the boundary of divergence
The fading mist above disentangle
When the dawn blooms at the horizon
The lanterns of the village starts to illuminate
That's when I realize that the stars are kept in every person
The starry night is seen in every eye
Don't keep it hidden, illuminate the sky
Jun 23, 2017
Jun 23, 2017 at 2:01 PM UTC