Crow (written 12-14-12)

What is it
   about a black crow in flight
   that makes it appear so much larger
   against morning-pale clouds
   than it really must be?

Banging frost from his feathers
   next to mirrored, fresh-air puddles
   (last night's rain)
or
   cawing, complaining, chattering
   on a lamppost spire
he is
   a foreigner, protruberance into our world.
   Loud and timid novelty,
   hopping, scratching, pecking thing
he is
   patient and
   angry and watchful,

but
   careening, each feather madly spread, he is
   intense wraith-
   inscrutable purpose and heaviness.
   Wings folded in to
   wheel and dive, he is
   death's own nature-
   the terrifying maw.

Claxons

The nightly news goes from
cannibal cops
to black Friday sales,
and the man next to me chuckles-
a quick, sort of cheerless
stir of the air-
and then he lights a cigarette.

Me, I'm growing a beard.
And there's a game on tonight,
but I don't much feel like talking about it yet.
So I'll just say that it's a bit too bright in here,
and watch the boys flip bottlecaps
into the trash.

I'll listen to the sirens all around me,
and keep my whiskered chin up,
and do my best to stay calm.

Fallen Intact

Sitting in the Second Street windows
of a flying saucer
Watching traffic pass-
late day sun
On the abandoned bricks of Peabody Place,
I am a clean sheet
remembering dirty hampers.
I am a smooth, gray cobblestone,
newly swept over,
daubed with colorful autumn leaves,
fallen intact.

I'll show you doors, if you show me time.

Pen

Pen,
he meant.
All those tiny angels?
They dance on the tip of a pen.

I am so tired of what it means

I. Am. So. Tired. Of. Money.

The Language of Birds

There are true things
woven in and between the threads
of wicker summer chairs,
under orange juice caps left
unscrewed for hours on a Sunday morning countertop,
and lying on my carpeted bedroom floor
beneath finished crossword puzzles
now discarded.

Outside, hidden birds
chirp of these subtle, true things
(if it's not too hot)
clearing their throats
while ducking from shadow
to shadow,
grateful for the trees.

And like in a dream, I recognize their colors-
the shapes and curves of the letters,
but I cannot read the words they form.

For all the beauty
I can appreciate in their songs,
I cannot speak the language of the birds.

Don't Forget

Your countertops hold fruits of such glory,

but glory is such an ephemeral thing,

and fruit, if not eaten,

turns quickly sour.

I suppose the same thing can be said of words,

and butterflies,

wine, and silence,

and all those other silly intoxicants

that I keep a little too close to me these days.

So what's a man to do, but give in,

and try to let love become his only constant.

Your cupboards are vast and full of such rich stock:

your memories have scale and grandeur,

but funny thing about memory,

it can, so casually, toss your heart in a cardboard box,

seal it with the sticky pull of packing tape,

pull down the clanging metal door,

and click the padlock closed

until you only take it out

so you can reminisce about

who you were.

I fear to lose it, too,

But I prefer to carry my heart

sewn into the laces of my shoes

where I can pick everything up along the way:

all that dirt and dew.

Walking on the Beach in a Windstorm

I feel

that I’m walking across

the end of the world-

this place,

where crabs caught unprepared

scurry and dive

and look for holes in the seamless landscape

where my footprints are gone

just seconds behind me.

They tuck their eyes

and wish to become stone.

The sand

becomes a stinging

ghost-mist-

a fast fog, snarling and cutting and biting.  Sand

is not one color, no-

it is deep blacks and browns,

reds and yellows of the richest texture,

white as bone.

The colors that lack are found in sea grass,

pebbles and shell:

purple, blue, here an orange.

And never

never,

do the colors stay.

Even the ocean,

sickly gray and churning,

bilge brown where the shorebreak twists up the shallow seabed

in a moment of sun is suddenly

breathtaking green and

shimmering blue and silver.

Then all becomes thunderous white

as water

soaks to earth

turns to air

as bits of sea foam

break from the mass and roll-

like living things

like the crabs

like shooting stars-

until they become something else.

