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.