Hot August winds
Blows across dried yellow grass.
The shimmer of heat.
Rippling off the blacktop.
At a roadside Motel.On the
South Dakota Landscape.

I see the arrival of
An Amish family all,
Dressed in Black.
Arrive dragging their
Simple bags into the room
As the door closes.

I head inside to escape the heat
The smell of sulfur.
Rises from the water faucet.
Mixed with the smell of
Bacon and Eggs frying
In an electric skillet.

I head out under the overhang.
To escape the heat and my parents.
Down the way, a boy in Black Hat
Black shirt open,
White Tee showing.

He walks over to meet me.
I show him toys I brought,
Bored in the blasting heat.
We hop across the hot blacktop.
Barefoot trying not to get burned.

Off to the park, We find
The hollowed out carcass.
Of an F-16 Fighter Jet,
We bonded as pilot and copilot
Jetting across the Badlands.

We strafed and bombed.
Enemy installations.
Cutting off troop Supplies.
We blasted the afterburners.
Breaking the sound barrier.
On a hot August afternoon.

I have a light under my concrete
For others
It is fatally luminous
So it must be contained
I relegate rays to the darkest depths
So no light may exit
But then you walked on my blacktop
And cracks started to form in my road
Light began to escape
You were fascinated
I was terrified
Because the more you traversed my pavement
The further my road split
Brilliant flashes with increasing frequency surfaced
Your curiosities were piqued
Mine were plagued
By what lies underneath
And when it would blind you

I tried to warn you from inside my cocoon
You said you'd purchase sunglasses
You never understood
This light
Shatters glass like Stone Cold Steve Austin
It's intensity is a stunner
It may be the Sun itself
But you insisted on continuing
To travel down this path

As models import wrinkles
Potholes become sinkholes
Fears were realized
Senses overwhelmed
Skin burned
Blackened
Into something unrecognizable
As all signs of life fade
I'm stranded on a crumbled road
With only sightless cadavers to lead me home

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

trigger warning:
Hate long poems?  move on.
Love words?  pleasure your self

<=>

drought and famine of the spirit,
over-staying summer
house guests in an overly sun blanched,
voided, white outed, mental abode.

faculties parched,
overly starched,
compositions lost in transition,
why can't they make it ashore?

It's after 2 AM, and though
ferries have stopped running,
mainland hangover hangerons are
working overtime to prevent
"author"izations, so all I get
when I press send is a whole lot of
"permission to cross," denied!

causes of vexation undisguised,
dual natured and manifold,
luxuriating and drowning in home grown,
city organic insipid,
makes one quick to blame
nobody in particular,
but yourself, repeatedly.

reasons many, the distractions of
rustling contradictions populate,
another life road fork looming,
a track record for choosing badly,
colors the blacktop even blacker and
ramps up desires for a janitorial,
but first do no harm, status quo.

Need a beer.
Need a distraction.
Need a homework assignment,
which I buy at the IGA market:

obey the eleventh commandment
which every writer knows;
you think you're Mr. Bigshot,
so pudding prove it,
write it,
one true sentence,
let it be a constitution for all,
with the lengthy consistency,
of a Hemingwayesque,
one true sentence.

dearth to riches occurs
as fast as a basketball
three second violation,
inspiration dripping like
windshield condensation,
got so many true sentences,
how ya gonna choose,

O sinner man?

sadly you don't hear or feel
my background music,
stringed surf sounds playing
Perlman's Mozart low to
the thunderous, sweltering,
swells of applause of
90+ degree heat
w/o a Crescent Beach breeze
to console the disowned

these superheated thoughts
now focused,
emerges a bill of sight,
lading my heart's many heresies,
staccato thoughts now,
rapid fire rebel,
a pre-discourse insurrection,
voices of words lash out -

pick me - immortalize me,
I wanna be,
a constitution for one,
one true sentence.

The Moment of Ownership.

Hillel did it,
standing on one leg,
a Sanskrit mantra,
not by me,
not for me,
not through me,
even more succinct.

full clarity unobtainable,
begin when fighting thru
the static of each nerve,
knowing that
each thought,
each emotion,
is a constitution
of sorts,
recognizing life is a series of
moments of ownership,
but that are truly ours
only when relinquished.

each one, a true sentence
when writ, spoke,
but only when disabused
of notions of possession
only true, when gifted away.

Lucian Freud painted those whom
he knew best, their portraits,
fully clothed but wholly naked,
a painter of revelation
thru the skin tones of the flesh.

exposeur of skins interior
displayer of old and ungainly,
left us eyesight more true
than an honest mirror,
with poetic brushstrokes overlay,
gained entry to what his
grandfather named id and ego,
artist's superego, his reflections,
a continuous judgment
on a pool of stretched canvas
that makes me despair that:

I will ere succeed
to cross the borderline
that modernity insists upon,
self preservation, neurotic fears,
impositions on my psyche and
that my moments of ownership
will be n'ere be stamped "transferred."