This,

all this is roaring,

screaming at me-

pleading, “don’t you see?”

The lines we draw, so convenient,

(this is water, this is sand, this is color, this is man,

the stars,

the crab that wishes to be stone),

so blurred in this place

at the end of the world

(don’t you see?)

Peace

A song in the joints
and marrow of a man
carries with it
all the peace

of bowing out
of a fight with God.

of a car accident
instinctually averted.

diving under
powerful ocean waves.
of then breaking the surface.
of the first clear, sputtering breath,
of the buoyancy-
and the precious glimmering sparks
scattered skyward and
caught, frozen, by the sun.

of never being hurt.

of the jewelled and sacred night.

Been on vacation...

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have spent the last 2 weeks on the coast of North Carolina.  This does not mean that I have not been writing- just that when I am on the beach, as most times, I prefer to write on paper.  My goal for the rest of the summer is to write every day.  This does not mean that I will be updating this blog every day: I am currently working on a prose story that I hope will become a novel.  I have already spent several hours putting together a rough outline and fleshing out the characters.  I will, however, keep working on my poetry as well, and will set a goal to update this blog, if not daily, at least twice a week.

I will start with the next post.

Neither Here Nor There

Before they come to bleach my bones,

let’s talk about

a few things less pretty.

After all, there is more beauty

in the carefully folded stems of discarded daisy chains

and empty chairs at restaurant tables

than I had previously thought.

I wonder if he could have imagined those things,

kicking the dust from his sandals

before he had his future figured

as a martyr.

But maybe that’s neither here nor there.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about my ego.

The asshole likes to walk around in public

in his trendy clothes

and spout clever clichés

like, “That’s neither here nor there.”

He is a fool and a braggart

but I can’t deny that sometimes

he’s good company.

So where were we?

Ah, yes, all that ugliness.

You see, there is nothing that is truly

neither here nor there.

So where were we?

Ah, clever clichés.

You see, all wise men know that they know nothing,

and that we always have more to learn.

Maybe that’s why there’s no perfect human teacher.

Maybe the truly wise don’t teach.

The morning after the rant.

A friend of mine referrred me to a talk that John Cleese gave on his method to be creative: foremost among his tips were allowing oneself time and space for your mind to rest up against a problem.  Now that I have some time and space, I thought I was lacking a problem.  But no- even in the midst of what was supposed to be a celebration last night, I found myself completely angry at the world.  And myself.  I realized I have not only strayed from the path of the light- I'm not sure I was ever really on it.  It's just a path.  I have no idea where it leads.  And as time went on, my eyes drifted from my surroundings and just looked down at my feet.  I have forgotten how to properly live in this place.  I have forgotten all spirit.  But it's a place to start- and now, for the first time in a long time, I have some time and space.

I tend to look at myself before I look at others when things are out of place. But as I look around, I realize, it's a trait that may be lacking lately.

Progress

The fields where we played as children are now
shining new
suburban subdivisions.

But where are all the fields?

All in

make sure

you build

that house

with windows

and doors

that open

wide as time,

and let them in.

let them

all in.

if we take-

if we take what we can see-
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.

These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.

But they've left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.

-Charles Bukowski

I wrote today...

for the first time in a long time.  I am trying hard to make it a habit.  Unfortunately, nothing good enough to post yet without some heavy editing- but I was reading afterward, and came across a poem that perfectly describes exactly what I've been feeling lately. Don't you love it when that happens?  It's like proof that someone (and I make no claims about who) is looking out for you.  Proof that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, and you aren't alone.  So, I share it with you in my next post, so as not to confuse Hank Bukowski's work with my own.

Zoo with Zoom!

Please check out my new photos on my Shutterfly site (link over on your right).  The new album is called "Memphis Zoo- Now With Zoom".  It's exactly what it sounds like- but I think I got some pretty amazing shots.

Spring Cleaning

Out of this house,

out of this heart’s silent chambers

ordered through sludge and past offenses

ordered to report to light,

he yet drags his feet.

In the Spring,

there are colors that have been forgotten

and

there are hatched long rusted shut-

there is water to be let in.

