"zane" poems
When ranchers decide to do a thing,
Sometimes they just go through it.
What follows is a little fling
A neighbor did...don't do it.
The clearing of the land requires a little fortitude
Some ingenuity, and luck, and not a little courage.
So A.D. Volbrecht's story, though a little crude,
Is only strange to those who eat milk toast and porridge.
Rather than tear an old house down to clear a farming space,
A.D. enlisted help from his oldest son to haul the thing away.
Together then, the two grown men took on a moving race
To see if they could jack the house and move it in one day.
The morning saw a Donahue, low slung and meant to haul,
Waiting as the house was raised, (unsteady on new legs)
Then slowly lowered down again. T'would make a feller bawl
To see the old home place prepare to pack its bags.
Son Zane began a steady pull to move the old house home,
And A.D. took his place in front, flashers and flags to warn.
Slow going was their pace, and traffic stopped up some;
The actual move was tougher than the plan they'd formed.
So seven miles became a half a day, and challenges arose
How ever would they move the thing through town?
The power lines and traffic cops were obstacles; who knows
What kinds of tickets they'd be writing down?
Up ahead the airport gleamed, the tarmac shimmered black.
"Aha!" old A.D. cried, "I've found the way around!"
Hard left he turned on a county road, and cut the fence in back
And guided Zane and the old home shack to airport ground.
Western Airways flight was due sometime that afternoon;
Old AD rattled on up Runway One, old pickup running fast,
To find a gate to let the old house through, (and none too soon);
The tractor and its load sputtered through the parking lot at last.
In June a few years back, a farmer and his son pulled off a heist.
Stole some runway time and cut their journey short...
No harm done, though they'd never do it twice
Without winding up defenseless in the county court.
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 7:56 AM UTC
There was a time I doubted myself
Helped along by your insistance
I cut myself away to pretend for you
I hurt myself just to please you
And to hope that maybe, just maybe
If I tried hard enough I could make it work
If I could just push it enough
I might not have to struggle with this
After all it would be easier if I could be this way
To wear a skirt because "you're a girl"
To paint my face because "its what girls do"
To adorn myself with lace underwear because "you can't deny your womanhood"
I wish I could
I tried so hard to show you I could be that
I tried so hard to show myself I could be that
So desperately I've longed to 'just be' how I am 'meant' to be
But I couldn't
I can't
As bad as things got between us
I will always thank you for showing me this one thing
That I cannot pretend any more
You showed me that I need this
Just as I need oxygen to breathe
Just as I need food to sustain myself
You taught me that I cannot pretend forever
You showed me that this is who I am
I am male.
I am Zane
No one will ever take that from me ever again.
Thank you.
Nov 16, 2015
Nov 16, 2015 at 1:34 PM UTC
The CAFO trucks roll past
Smelling of hog **** and ***
Their passengers squeal maga,
We are not afraid, they cry
Our **** is in your water
You breathe our **** all day long
Who’s crying now?
Maga, they cry. Hahaha
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 5:29 PM UTC
Zzzzz
Zzzzz
-Zzzzz
Zzzzz
Zz...
(???)
Zoe?
-Zzzzz
Zzzzz
Zoe??
-Zzzzz
Zzzzz
ZOE!!!
-Zz...!
Zane?
'Za,
Zucchini,
Zinfandel?
-Zzzzz
Zoe!
-Zz...
Zane?!
'Za,
Zucchini,
Zinfandel?
-Zaxby's
Zalad
Zaxby's
Zalad?
-Zzzzz
Zzzzz
ZOE!
-Zz...!
Zane?!
Zaxby's
Zalad???
(???)
Zoe,
Zaxby's
Zalad?
-'Za,
Zucchini,
Zinfandel
Zzzzz
Zzzzz
-Zane?
© 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
Jan 4, 2020
Jan 4, 2020 at 12:02 PM UTC
Death metal
This Valentines Day
Mass shootings and
Congressmen pray
This Valentines Day
This Valentines Day
Trump says he’ll pray
This Valentines Day
Does he know the words
Can he read them?
This Valentines Day
This Valentines Day
Way-Out Willie
On the stage now
Hand jiving us
This Valentines Day
This Valentines Day
This Valentines Day
Copyright © 2018 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 4:26 PM UTC
Our lot was not to stay all night;
In kneeling praise by bathroom stalls.
Alcohol numbed your honesty's bite,
wrote her destiny on the divider walls.
And we weren't the kind to cheat, don't believe,
All the loose lips half-cross town,
Last call patrons who watch me leave,
And shut this ****** down...
Like Zane and Beckett, so convinced,
Their **** would last forever,
Bad enough to make you wince,
If they spend one more second together.
Or Jane and Kinney, young, driven, and full,
Of lust or something similar.
Don't be surprised, you've seen this fire,
The end? ...all too familiar.