I take back my life,
by giving it away
this alphabetized self portrait,
a wrinkled sketch of me,
my ownings, undertakings
needs taking by you
so I can disown it.

these words are my own,
their conjunction is a
junction to you,
and a constitution for me.

once this expiation
is in your purview by the voted
election of Send,
bonded by a mutual
Moment of Ownership?

so net net,
bottom line,
these are my
one true sentences,
summarized, constitutionalized:
I am yours, for the taking,        
so come by, for and through me,
in many moments of ownership.

p.s. let us shelter together in place, an island growing

To lay my head upon the tawny cover of softwood pines once more
as I pry the manifest question of youthful travail and insecurity ,
to garner the earthen tier beside natures vested , rippling waters ..
Churning runnels lending delicate directions , whirlpool portrayals that countersink their matriarchal beginnings , only to gradually disappear ....
To wander the carpeted trail with arbitrary resolve , free of pious
intimidations .. Fixated with superb creativity  .. With the eyes of an eagle .. Determined . Pithiest .. Invincible ..
As heat obscures the blacktop ahead , the shade of home is but a dot in the humid distance , tar laced Georgia roads in the month of August are quite dangerous to young , bare feet ...
Sorghum fields , hog wire boundaries , darkening skies ..The unbounded Sun dragging each step , briar patches line the road shoulder , painful reminders of lonely boots foolishly left unkept ...
Fire ant mounds hide in tall grass , Cow Killers forage alone in Summer swelter , brown scorpions , cottonmouths and the list goes on virtually
forever during Dog Days , legends of wounds refusing to heal , double headed rattlers and rabid foxes , Longhorn bulls turning wild , growing bloodthirsty , hunting down unwary farm hands .. Men turned lunatic
from tainted moonshine , waiting at the wood line for clumsy boys and girls , well water made septic from lack of rain .. Bobcats running in packs for any food easily obtained , including boys that refused to listen
to mother , leaving their cowboy boots when warned not to do so ... This will be the last time I'm caught barefooted , all alone , left to my own wit and minds reserve , Mom and Dad can be sure of it !

A tomboy, naturally barefoot, gingerly walks the white painted line because the asphalt is just too burning hot.  Scrubby tufts of weedy grass are welcome respites on the way, briefly cooling her steps even if they are stickery.  The ***** soles of her now calloused feet were intentionally toughened just before school got out, with mincing steps across the roughest gravel she could find.  Her mother accommodates her preference, leaving a pan of water outside for her to scrub her feet before going in.  Even then, a black path has gradually appeared leading from the front door in the old orangish carpet.  Two months of summer barefoot every day when she had the choice. Keyed roller skates clamped onto last year’s school shoes were the exception.  She can flat out run anywhere.
  
This particular expedition began like every other thing they did, which was anything to fend off boredom.  She had been sitting on a cement step shaded by an open carport, just three oil-stained parking stalls for three small apartments on the tired poor side of town.  There is a little more dirt on the street here, and grass is a little neglected.  Just like the children, but these kids prefer that anyway.  Two scruffy friends stomp on aluminum cans, brothers sporting matching buzz cuts and cut-off shorts.  They are flattening them for the recycling money by the pound, so the carport smells vaguely of stale beer.  Another boy attempts to shoot a wandering fly with a home-made rubber band gun; rings cut from a bicycle tube made the best ammo.  “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  Thwack…  The only requisite for friendship here is vicinity, yet it is still true.  The idea of choosing friends is about as odd as the concept that one could chose where one lives... Strengths and shortcomings are completely accepted because it is just what it is.  

Their amazing three-story tree fort with a side look-out had been heartlessly taken down by the disgruntled property owner last week.  Two months of accumulating pilfered and scrap two-by-fours, nails, and even a stack of plywood (gasp!) from area construction sites had yielded supplies for a growing fort.  A gang-plank style entry had crossed the ditch to the first level.  Nailed ladder steps to the second offered a little more vertigo and a prime spot to hurl acorns.  Another ladder up led up to the third floor retreat, with a couch-like seating area and shoulder high walls.  A breeze reached the leaves up there.   The next tree over was the look-out, with nothing but ladder steps all the way up to where the view opened up out of the ravine.  When the wind blew, it gave merciless lessons in facing any fear of heights.  But now that was all over, discovered gone overnight.

Someone says again, “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  “ 7-11? ”  Good enough, so they head out.   Distance measures time.  Ten minutes is the end of the street past the cracked basketball court in the church parking lot.  Fifteen minutes and the lawns end at the edge of the sub-division.  Half-built homes rising from bare dirt and scattered foundations could offer treasures of construction scraps, (where she suspects the stack of plywood came from.) but they keep walking.  Twenty minutes is where industry has scraped away nature, and railroad tracks form an elevated levee.  But time is meaningless if there’s a wealth of it, so there’s no going further until an informal ritual is completed.  Wordlessly they each dig around their pockets searching for equal amounts of pennies.  Each of them carefully arrange them lined up on the rounded-surface rail, and they settle in for the wait.  It could be five minutes or it could be thirty.  They all understand it’s a crap-shoot of patience waiting for the next train. It’s an unspoken test; quitting too early means losing your coins to the one who stays, so that’s not an option.

Heat presses down and the breezeless air smells like telephone-pole creosote.  She sits in a dusty patch of shade found next to an overgrown ****.  She knows it tastes like licorice and breaks off a stem to chew, but doesn’t know what it is.  The boys throw rocks randomly until she finally stands up to join in, tempted by the challenge of flight and distance.  Then she stands in the center of the tracks, looking one way then the other, searching for the first random distant glimmer of the engine’s light at the horizon.   A flash, so she places her ear to the metal Indian-style, and the imminent approach is confirmed.  She calls out, “its here!” and double checks her pennies’ alignment.  Heads up or tails, but always aligned so the building might be stretched tall or wide, or Lincoln’s face made broad or thin.  That happened only rarely, since it could only be rolled by one wheel then bounced off.  If it stuck longer, the next wheels would surely smash it into a thin, elliptical, smooth misshapen disc of shiny copper.  Its only value becomes validation of a hint of delinquency, Destroying-Government-Property.  Once she splurged with a quarter, which became smashed to just a gleaming silver, bent wafer discolored at the edge.  Curiosity wasn’t worth 25 cents again though, so she had only one of those in her collection.