Where once music leapt like

rainstorm frogs

now  just words, phrases, fragments

occasionally whip around

chalky metal corners

to spook him.  To make him remember.

New pictures!

Please check out my new shutterfly pictures (look on the sidebar under my profile).  The new album is called "Collierville Square 3-2012".  Thanks to Greg and Jason, who had the idea, and who appear in this photo hunt.

The foolish and the unafraid, equally, need perspective

Jasmine perfume
an antique clock
collectible spoons
and pictures-
albums full of pictures.

Pictures of her great-grandchildren.
Pictures of her sons
in crisp Air Force uniforms.
Pictures of her mother.

Her father died in an explosion at the plant-
this was back before the War-
she was 15.
She said that her mother had it the hardest.

All this, in such stark contrast

to these chirping birds
and this sunshine,
and the giggling gaggle of college girls in the corner.
Chirping, smoking,
and cursing the things that "suck".

I want to be clear-
there is no judgment here.

It's just so easy to see, now, on this patio,
how things move- and in what little change.
No start-  (We can't remember how we start.)
but maybe,
someday,
an end.

Just like her,
looking at her picture albums,
counting her pills,
and talking on the phone, twice a day,
to her daughter.

Just like them,
those girls,
laughing out smoke,
and talking about what "trips them out."

Bad Day

He stood there, a case of beer tilting his frame on the slick and shining street.  He had been in the rain that day, he thought.  He had been there.  Clouds were still moving low and fast and yellow above him, and he paused, looking up, exhausted to his bones.  A long breath in.  One out.  It dawned on him now what a horrible day it had been.  The day, a thing, a space in time.  He felt like he had been in a fight- pummeled and bruised, but still standing.  Standing there beneath those clouds, breathing that air.  And there he stood: still trying to exude some sort of good into the world.  One more deep breath, and he stepped toward the stairs.

I have not been what I could- no, I have been washed away.

Light
spills surreptitious
from where the lightning and the thunder
reign inscrutable-
gifts no car stereo could pronounce,
no prim suit could bless forth-
the weight and worth of which the strongest ink
could not shoulder
(catch me!).

Slick and intense,

it turns so quickly gray.

Mashed and muddled and rendered invisible.

(It’s us.  it’s all us.)

It is darkness, here,
that flows-
that runs in drains.
Sparked and shimmered
purple silver
that collects and whirls in pools
on the parched, pocked, and dusty concrete
and on our desiccated skin
(we are so thirsty! who brush aside,
and hide from the rain!).

Prayer

May we never relegate Love to youthful exuberance.

And dream of days that are not this day.

May we never consign;

Love does not consign.

Sing-songs to circle skies!

Wheel and laugh!

If life is a series of circles,

May we

elucidate the

loop-the-loop

loudly!

May we ever dig our hearts,

may we mine passion!

Priceless passion mine!

West

I.
In the afternoon
she came to me.

Red wine and summer spirit-
strawberries and citronella.

We talked then, the trees and I,
on sacred things like shadows and symmetry-
of caffeine and buzzing insects and quiet.

In the 4:00 lull,
the trees rested their myriad tongues
and decided, instead, to think for a while
on whatever it is tress have to think about.

I think a tree's only thoughts
must be ancient songs of praise,
and when they sing,
the song is a patient one-
and when they are tired,
they must dream of summers past.

Trees are largely unconcerned.
Trees are never bored.

II.
("The cool of the evening." I've always loved that phrase.)

When the sacred shadows began their tired push for dominance,
she brushed my cheek and departed.

She again became wind,
and with the prolonged thunder of a 747,
above,
west,
she was gone.

I was me again, and not my best.

The trees stirred, fitfully dreaming
whatever it is trees have to dream about,
or to be fitful of.

The contrail of a 747 going west
became a streaking comet
in the light of a sun
that seemed larger on the horizon.

Spokes

The cards of all the world's houses sometimes
flutter and sink around me.
I put them in my bicycle spokes
and jump like rain.

I sometimes know the names
of the spirit I invoke,
but most times, I'm just plain.