And pretty Syd had all the gall,
and Pony Boy thought he knew the score...
but he's just a **** like so much Pyrex,
Stuffed inside his paper *****
But Ashtray Woman with ***** Mouth,
And monster's blood on toilet tissue,
Is just another frightened girl,
With real and dangerous daddy issues.
Now, here, at the close (I'm still glad to say),
You deserve almost everything, that you've won,
Our karma arose ( and, in time, took the day ).
Now I ponder regrets in the hours before dawn,
It wasn't the when, or with whom we may lay,
or the time in the morning before I should be gone,
It's more about how we desired to stay...
When we gazed into stars lying flat on your lawn.
I once craved your poison but, now, in my way,
I'm actually glad
to see you gone.
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 11:26 PM UTC
Drinks, articulate, a friend and his friends, all strangers
New faces and talk and chortle chortle
Har har har but same old, same old
Little Jimmy looking for I-don’t-know
A zap, a spark, zane for the brain
A flash of brilliance.
Electric hope
Fear, but fear of the good.
Glides in the Girl,
The boy perks up.
O, Heaving youth, lithe
Smiling with mischievous intent.
And the boy is alive.
** ** ** he makes her giggle
And never a more electric ******
Could you hope to hear
As he sits, dropping crystal
Shards of intensity sparkle between
Through a veil of shimmering liquor.
And the strangers begin to fade
So, alone, they talk
And O!
How full of colour and ringing joy it is
Bursting through the grey pallor
Of those strangers
Of the terrific tiny talk of tiny types
The chatter of proud people- of thoughtless things
And improper imperfection
(That fear of the bad that can make good people
Gobble on like gluttons;
Gossip their glistening gloop)
And the plastic nod nod nod, har har har
Ever bound to ragged boredom.
But She is different;
A scattering of the light.
And they laugh and zap
They bite and soothe
And play and croon
And find themselves lost, but quite content
In a world of delirious joy
A sacred place reserved for sleep
And the welding of atoms.
As Her furnaces of laughter
Roar their blazing joy,
Her hammering heartfalls
Pound upon this lost boy’s soul
Melting it into hers.
The flying sparks begin to meld
Along with hope and hopeful fear,
Til a second Sun reigns proud amidst the dawn
Shining high above its peer.
Morning.
Zipping their separate ways,
The heat of twin Suns firm against their backs,
So bright the light,
It takes time before their eyes behold
The second glowing orb they made
And gaping in disbelief,
They find themselves rushing back
To fold into each other’s arms
Tired and aching and dizzy.
On the verge of wakefulness,
They glance back at grey strangers,
With a smile, laying in perfect silence,
They sleep.
And, filled with goodly fear, the couple wonder
And marvel at their fortune.
Nov 16, 2015
Nov 16, 2015 at 3:11 PM UTC
Loan me a dime, he sang
A dime is all he asked
Is that too much
To bother you
Worn hat, gnarled hands
I need a dime
He said, that’s all
Loan me a dime
Back tomorrow
I repay you
If you loan me
a dime, he said
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 4:49 PM UTC
I am a little boy again
Is the supermarket empty?
I am the ugly duckling
Is there life outside the pond?
I am a cub in a giant cage
Is there a zookeeper?
I heard there was an oasis beyond the desert
My warmth adds up, the numbers don’t
My spirit searches, my mind wanders
There are a billion faces behind my own
Is one of them me?
I clutch my teddy, violated
Looking for a lake to wash in
I slap on a face before I go out
Zane, Zack, Z’karyah, kotch, Psalmspitter,
Tenderfoot, Buddha, Dylan, Matthew, MiaR
I look for shalom, but find chaos
A thousand roads forward and back
Do any of them lead me home?
Where? What is that?
Sides draw battle lines, I am cut in two, or three, or four
As the little boy inside me tries
To figure out what to search for.
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 4:23 PM UTC
We died that day
I can see our mausoleum now
Stacked stones
Memories, overlapping
Beautiful and meaningless
Wasted space in heads too young
Too young to see the facade of this house
Falling away
As you fell away from one another
In different beds now
But mommy and daddy's would always love each other
Right?
Permanence was supposed to be spelled in your names
I dared not think it any other way
Collapse was hearing my fathers cry
From seeing mine
Choked by some unseen force
I think we can call guilt
We weren't meant to stay together
Alive
This family
Fate fiddled with the idea
Fabricated smiles
Serving dinner to the ties of your marriage
Us
No
That day aged us years I swear
Reality thumped in chests
Where blind faith once lived
Zane was old enough to know
Family meeting meant goodbye
Zara young enough to hold concern only in our puppy
Asking with a quivering lip where he might go?
I excused myself
From the room
The idea that this was real
And it must've been my fault
I thought
The blame must live in me
I see the sorrows in my parents eyes
I know the blame must live in me
Somehow
How could I have known?