The approaching engine silently builds impending size and power, so she dashes back down the rocky embankment to safety because after all, she is not a fool, tempting fate with stupid danger. She knows a couple of those fools, but she finds no thrill from that and is not impressed by them either.  Suddenly the train is here, generating astounding noise and wind, occasional wheels screaming protest on their axels.  She intently watches exactly where she placed her coins, hoping to see the moment they fly off the rails that are rhythmically bending under the weight rolling by.  It becomes another game of patience, with such a long line of cars, and she gives up counting them at 80-ish.  Then suddenly it is done and quickly the noise recedes back to heat and cicadas.  The rails are hot.  Diligently they search for the shiny wafers.  Slowly pacing each wood beam, they could have landed in the gravel, or pressed against the rail, or even lodged straight up against the square black wood yards down the tracks.  They find most of them, give up on the rest, then continue on.

She has thirty cents and at last they reach the afternoon’s destination.  7-11’s parking lot becomes a genuine game of “Lava”, burning blacktop encourages leaps from cooler white lines, to painted tire stops, to grass island oasis, then three hot steps across black lava to the sidewalk, and automatic doors swoosh open to air conditioning.  She rarely has enough money for a coke icey; she is here for the bottom shelf candy, a couple pennies or a nickel each.  Off flavors but sweet enough.  She remembered when her older brother was passing out lunchbags of candy to the neighborhood kids for free, practically littering the cul-de-sac.  She had wondered where he got enough money for all that popularity, or could he have saved that much from trick-or-treat? She wondered until he got busted shoplifting at the grocery store.  The security guard decreed that he was never allowed in there again, forever, and the disgrace of sitting on the curb waiting for the mortified ride home was enough to keep him from doing it again.

Today she picks out a few root beer barrels, some Tootsie-rolls (the smaller ones for two cents, not the large ones that divide into cubes) a candy necklace and tiny wax coke bottles, and of course a freeze-pop.   Sitting on the curb, she bites off small pieces of the freeze pop, careful not to get tooth-freeze or brain-freeze, until the last melty chunk is squeezed out the top of the thin plastic tube.

“What do you want to do now?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

I didn't hold tendons between my fingers like
street boys on rain city rooftops,
crumpling their futures up to smash into shredded jeans,
shredded hearts,
some wrappers escaping, flying over this city
as our neglectful witnesses.

Their hands were broken bottles. The black top
made my guts look like escaping snakes,
my eyes hoping to be Medusa.
Fictionalizing gets me through most things.
Sometimes pain tastes like metal, sometimes like cherries.

I stare at the sideways sunset, a wrapper spit up
and drying out, a pipe dream promise;
reviewing my time strips as if they'd had a spelling change,
recounting every drop of blood word and smile.
Sometimes I forget that I'm real.
Sometimes I'm not.

He was definitely dead.  That much could be gathered.  He was standing over his own body, sixty feet away from the car.  fifty-nine feet away from  the telephone pole.  The pool of blood on the blacktop was rippling from the sheets of rain that were piercing it.  The rain bounced off of his lifeless eyes, staring on into the cloudy sky.   His shocked expression was forever frozen on his face.  He walked around the corpse, both fearful and excited.  He was dead....He was DEAD!  He was on the other side!  He looked around, searching for the 'white light',  but all he found  was a man dressed in a ratty  trench coat staring directly at him.  Rotting teeth smiled at him under a grungy  Fedora in a way that reminded him of a jack-o-lantern carved into the likeness of Indiana Jones that had been left out past Thanksgiving.  A withered hand beckoned him.

He was not hesitant.  He was not fearful.  

Those were emotions controlled by a brain that was currently about as useful as a bag full of gelatin.  He strode forward and took the man's hand.  It was neither hot nor cold.  They were no longer in the rain.  They were in a room with a large monitor
sitting in front of a station of various knobs, buttons, and switches.  A large leather chair apathetically awaited use .  He was aware that none of these objects  actually existed, because they were in the place where things don't exist.  Still, he sat down
and turned on the monitor.  He looked at the labels.  Some were obvious, such as P L A Y,  P A U S E, and S T O P.  Others were strange, like the ones labeled F I R S T S and L A S T S.  He pressed the former.  A list appeared with items as simple as "Kiss" to ones as specific as "Sprained Left Ankle in November".

He chose the former.

The screen went blank, then a video appeared.  It was a boy and a girl lying on a hill on a blanket at the onset of dusk.  The boy he instantly recognized as himself. The boy brushed his hand against hers.  She let him.  Fingers now entwined as they stared at each other.  At the time it had felt like hours, but it was less than a
minute before lips pushed apart to make way for tongues.  His first kiss.  It didn't take him long to figure out how the machine worked from that point on.  

He spent years going through every second of his life and reliving it from a new perspective. It didn't matter, he had all the time that never was and never would be.  He saw his mistakes and his triumphs, his loves and his heartbreaks.  Finally, he decided he was
finished.  It was time to go.  The man in the Fedora smiled.  Smiled that Cheshire smile

They were in a hallway.  It seemed to stretch for miles.  Every twenty paces or so, there was a person, standing on a platform, obscured in darkness.  He walked to the first one.
A light flickered on.  It was his mother.  She looked like she did when he was a boy, vibrant and full of life.  She never lost that, even as her body aged and her health declined, she always had something to smile about.  He talked to this apparition of his mother.   They talked for hours about his life, of random topics.  Things they had never had time to talk about when they were both alive.  After some time, she gave him one of her wry
smiles.  He nodded and made his way to the next person.  His father.  

He continued this for quite some time.  He talked to everyone from his brother to a guy he used to get high with in college.  Years passed as he said his final goodbyes to all the people in his life
that he had ever known.  All of them were happy for him.  All of them had something to tell him that he had never known about them in life.  None of them were real.  When he was done, he turned to the man in the fedora.  A smile.  A smile that had a personality all its own, a smile that simultaneously showed compassion and seething hatred.

