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.