Empty For a Living

Some people empty

plastic latrines

for a living.

They suck them clean

into a tank

on a truck, then

they take the mess

someplace else.

Away

from the dark

smells of our lives,

when they come

near we run

away.

I've heard them called

“honey wagons”. I

don't know why

we think it's so

funny to give

vile things

a pleasant name.

We do it maybe

for the innocent

we presume to be

among us, to protect

them from injury

            caused by success

                expressed as trucks

                    filled with shit

                        some other people

                            empty for a living.

...

Lol Am With You Always

Doip.

The little comma drops with a sound like that.

Hops down the page with some insistence.

“I, gotta be here now.”

Is it, good?

Try, some!

I didn't say I wanted to try some I asked, if it was good.

Let me get you, a little plate.

I don't want any right, now.

Oh, ok. Well there, is a lot left over.

Was it, good?

Well try, some.

Ugh I, don't want any.

Because, I made it and it's terrible.

I, didn't say that!

But it, is true.

It is, probably good.

Try so,me!

I do, not want any! I just want to know if, you thought it was good.

Whaddya do there, With the hammer and the head what is that, Happening on the inside like a tool without a place for tools how man, how,

It's like a poem the addiction, The why of which you can't want to know for the reasons buried in the very old dark, What is it with all this dirt none of this goes here get it out, God damn, For fuck's sake, I say tomorrow we come back here sober and we fucking put this shit in the hole and we shoot it dead and walk away and you say

...

I don't say anything. I just watch. There is no wrong way to be.

Yeah, see, fuck you for saying that. There is a right and wrong way to be! You can't tell me that it is all the same, because I fucking know it is not all just the same. Think I like my mom better now dead?

And with that sentence, now you know.

I don't know anything. I just got tired right there.

Because now you know the unsaid thing.

It's not true.

What isn't?

That I like my mom better now that she's dead. That's just not fucking true! God damn!

The Lord said “Lo, I am with you always.”

The Lord meant “Lol...”

...

This Is Spring

You look out the window and see snow so wow
you shout

He looks back at you with crystalline salt crusted
glasses

And you love him drunken sloppy with morning
sorrow

Unwillingly dripping along the lines like old
Winter losses

What are we doing you ask him directly with
bluster

His face puffing and piling into banks and fences
he answers

Missing a shadow pass over the last of my relative
chances

You turn from the glass aching without any doubt
now


-

Every Day

What do you do? You write poetry every day anyway.

Don't feel bad about it. No one ever has to see any of it

despite their greedy mind's innuendos and the ghosts

this is all yours and every word is how you want it stop-

ing in any way it pleases you to say it doesn't go like

wearing a uniform and having to appease an authority

even if you submit which you do all day anyway bowing

to this god of order and that god of despair and anger

vowing to break words like yours apart before they join

you make them into verses and put them into your

order because here where you are creating is your poem

coming out of the chaos of morning just to say hello

I brought you this spray of words from the garden and in

a week they will all be forgotten and how many left are

your days going to gather a gift like this of your life?

-

Little Stone Angels

Is this light or some other illumination

I see burning off the edges of the roof

I want to see as some sort of angel

with a stern face looking through me

turning across the sky like an odd bird?

In each breath I feel both full and empty

looking for the end of the line despite myself

where the one end is all I did as someone else

and the one in hand is my own doing only me

where did I think I was going all this time?