The last room.  No one said it was the last room, but it had that feeling of finality to it. It was spartan, nothing in it except a marble floor that seemed to stretch for eternity in every direction.  It probably did.  In front of him were two pedestals.  On each of those
pedestals was himself.  The one on the left was wearing a fine tailored suit, had radiating skin and a smile that cameras feasted on.  The one on the right was a stark contrast.  The teeth he had left were hanging lazily from the roots.  His hair that he had left was thin, oily, and ridden with lice.  His mouth turned upwards in an insane grin that was only
matched by his thirsty, bloodshot eyes that seemed to bulge from his pockmarked skin

                                          They both spoke at once.

You were born on                                           You were born on
July 3, 1985.  Your                                           July 3, 1985.  Your
parents fed your                                         mother died when you
curiosity at a young                                     were 4.  Your father
age.  Your passion                                   turned to alcohol.  He
was art.  You painted                                 took his pain out on you.
your first work when                                     You dropped out of    
you were nine.  By the                                high school and moved
time you were 16, you                             as far away from this
were renowned as a                             life as you could.  You
artistic prodigy.  You                      quickly discovered a bad crowd.
attended the Art                                     You met a girl, Cindy.
Institute of Chicago                                       You got her pregnant.
on a full scholarship.                                   You started selling drugs
It was there that you                                     to make ends meet
would meet Claire,                                       for your accidental family
your future wife. By                                       It wasn't long before
the time you completed                                     You made a mistake
your school, every                                             and ended up in jail.
museum wanted a                                        years later, when you
piece of your work                                       were released
hanging in their gallery                               you found that Cindy      
Your work would be                                       had killed herself
remembered for                                                   and your son.
hundreds of years after                                       You had no job          
your death.  You had                                                 no skills
a wonderful family,                                        You spent your days
fame, fortune, and                                          doing odd jobs for
everything that came                                   money.  Money that
with it.  You lived                                           You spent on drugs
until 89, where you                                        Until the age of 45
died peacefully in                                       Where you froze on a
your bed, surrounded                           street corner, surrounded
by loved ones.  This                        by human excrement.  This
is your life's best                                           is your life's worst
possible outcome                                         possible outcome



He nodded, then looked at the man in the fedora.  That smile crept up.  A smile like a hyena. He snapped his fingers.  Two doors appeared.  One was Oaken and battered.  The grains of wood barely visible over years of neglect.  The other door was new and had just been  painted with a fresh coat of sky blue paint.  

The man spoke for the first time.

This is the last decision you shall ever make.  The door on your left will lead you to the  afterlife, and the judgement that awaits you.  Whatever is decided, that is where you will spend eternity.  The door on the right will allow you to be reborn as a new soul.  This one will no longer exist.

He gave it a good long ponder.  Had he been good enough in life to pass the judgement?  What if he ended up in a hellish nightmare for the rest of eternity?  Could he do better
if he started fresh?  The thoughts swirled about him like a whirlwind until finally.

Years later

He chose.

The man in the fedora smiled.

I'm running 7:25 splits. Eight miles in. I haven't got stuck at an intersection. Not that I ever do. Runners got the right-of-way. And like my buddy Randy Run 'N Gun would say, I'm zen. Very ******* zen. Used to be a walker. Not no more. Not after the heart attack. No, siree, I'm a runner. A good runner. Lost 45 pounds. I did. I did. I stick to the left side of the road. So I can see the guilt in the drivers' eyes as they pass by. They're thinking, there's an old man out there taking care of hisself. I should be taking care of myself.

And they should. They really should.

But what's exercise to the people in this town? A walk down the block to Loaf 'N Jug for a Snickers, that's what. Or if you're a rich *****, it's twenty minutes on a Stairmaster three times a week. And I have to wonder if they're really doing it for them, you know?

I'm on the way back to the house. I peel off 30th, cutting across four lanes of traffic. Head into Garden of the Gods park. I do this so people get the right idea of the city. When I was a tourist here, I thought to myself, why's everybody all lumpy-assed and tied to children. Made a promise to myself. Told myself, when you move out there, you're going to be the trophy. So, I run through the red rocks and insert myself, mid-stride, into all those family photos. That way, when they get home, they'll point at their pictures and say, everyone in Colorado is so fit.

Now I'm getting close to the spot. It happened about a mile--mile and a half into the Snake Trail over by that 30-foot tall rock that looks a bit like Lyndon Johnson. I was a tourist and a walker then. Not no more. Not ever again.

There's a stretch of blacktop that cuts Snake Trail in two. I can't remember the name of the road. I think it's named after some preacher who got cholera, lost his faith, regained his faith in the end. One of those touching trajectories. Those stories always sound like a lot of fluffy *******, if you ask me.

Cars are backed up on Wishy-Washy Preacher Road. There's a crowd of people gathered in the middle. I look at my running watch. I don't like this. This is the kind of unplanned circumstance that skews your splits. Then your run time makes you feel like a lumpy-***, and that ain't me. Not no more.

I start pushing through the crowd. There's a lot of whispering and a lot of little kids all snotty and teary-eyed. And it's all just frustrating, because I feel like I'm cutting through molasses. I look at my running watch. I reach the center of the crowd.

A mule deer had been runover--well, halfway. The stupid beast still uses his front legs, dragging his crumpled and ****** backside along in a mad circle. A screechy whimper comes out in intervals like beeping hospital machinery. He's so scared, some middle-aged woman with a kid to each hip, says. A longbeard, beergut hippie starts into a prayer,

Gods of the natural world, gods of the sweet animal kingdom,
we ask that you wrap this wounded beacon of your light
into your warm embrace. May you replace his great pain
with the great comfort of your cool breezes, with the great
comfort of your warm sun, with the great comfort of fresh water.