The good in this
Seeing my mother's smile light up in another man's eyes
Someday
And now we're buying our new house
To replace the old one
Building it with empty stones
We've yet to make memories of
My new step sister
A step mother
And none of my fathers cries
How could I have known
I wouldn't still be bringing flowers to the steps of our mausoleum
That life moves on
And how beautifully bittersweet that could be
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 12:56 AM UTC
There is a house in
Southeast iowa
It sits all empty
Waiting for us there
Big porch, a bigger yard
Golden fields, open skies
A moon so full
I’ve watched and sighed
Star light, the stars bright
They shine for us tonight.
Some day someday soon
We will see them all.
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 9:36 PM UTC
I want to be a magician
How nice it must be,
to have a vanishing act,
to disappear,
at the drop of a hat,
to dazzle and amaze
all of the days,
and sleep at their end
with a smile on your face
I want to be a magician
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019 at 10:03 PM UTC
Dinners are quiet, we sometimes speak
In our heads, 2 MMA fighters circling
Looking for a knockout punch
Pass the salt, please
Laughter’s a runaway
Been missing for a year or two
Never filed a report
Needs pepper, doncha think?
We shadow box through the house
Oops excuse me, that was close
Then retire to our corners
Facebook and Instagram, y’know
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Mar 18, 2019
Mar 18, 2019 at 8:44 PM UTC
The innocence of childhood
Is stuck in my mind.
I remember that pale boy with the comic books
and bowl cut, black hair.
And how we'd stay up all night together
playing and laughing, innocent.
But then we grew up and apart
and we were no longer innocent.
We found lust and we found hurt,
but most of all we found life.
and then
you found death.
I went to your viewing and you looked so good,
boy who was once a friend.
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 8:12 AM UTC
Raddled, addled
oh my goodness
some dimes in the
jukebox baby
A substantive
No gargantuan
Evening awaits us
Only question
Do we grab it
Race like wildfire
Down our road
Never look back
If the wherewithal
lies within us
God’ll forgive us
Might even smile at us
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 10:38 AM UTC
The remote don’t work,
but my baby can dance,
the remote don’t work,
but she can prance, prance, prance
She slides to the left
Shimmies to the right
Makes me smile
That lasts all night
The remote don’t work,
but my baby can dance,
the remote don’t work,
but she can prance, prance, prance
I’m missing sports center
Netflix too
Having watched a ballgame
since 2002
The remote don’t work,
but my baby can dance,
the remote don’t work,
but she can prance, prance, prance
The remote don’t work
And I don’t care
The remote won’t work
And we don’t care
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 4:27 PM UTC
Painful misunderstandings
complicated altercations
Confused mashup
of regrets and hope
They cumulate, proliferate
who adjudicates
We all step up
For another ride
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019 at 2:02 PM UTC
I wanna live
With the asana girl
We could be happy
Drinking our ghee
With my asana girl
She speaks in their slogans
I nod and say yes
We roll on our mats and
Breathe through our noses
My asana girl
Twelve yogis humming
A sitar for show
The raja relaxes
And waits between chants
For his asana girl
I don’t need no money
I’m happy as hell somehow
Karma’s a ***** y’know
You see it’s all a big show
Om... om... om
Copyright © 2019 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Mar 19, 2019
Mar 19, 2019 at 2:33 PM UTC
A silver smartphone
Hides on a silver bedspread
Wise is he who knows
Copyright © 2018 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 1:24 PM UTC
Oh,
I loved Zane Grey,
the way his cowboys
shot through each day,
the tinhorns and telegraphs,
funeral directors and their
funereal laughs.
It's not the same since
Zane went away.
The range looks grey now.
How
I miss the grits and hominy,
if only Zane had
stayed
we could have played
cowboys and Indians
for real.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 8:06 PM UTC
You just happened to smile
For you, no big deal
For me, the true sun shone
deep inside me, warm
Another day, maybe two
You did it again
Confirming my theory
Smile equals Life Inside Me
Yeah, Science is Dope
Your smile is crack and I am
Addicted to it
And there’s no rehab for me
Copyright © 2018 - Zane Safrit - All rights reserved
May 25, 2018
May 25, 2018 at 8:55 PM UTC
Hold on, hold on
I keep telling
Myself, I say
Se'f you gotta
Hold on, Love is
Coming, Hold on, Love
Is coming, hold
On, just hold on
Copyright © 2018 - Zane Safrit - All rights reserved.
May 20, 2018
May 20, 2018 at 10:40 PM UTC
I saw Him on the street
He walked right on by
I waved and I danced
I even said “hi.”
I went to His House
I knocked on His door
Jesus Himself
Said "There’s room for no more."
God, He don’t know me
And if He does
He acts mighty strange
I call him at night
Sometimes daytime too
He asks for my name
Says, who, who are you.
God, he don’t know me
And if he does
He acts mighty strange
God, he don’t know me
Jesus, please help me
Y’Dad’s forgotten my name
He laughed and He laughed
And He said "Ain’t that a shame"
Copyright © 2018 by Zane Safrit. All rights reserved.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 7:55 AM UTC