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.