I unzip my running belt. It's not a ***** pack. I pull out my NAA Guardian .32 automatic. It's not a woman's weapon. See, Randy Run 'N Gun, got his name because he invented this kind of running. I respect him for it. Got nothing but respect for that man. See, a fella has to be prepared at all times. There are mountain lions. There are bears. And perhaps worst of all are all these ******* mule deers. They ain't even scared of people. They stop and wait for you to feed them, blocking the sidewalk when I run, skewing my splits.

These hippies ain't going to do ****. They're taking photos with their cellulars and saying theologically vague prayers. And all these tourists are watching. So I walk right up to the mule deer. Someone behind me breathes in so hard, it's like she vacuumed all the sound. Pop. Pop. The beast stops its beeping. Legs twitch. Legs stop twitching. I'm the only one with courage enough to grant a mercy ****.

It's all about doing. Right? That's what the heart attack taught me. Before the heart attack, I thought about being a runner. The rhythm of it, the mechanical discipline appealed to me. Liked the idea of doing a marathon or the sound of it.  I was walking in Garden of the Gods. Noticed the LBJ rock, said to myself, Holy hell that looks like Lyndon Johnson. I heard these quick steps coming from behind me. I thought some potstentch, beergut hippie was going stab me. Felt like the gears at the center of me came off their handle. The right side of me just wasn't there anymore. As I fell I saw it was only a runner.

I reach the Lyndon Johnson rock. I'm eleven miles in. My splits have averaged to 7:43. ******* deer. The ground is lower at the spot where I had the heart attack. Why? Because I dug a hole there, that's why. The old me, the walking me, the tourist me lies dead in that hole. As I pass by, I spit it the ditch as I always do. Good riddance. Yep. Yep.

The trail finally turns downward. A little more oxygen in Ute Valley. Randy Run 'N Gun he calls moments like this, Runner's Reward. And I like that. Nature's okay. The cedars, the meadows, rivers -- all that **** -- is just fine. But what I like about running is the metaphor. See all the hippies, all the tourists they live their lives in a constant state of reward. They think, I'm alive, so I'll smoke this ***. They think, I'm alive, so I'll take ******* pictures of everything. But runners, runners know that you don't deserve life. It's a gift to be earned. So you work your *** off. Mile after mile. A reward for me is a valley. The reward doesn't last long, just long enough for me to catch my breath, you know?

I exit the valley. I pick up the pace. Try to make up for earlier delay. I cross Flying W Ranch Road. I hear metal-scraping-metal. And I'm hit.

I'm in the air. I'm sliding. I'm bouncing. My knees and elbows are hot. I blink.

A woman in a bright pink tank top and yoga pants stands over me. Stay in the car, Jacob, she shouts. Oh my god, oh my god.

I tell her runners have the right-of-way. But she doesn't respond. I say, Lady help me up, you're ******* up my splits. But she doesn't respond to that. She repeats over and over, You're going to be okay. Your'e going to be okay. Just keep looking at me.

I turn my head. The display on my watch is cracked. I can't read my splits average. My head is a ton of bricks. My elbows and knees are hot.

Jacob, stop, the woman says.

Her boy stands over me, taking pictures with his cellular.

Blacktop, soft top, foot upon the gas
Highway, my way, miles of haulin' ***

singalong, bringalong music for the day
iTunes, my tunes, soundtrack all the way

sunshine, fun time, havin such a blast
drivin, arrivin, trading poetry for gas

Top down, drop down time for us to chill
Line up, sign up, still got three seats to fill.

Plip plop
Raindrop
Sliding down the window pane

Time doesn't stop
As it meets the blacktop
This liquid substance we call rain

The minutes they pass
Life's funny like that
How the world just keeps on turning

The moments, they don't last
Regardless of their impact
The clock keeps ticking, this I'm learning

There’s a distance, an echo
Of hollowness
Upon the blacktop
Asphalt concrete
Sidewalks 3 in the a.m.

I am more than
This
Heaviness
Like the iron bars
Of prisons.

Your faraway
Song, an echo
Of hallowed
Be

An Infinitesimal touch
Of infinite
Within the heart,
Fully filled by
Sublimity
Overcome to tears,

At dawn, like the sun’s
Brilliances.

Life
As evidence
Trillions all
In benevolence

Seeing
The light…

“I am more
Than this
Heaviness of

Emptiness
Within
My soul

I am
More
Than this …
shallow
Shadow’s
Hollow.”

I am ...

When I was in 4th grade a girl named Claire
Kicked my ***
And left me on the blacktop
I swore it would never happen again

When I was 17 a girl named Ashley
Kicked my ***
And left my heart in pieces
I swore to never trust love again

I just turned 23 and a girl I shouldn’t name
Kicked my ***
I wanted to give her everything
For the very first time

But I never got off the blacktop
My heart is still in pieces
Love is still untrustworthy
I need to learn to fight.

In class the ******* and white tick-tock pinched
my mid-morning belly. When everyone else
borrowed numbers, my pencil lead and yellow paint
scratched out hunger. Minutes chugged like school
buses.  Even columns of three-numeraled numbers
minused the bottom line, scold of lunch.

A borrowed quarter and dime from the office,
meant a secretary’s red-lipsticked mouth, bent
and accusing.  Her coiffed curls shook my dreams.
I would starve before sailing into that office
for my little belly, but forever yearned for the secretary
to pet my hair. Say, “There, there,”like to a character
in a book rosy with girls in gingham dresses.

But, for all those lovely boats of hot lunches: meatloaf
with crusts of catsup like a winter cap, buttered beans,
dinner rolls
and cold-cartoned milk, not watered down--

Missing lunch,  I'd hide out in the cold storage
room of sack lunches next to the playground.
While the others ate, I'd escape at the right tick
into the recess of blacktop and tetherball.

