the greens grow over:
I walked with you in that field.
The evidence fades.

The world is ending,
well, only mine. You go to
Kansas. Don't come back.

It's not so funny -
awake still with your dreams gone
away with someone.

crawl under the fence:
this field is where my dad found
corn roots in a skull.

silly old teeth bounce
around her mouth chewing grapes
before they're champagne

Winters Muse

dead homey shot

new bottle of jim

place it on the

kitchen counter

(label side out)

stand back

breath deep

say silent prayer for

those that went

to the other side

before you &

before their time

get shot glass

place next to jim

say silent prayer for

those that went

to the other side

before you &

before their time

twist the top

grasp bottle by neck

pour

close bottle top

stand back

say silent prayer for

those that went

to the other side

before you &

before their time

take shot in hand

take shot in mouth

swallow

say silent prayer for

those that went

to the other side

before you &

before their time

(in memory)

Sooo

are you guys ready to start writing again yet? I have been thinking we should write a long poem. together and all. so, somebody start the damn thing and we should all pick up and play along. call it part I, II, etc......
that's my idea. it's my 3rd idea this year.
so, like I was saying, somebody start it.

beginning dance

sitting across from you

after work

my knees hurt

my shins sing

a violin concerto

talking & listening

eating burgers

that could be worse

but could also be much

better

its windy &

rainy outside

tv's blare a

football game

inside

we just yack away;

i watch your fingers

& hands & i watch mine, too--

i play with the brown napkin

under my water glass:

i roll the corner of the

napkin then

unroll & rub my

finger over it trying

to smooth it out

& listen as you talk

about who you are,

where you've been

& what you're all

about

What Passes for Knowing

Out in the snow I am
underneath awake
with my arms on a pine
bough legs over the
brown needles.

All things are seen.
The wild grass has not fallen over
underneath the weight
of snow. The deer pawing at
the roots.
The land so wide it goes
to the edges.

This cap was made for me and
my ears are warm.

See the ice on all things. So quiet; we
have eaten up the sounds except
the clicks that our ears hear.

All this passes away before the stern light when
the city mounts these hills. Cars
idle among the rocks. Bridges lie on
the creek. And even
these boughs are windowpanes
clattering in chill.

What you knew,
and I knew,
will curl in the corner of the room
and point its face
towards forget.

failed piss poem

i need to stop writing poems
like this

about nothing in essence
but i can't help it

its "how i do"

i wanted to write a poem
about taking a piss

in the men's room

but it bogged
down

i tried to bring
in the rules

you know,
the rules:

look straight ahead
study the wall

(admire the tile
& grout work)

don't talk to the
guy next to you

better yet
a whole urinal

between the two of
you-- its better that way

don't look down

shake twice
zip

wash your hands
leave

then i was going to
write about the

antiseptic smell
& the bright

florescent lights
the blue floors

& the gray
walls

& maybe throw a zinger
or two about the

dudes that talk on
cellphones while

droppin deuces in
the stalls

but it just didn't work
nothing there

i tried a
couple of times

but nothing except maybe
a crude aside

so i threw my hands up
(washed with soap & water

under the cold water tap--
that's all they have in the men's room)

& said "never mind, it
wasn't that good a poem

anyway"

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

The Provinces

We took the last of the tobacco,
then rolled
the stones from the fire to
under our feet, and
slept with the dunes behind us.
I woke when a bird flew near.

In the morning we stalked gazelle along the
riverbed, but could
not bring one down. I made a fire
under a rock. There was tea for lunch.
The birds curled around once, then
went looking for something else.

That evening I walked back to my wife. She made
sweet potatoes and cheese and butter and onions
and pancakes. Her brother ate with us and we
stayed up watching the night drinking beer on
the roof. He is unhappy with his new wife, and may
go back to the old one.
The birds are very quiet here.
They hide. They know the children will catch them.

In this town the trucks cough all day. The market is
full of flies. The soldiers look at you and the
foreigners ignore you. You sit
in the heat, drink tea, and smoke.

Three days south there is a valley. I was there
once with my brothers. We were following gazelle.
They turned and led us into that place.
Green trees grew out of
the rocks. Everything
was bloom.
We stayed there two nights
beside the water and ate well.
There were pears and endless game.
The birds came and went chasing
seeds and mosquitoes.
I wrote my name on the rocks beside
another name.

I tell my neighbors about this place but
no one cares. There is a truck which has
brought whiskey or
always something else. If
I can get a contract I will take a
foreigner there to hunt.
They will be pleased with the place.
There is no waterfall, but they will like the
rest. They will be brave
while I catch grasshoppers for them
to fish with. When they go away they
will tell their friends. Then they will come to me also.

I will sleep away from here, near the
trees, under my name.

a bad no good poem

so much
depended on
that red wheelbarrow
the rain & the chickens

but the rain stopped
& the chickens fit into
cooking pots & then
into our bellies
the red barrow broken

& now there are
skeletal chicken remains
a rusty wheelbarrow
& a brown dry
yard &
that's all
there

is

Signs

Six flies on the bathroom wall
Two are mating
One woolly brown moth
does the backstroke in my coffee; its the last cup in the pot.
Two dead squirrels and a bloated headless deer
flank the roads of my morning commute.
All
signs, permutations;
this is not going to be
my best day