Lay prone
in the hammock of home.
No drink, no smoke, no drug.
Let the blue loom of the sky
seep its dye, so sterile, so dope.
Great is its storied fresco.
Rest easy that it waits for you.
Category Archives: thoughts
Grown up
Kid I was
when Dad got my nose
showed how to take your thumb apart
Oh, and the trick
with the hats and cigarette butts
How to worm a hook
Bought a poetry book
Must’ve seen my look
Told me I must be a man
Face the bullies
Have a plan
Double up that fist
Let ‘em have it!
Yeah
Dust bunnies
Taken-
the combings of years,
of minutes and seconds.
Sift and sieve,
this sultry eve.
What’s fallen,
plasmic,
into dream hands,
begs of wonder,
of worship,
and tastes
of regret and forgiveness.
Everything, and the kitchen sink
* Mental health triggers, suicidal ideation*
God. You know, I’m just washing dishes, feeling useful and kind of self-satisfied. Haven’t dropped anything or cut myself, even though the bothersome cat is weaving around my legs. I swear- if he had a ball of yarn, I would have been a coccoon by now.
See, it’s the third week of withdrawal from a particularly nasty medication, and I’m thinking I have aced it. Not too bad, not too bad. There’s a cast iron frying pan with some baked-on crusty stuff, and so I run the water very hot and start leaning into it with the old scrub brush. I’m even thinking that this is good exercise, when the destined vapours rise up to me… the singular smell of fried mushrooms. [Me, at twelve, tagging along with Dad, picking them in fields and ditches, once getting chased by bulls] [Mom, frying them up in her iron pan, the whole house smelling delightful]
And, God dammit, I cry. I rattle dishes and run the water faster to help stifle it. And I think of missed things and squandered chances for love. And I let this self-pity pool into something worse, and I think what is the freaking point of trying to get clean and well? It’s not as if there are more memories to make, more chances to unsquander my wasted life.
And at last, to myself: “You’ve made a mistake, bud. Better go back to the upswing with those meds.” Because I see myself hanging from a tree like those men they found, and I take it to the logical conclusion of worrying about last testaments and burial arrangements. That’s what it does. That is what it does.
And so, tomorrow, we find out what we are made of.
Dirty birds
Down here, tonight,
on the green ground,
it’s quiet and still,
vacuumed.
I look up, by chance,
to test for rain.
The darkening clouds sail,
like a float of smoke.
A diamond of dirty gulls
rides the breeze, like flying M’s,
and I fancy I feel feather fluff
and whoosh of wings
Dramaturge
I was one for Drama,
but the frame was the thing.
I wanted only to be
the swelling strings,
the muted xylophone,
the kettle drum tympanic.
I would whip the most mundane
into the unforgettable.
Make you think your sadness
into music.
All in allegory
of our mad desires.
Rewind
Drawn to baby anythings
she is
Seeks to protect
to nurture
But if the thing grows
and gains stubborn volition
then on she must move
to find another small one
to teach
to love
to know the duality of joy
and
take tearful vengeance
on an old giant
Melting Man
Melting Man
has the night terrors
Malignant faces
Pointing fingers
Nodding to each other
with icicle noses
long hands
and obscene gestures
~Man of the Melt~
Cover yourself!
Fold ye down into the foam
where mildewed spirits cannot roam
Call ye spiders and millipedes home!
Keep your focus, please
Detect the fault lines
in a stubborn peanut shell
Wet-nose the whiskery cat
Feel the points he makes
out of soft pads
Let the large leaf ant
explore your jungle
Unite or untie your ganglion knots
Sniff a crocus
keep your focus
Weird girl
She felt like a foot
with uniform toes.
Something to cover,
but familial
to her apartness.
In her years,
she picked up tools
both shiny and showy,
but of the wrong life.
Fools’ gold,
valued as real,
was lost on her.
Untrainable.
Mulish, they said.
Others of us knew
differently.
Aremyfeetofftheground 