On a long stretch of highway
his thumb to the road,
Leon set off to lighten his load.
No thoughts of tomorrow
no plans set in stone
just a few hundred bucks,
and a dream of his own.

Leon was weary of playing the game.
His boss and his girl,
they both thought the same.
Their griping and wanting
was keeping him tied
to a life that he loathed,
left him weary inside.

He would act on an impulse,
and finally be free
to do as he liked, and be who he'd be.
A fantasy stirring could finally come true!
No end to the wonderful things he could do.

For hours he walked,
while the headlights flashed by
light on his feet and a smile to the sky.
While on that same blacktop
Jenny drove on
anxious to make it to Phoenix by dawn.

It may have been fate or say what you will
that she spied him on time
as she came up the hill.
Surely this guy must be needing a ride
so she pulled to the shoulder,
letting Leon inside.

Jenny felt guarded while driving along,
not accustomed to helping who didn't belong
in the world that she lived,
and the life that she led,
ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?

Her worries subsided in such a short while,
for he talked with such ease.
He had such a nice smile!
It's true what they say,
you just never know
who you might meet if you give it a go.

Just outside Phoenix the sun started rising
when Leon said "Jenny, ain't it surprising?
I feel like I've known you my entire life."
The last words she heard,
as he pulled out his knife.

Ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?
Leon's still dreaming,
while Jenny lies dead.



.

the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******,
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
                   go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.

color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.

& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]

maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
                                                       above,
                                          between
               the lights and music.

reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.

and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science?   secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.

  nat geo channel:  [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
                                                                ­  on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]

money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.

quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and ***; and
microwaves  ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.

blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.

O' Warped Tour

On the hot blacktop we stand
In front of your various stages

The beautiful bands grace us with their angelic,
or if they prefer, demonic, voices.

O' Warped Tour

The people we meet
Girls in bikinis

Boys with ****** noses
Teenagers sitting on shoulders

O' Warped Tour

Mosh pits in the front
Singing in the back

Crowd surfing
To running circle pits

O' Warped Tour

With your merchants
And band autographs
With your cigarette smoke
And crazy teens
With your summer days
And loud music

We never want to leave
O' Warped Tour
We love you

***** from the bottle,
Warm.
Hot dogs from the package,
When your down and *****
The grotesque becomes magic.
Pawning a guitar for a pellet gun,
To procure breakfast.
Squirrel stew in the back of a scamper camper.
Spotlighting bullfrogs,
And mopping floors for a hot meal,
And a cold beer,
And a sympathetic ear.
Nights when the blacktop turned into void,
And the painted lines became a tightrope to nowhere.
Full circle,
Bangor to Frisco,
Any woman who was willing to sleep in the bed of a truck
Was a queen for as long as she stayed,
Always had **** concealed on me,
The copper piece of road currency,
To the gold and silver, of *** and gas.
The exchange rates would change overnight,
But syphon some gas at a truck stop
And it all will be alright.
Misspent youth, following bands
And getting lost along the way.
***** from the bottle,
And hot dogs from the package.

When I was seven, my best friend and I used to dress up and have tea parties. We wore the torn, hand-me-down dresses from my cousins like they were gowns straight out of a princess’s wardrobe, and we were beautiful. We would prance around my room with purple plastic teacups, and there was no better place to dine than the blue **** carpet from Goodwill.

When I was seven I wanted to be a dancer. Not just a ballerina, no. I wanted to do everything. I watched with rapt attention as my cousin’s modern class tumbled to the floor of the stage, and as I stared at their neon colored tank tops and black jazz pants, it seemed that my world made sense. It seemed that as long as I was there on stage, dancing with the same skill and emotion and passion, I would be beautiful.

For my eighth birthday, my friend gave me the sixth Harry Potter book. My favorite character was Hermione. At recess, we would tie the sleeves of our red uniform sweaters around our necks and run around the blacktop pretending to play Quidditch. I thought Harry was smart and cunning and funny, but Hermione. Hermione was full of enthusiasm and rules and always made friends even if they were only in her head. She was top of her class with hair that everyone noticed and her brain was bigger than her group of friends at lunch and that was okay because she was like me. I never thought Hermione was beautiful. She didn’t need to be. Her bushy hair was full of intelligence and her buck teeth were strong enough to bite off the tongues of her oppressors and her dull, brown eyes weren’t dull at all because even the Whomping Willow began as a patch of dirt.

Hermione wasn’t beautiful like a garden. Her fiery eyes were dancing with flames that could wipe out an entire forest without even breaking a sweat. I have never wanted to be beautiful like a garden or the sunlight on the Fourth of July. As I tumble onstage in a blue dress with a tear in the front, my feet are ***** and my palms are sweaty and not one girl has brushed her hair. Footsteps pound the floor like a mighty pride of lions and hearts race as the bass drops and I am not a garden. Don’t you dare call me beautiful.

I am
born on the prairie, stark clad
blue sky desert, blacktop desert, canola yellow desert
small in the great space
between us

I am
born of the mountains, wrapped
in forest standing strong-faced and tall, my
companions, rooted
my teachers

I am
born of beloved lands lost
many times over so faith becomes place
and we drift—
spirits uprooted

I am
born into the laws of my fathers, solemn
like their God, and righteous
holding fast to the book of their fathers
unyielding

I am
born of old world order imposed
on new world freedom—
the image shifts
and I blur

I am
born of the rhythm of my mothers
of life-force and flutter
small hands and steaming pots in hot kitchens
my church

I am
born of bleached fluorescent flicker
drawn into her whirling hurry
longing for rainfall and
idle play

I am
born of ghosts and tiny monsters
adrift in the hollow that bears their aching past
and tangled present
alien

I am
born of memory, my fingers carry secrets
daughter of the many mothers before me, their lives
tell the story
of mine

I am
born of the unknown, a swell in the stream
that spills into the ocean, I am
mother of many daughters
to come

...tell me who you are

Some of my friends swear they are, but I'm not.



