The Crawl

The power lines sag between the houses with
stale electricity
delivering light and the
blur of television.
Onion cooks in the kitchen.
The neighbors meet at
the front steps with
cigarettes. Kids
hide
from each other behind
water heaters.

The whole place runs on
its method. Continues
from the beginning.
Lightning.

Just as we sit to eat and
draw our fork - think.
There is something we
were before this.
We were a promise to our prior.
Our name was struck
in another place by the
nature of fate.
By our nature we have eluded,
fooled, and misplaced it.

Pass the dinner around the table.
Pass the dinner around.

The Way You Love Me

Tied back into our history, we are

an accident walking with a handful of
sharp rocks. Out of the trees and
up from the water.
Still afraid of a lion at night.
Everything is afraid of a lion at night.
It is the way they grunt out
in the bush.

And now here we are, riding in the dining
car of the continents with the clinks and
shakes of the rail. Out of the big windows
the country goes away.
It lives with the loneliness.

We are here because I want to show you what
I've bought. Here: these hills.
I will fasten them around your ankle.
Here we will comb the hills with
houses and trees and wheat.
We will sit on that low rock wall.
We will taste mouthfuls of this wind.
We will peel the world of its time.

If there is trouble, my pocket is
full of rocks. I will throw them
at night at
the lion lapping up water from the spring.
In this way I will see no trouble.
I am a man of this age.

noir mourn

2 1/2 glasses
of jack over
ice

miles on
the cd

an open window
the sound of rain

ceiling fan
spins--

a soft hum
from above

ice cubes
clink as
i sip

breath deep--
from the diaphram
close my eyes

i sit in my father's
old office &
mourn to

myself

Wait for the Report

Shot glass splashed with tequila
full and dripping onto the wooden bar
worn with scrubbings and dried out by
alcohol, hard as a rock.
It rests, waits, impatient
wants to be thrown back, shot
and slammed back down on the bar
loud report, bam, didn't even
need lime
fuck salt
straight shot.

That is how I feel some days;
patient anger dripping onto the bar
waiting for the report
fuck limes and salt
I'll take my future neat.

Scars that still itch on occasion

I clearly remember
how I felt on the inside,
the struggle against and the
abandon to.
I can easily recall
how you felt to the touch
thighs, hands, hair
lips, forehead
and there are times
when your smell rushes at me
and my nose is full of you
and my brain reels with
unexpected memory.
How is it that connections
remain from such physical memory
when all other connections are
long dead and cold.

narration into person

Come into the world without
knives and no way to strike
the dark when it

steps over you
day ends.
The geese are quiet all night.

You grow
up with your shoes on.

Going to job and job and job
sharing words that
nobody wants to do this.
Just without saying 'nobody
wants to do this.'

Home every night in time to be
drunk hiding under the
floorboards.
Vulnerable shhhh.

Wake up and have nothing.
Wake up and have
the microphones.

The engineer is waving his hands and he says the
levels are set and he will count you in and
tape is rolling and the light is on
and now go now, read
autobiography


Everything started with dark and no violence. The night
stepped over me. Daylight. My name.
I worked to afford not work.
Now I slip back to the last seat on
the mountain and can see everyone before
me and crowding the valley.
Crops grow around the children and dogs.
But I cannot turn.
But I cannot see the peaks.
The wind is behind my ears.
No way to turn around and see
where I'm going.

untitled

thoughts
like weathered
streamstones
rounded
hard bouncing
rubbing decaying
eroding
turning to
fine dust

nothing
nothing
nothing

fullness of
blank

honor haiku

such a great honor
the first poem in november
i really mean it

trash haiku

garbage truck arrives
a big international
we have dumpsters now