(sonnet #MMMMMMCCXL)


Rain.  Just a whisper as how twilight thence
Steals thinly 'cross the ist more fragile scale
Of wet?  I caught that note in sweet all hail
To say "it can't be--!" puddles' ghostly sense
Now winking lightly from the blacktop, whence
That subtler voice of traffic hissing, pale
In deeper shadows' lonely wake, t'avail
Was't true, and phone recharging, what from hence?
I'm sleepy.  Blackened silhouettes hulk fer
Good measure in the darkness, like a crew
Upon some ghastly mission as it were,
But I'm too tired for aught now, lying down to
Effect right in this stuffed chair.  Call it poor,
And one espresso long gone, kiss me too?

02Apr17c

Hips hunkered, rise to dapple-blue-toned dusty seat
Flush arch cheeky blush, excitement
Droll eye-glazing blue pupil toned in sleepy drug haze
Wind whipping wild air rushing through tempered glass
Wubing whoosh of wheeled blacktop pavement
Colored in eerie sunshade yellow
Lined, darting-flash gold white boundary crossing  
Tight knuckles, two hand hold
Blinking brown doe-eyed drowsy heavy lidded
Lolling head knocked back, head bash rested caressing faux blue
Ploom of dust
Dry-mouth open to catching fly’s
Or what’s left of dank-infused air
Quiet stillness

Blond hair crawling in busy wind,
Equally as gone
Thumping, jolting-momentum  
White line boundary lost, wheels ended grass
Ditching down, dirt slid slide
Floating weightless suspended-nightmare phase

Snapping,
Awake! Awake!
Screaming slotted terrified,
Panic! Painful-heart-wrecking rob breath
Nose dive, mounded metal drive inching closer
Hairs-breath away

Afraid, screaming ****** ****** inside sealed lips
Brown eyes; lid white
Hands upon steering slack, loose light
Asleep, peaceful in calamity
Unnatural shake and tumble
Nail dug bleeding ache
Skidding gravel, tree lined doom
A god not believed in a prayer ensued
Shaking, the calm unglued
“Baby, wake I beg you!”
Brown quick electric wide
Screaming, Screaming
“Oh my God! Why!”
Swerve snake skin peelout
Black lane orange in night
An almost death.

Hey, wouldn't it be lovely
If we could set down our books
And sing to the sky
Like lunatics in the early dawn

I'm seventeen and I still can't talk
You forgot how to walk
And scraped your knee on the blacktop

I need a haircut;
Something simple that would leave it
Short on the sides and longer on the top
So I could style it back and realize my
Mirror-driven destiny

Hey, wouldn't it be great
If we could walk away and never look back
Like you knew how to walk
And I could still talk

The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.

The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots

The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.

That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.

Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.

I was not allowed to be angry, so I bottled and drank
my rage with wine chilled by too many ice cubes--
I suppose that’s why I shiver at inappropriate times.

My parents said: You have to be the better person.
Even as you ***** those girls, called my sister a liar,
mocked my mother and father as they drove to town,

attempted to arrest me for “demeaning of character.”
But I lost my temper, once, I felt it hot like nausea
creeping all the way to my fingertips before I

screamed and shouted and shattered two glass bulbs
hard against the tallest pine tree in our backyard.
I cut my ******* picking up all the chips,

incidentally making me rethink my plan to punch you.
Instead, I imagined myself holding my father’s pistol,
the one he showed me how to shoot from 100ft,

complete with target acquisition training--just in case
you tried running--we both know you never
took me seriously enough for that. I bought a faceless

target shaped like a man, picturing your acne-skinned
cheeks warped with that smirk you wore when I tried
telling you to *******. All this before my anger faded,

fog rising from too-hot blacktop pavement when the air
cooled, snowflakes falling as I stuck my tongue out,
swallowing each crystal like a word I could have said.

Cloudless skies and
You & I.

A BBQ aroma
Levitates
Like those hummingbirds

Did you like that movie?
I've got to be home
Maybe 11.

I like your pick-up
It makes me reminisce
For an old home

With happier times
Maybe we
Could re-create those?

Looking at the blacktop,
I'll miss you tonight
You'd make a good father

Half-moon lover,
Let my dreams
Only be of you.

poisoned well of the antichrist littered with ground cover
picking out ****** flecks of gravel
blacktop kneeskin
patience pieces of scattered space time
to go back to the future of continuity
lack of genius ingenuity
and the suckling of the pig entourage

riding in a flat top hatchback
cadillac of the daily grind
upperclassman japan onii-chan
brother in arms from anotha motha
hug from afar colliding with crackpot theory

terrible fantasia cooling bricks in soggy sun
swallowed his pride with a glass of self-worth
and these ***** don't cook like they used to
I don't look like I used to
warped veil of camouflage chameleon leather
with a ****** level of automobile salesman

tried to get closer to god
ground him up, picked out the stems
twisted him into thin paper
touched flame to his finger tip and a son of Adam was born

gum shoe gaze
or the emptiness felt at the end of reasonable doubt
correctional text messaging system
sent from hoarse corpses
tenderly poignant in their ****** coffins

will think for food
cries from an outdated MENSA
over ***** and under-appreciated
siting on hunched shoulders to get a better look
to be a martian in a plain port

wharf warehouse whaling boat
red tide in a Shanghai *******
floodgates made of bitter premise
that last bit of purple yam
**** Okonkwo
Things Fall Apart fell apart due to faded highschool ambitions and bloodshot eyes
cruel like the shade of off-cerulean

champagne fizz tickles at the soft meat of his tarnished throat
and silver tongue
as the matchstick framework
so fragile in comparison
fizzles out on drenched sidewalk
while cigarette ash floats by
like gray gnats

Got an idea for a pretty poem?
Hold that thought
while Yung Joc finishes plz.

In the barnyard
in the suburbs
Blacktop recess was the best recess
cos we were kettled together

90s nostalgia is limited to lame t.v shows

why don't no one talk about the wet overcast no more?

“some say love is a burning thing. that it makes a fiery ring.”

so kiss her.
or don’t.
and always regret.
always bike home thinking.
always think of love.

she’s in a parking lot somewhere drinking cheap wine,
balancing on the bumper.
he’s on the river somewhere drinking cheap beer,
balancing boulders.

a dog sprints by and forgets all heartache.
he is happy.

the town and the people and the job and the dreams.
the nothings
and the everythings.
and the little life this is.

to slipstream years gone by.
one fire in the sky, or another in the hills
just west of town.
something said about the smoke.
we take a weekend to spool through the story of your folks.
film cans or video cassettes,
or home re-sets. rewind.

words and faces scrawled in a tome of note.
spoken little memories,
little mysteries.
stories to tell no one.
stories to tell those who will listen.

the boys with dirtbike brothers.
the brothers with drunken fathers.
the fathers with dead wives.
the wives with ancient mothers.
the mothers and their children.
and the children living well enough.
living calm, then free.
far away, then close.

an empire.
of highways and histories.
of songs and the souls they swing.
of old money/new money,
betrayal on the horizon.
blacktop jamborees and assassinations.
driveways and nicely neighborhood lit-upon lawns.
well-trimmed trees.
a never-ending tree of lovers,
grasped and gasping for the sky.
listen and wait.
for the sun to kiss the moon goodbye.

                              [a family and their dog.]

this chrysalis.
this coincidence that is us, on one good gust.
from heart to hand to sons and daughters.
synchronized to die and revive and imbibe along the ride.
a tableau of animalia.
feasting and sleeping and awoken
by the wide little world all around.

“we are fires in the night. let us bathe you in our light.”

Don’t tell your mother when she visits
home that I sleep beneath frayed house
shoes, under floorboards, noticing
creaks. Or how I pulled the trigger

here, to my chest, and after how you
fled along the highway, dropping a second
.40 though, out the window (still loaded with a slug
meant for you) where tire-marked
mutts bleed, sinking with wild sage

growing in blacktop
weeds. Tell her I watch you crawl
into your bed and still try to keep you
warm, beside your father. Still living

behind these walls I feel his thumbs
press into my skin, (closing
bullet belly-holes) while my icy fingers sew
him a new pair of wrists. Ask your mother, why she forced
separate beds on her lover-mate, and why

the running pink from his arms still stain
our kitchen sink. Let her heavy *****
know, (it's not her fault) she
shoved us from this single-bath

American rancher, with one foodstamp
still hidden in her blue-jean back
pocket and with the Walmart all the ways across
a black-clouded interstate. Make sure

she welcomes these trapped ghosts hanging on
wooden clothesline-pinned sheets, swaying
with wind gusts from the highway where unlucky stray dogs
bleed, sinking with wild sage growing in blacktop weeds.

route number nine
we traveled your spine
over two lane vertebra
an occasional scoliotic stray

pass farmer hands in fields
on tractors of painted steel
labored maze rows to feed cattle:
chattel

windowed wind in evening's chatter
filtered light, komorebi, back matter
natural at fifty miles an hour
time melting spills of roadside flowers

and press of an orange-red moon
you unwrap its butterscotch rune
full of eons of seeing eyes, candy store watch
its popcorn face staring, tick-tock

then high-beams replace the sun's
intervals of lightning bug reflectors
into dark, deer vision, tunnel turns
and newly oiled ticking blacktop

distant into day's finish, night
journey's last braking bights
in memories gloaming sight
of a rural tale spin write

-cec

The absorbent two-ply quilted southern sky
was soaking up the pre-dawn rays
as we were pushing our broken green four-wheeled machine
southbound on Bruce B. Downs
taking up the curbside lane

Our shirts were becoming stained with humid profanities
despite the fan blade traffic throwing a slight breeze
We were slurping brackish blacktop steam from the air
plodding like the Hillsborough toward our destination

My mind was already sauntering back toward a broken green futon
sitting in the section-eight, eviction evaded, apartment
Out the window cross-bred ducks were lording over
scrawny, pseudo-feral worm host cats
for which the knockabout neighbors kept a litter box outside

Nope.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCXCVI)


I lick my finger slowly, with a sense
In closing as of stealing frosting, pale
As aught compare, th'espresso's foam detail
Tinged subtly with milk's sweetness for intents,
Like that finale suited for it hence,
The rainy blacktop half dried in betrayl,
While minutes tiptoe by on wings more frail
Than insects' glassy touch we note from thence.
Prepare their lunch with baggies for as twere
Thin cleanliness, cuz honey's sticky to
A fault; cube our potato like in tour
What, eh?  I tossed my brother's typed note, knew
Not that twas worth aught, and discuss how poor
Tis that all's typed, not writ by hand.  And you?

21Mar19b

You see it happens every now and then
This whole world starts caving in
That's when I know it is time to go
Break a link in this chain

You see I thank my lucky stars I'm a Country Boy
And the concrete and blacktop really annoy
This down home backwoods kinda man
Have to leave this rat race when I can

You see the only thing that will give me a rest
Is miles full blue sky's  I'm never stressed
My dog and a shotgun, or fishin pole.
Mother Nature you'll find my heart and soul

You see all I ever wanted in this here life
Are the simple things without any strife
I'm just a gentle laid back kinda man
Down home Country Boy yes I am