It is not hard to find me everywhere you look

through my eyes I see the whole world

and even the feeling you have where you are not

me but only you is intimately assuring

to the ribbon of living washing this morning

into the all of us alive at the same time song

where you play your tune at once alone

and low in the unknown through it all we

each take our turn at tuning out the rest

so in the deepest quiet of our little fire

is a nest of woven notes aglow we ignore

holding us aloft for a few moments more

to look out at the whole of it to know we

are this one thing alone only once again

offering the sleeping angel our last home

-

Our Most Perfect Return

In the morning when we wake up there is a moment

when we don't know who we are but feel no panic

a perfect living in the midst of imperfection

How sweet the whole world is without thought

before we add our little fears and doubts

and open our eyes wider than we can understand

All day long then a cloak of despair enrobes

the light of the day is diffuse and limited

a slow hand encloses the mind with thoughts

If we didn't have such memory or the ability to conceive

brilliant children of self treachery

we would run out into the fog and dissipate

Like we will later on when the afternoon turns

bright with age and sags against evening

and the bed returns to sleep in the shape of us

Innocent in the darkness of our true being

we slip out of our self clothing into the all

empty of the marks that designate us

One different heart-beater better than any other

marching after the idles of a single searching mind

all day alone in a dream of self improvement

Lost again the moment we close our eyes for good

our dream of waking up better than we were

sweetly eases away into our most perfect return

-

Let Go

I was walking with the moon

when I said to the moon

I don't need you

Sunshine was hot on my mind

the hour of forgetting

was upon me

I stopped and let the moon go

the darkness came to me

you were not there

The weight of light extinguished

from its beginning life

all need of me

-

Don't Go

     Every day not to go down to

             but to become the river.

                    Not to see the trees

        but become them in bloom.

             Unsevered from the sun

no matter what hides it from me,

         I am drawn and compelled

         beyond my ability to know.

                             So I do not go.

                  I am already flowing

                        with the universe.

-

September 11, 2017

Re                  how on this day like no other

    me             how the sun had this angle and the hour passed

         mb        the deep silence of not being there seeped into our bones

              er             set into our faces

                       the clocks agreed to go on but we were hesitant

                       when compassion in some enflamed and disease set in

                       looking at everyone with all our sadness uncontained

                       cartons and forgotten coffee toppled in despair

                       how on this day some of us turned again on each other

                       we who set fires want most to be remembered

                       what memory does as it gets older and starts forgetting

                       how on this new day like no other

                       how the sun had this angle and the hour passed

-

...

I am the great nothing

hiding from not-

hiding, just not even

not anything

is there a difference between

on purpose and

just as it seems?

What want wants me

divided by countertop

to perform a bakery

and produce whole food

from will alone, make it

appear before your eyes,

come into familiar view
as you build the same

self every time you come

through that door and I

appear somewhere in

the field and come to you

in the same different way

you and I both expect

annihilating one another

into being here now,

a doomed paper cup

further along the line

of our lives?

                   Certain

cells divide, some die

in our time within us

spiced through with

resined flavors that linger

even as you divide

from me again when

we wobble softly into

serious separation.

...

Fall into Spring

As I listen to an insistent bird

on the other side of history

through a window on the second

that's open despite the rain,

and there is emptiness

expressed by a white cup

next to my elbow, and thirst

gathering clouds in my belly,

I wonder if some of the silent

pauses that persist are true.

Every drop has dimension;

a beginning of an end.

One voice is gone fluid with desire

and mixes with the tumult

of wild cries changing color

to match the scheme of the sky,

draws breath in between

shades of living and eternal,

and flies out to another

wanting the wanderer to find

the branch that breaks through

with it's fall into Spring.

-

A Chill on a Hot Day

What do you want to know that you never do?

Shining through everything you left

shaded blue something gruesome and worn

hamfisted and warm begging for your stories

uncle max auntie min they want to hear about

the night when you and jim were shining

and maybe dynamiting or with sue

the fowl scattered when you flew back in

and you were light as a cockadoodledoo

no no you argue it wasn't me because I knew

your folks when you were two and we

never spoke then when I let them both in

before they were broken something you

could cry about remembering ghostly

like a chill on a hot day when you look

for the sun and he's not there just a wing's

edge just the brush of air and the ball

hovering mid rush you never will touch

because it's grown tall the tale you tell

from small to now when you don't know

rides eddies in the air and you don't know

hides the skies and you don't know who

waits all night because you never do

-

Open Ended

-

How Like You

You would have thought it over. Your precious mind would surge all over that like rising tide.
The bonfire would drown and some kid would always decide to swim out as far as he could.
The good ideas are sweet under the shiny sky with just a hint of something ugly, soft and cold.

But you shake that off because it's sunny now and you and I have things to do and are busy.
Watching the ants move or moving with the flow as the six legged trio plugs into every hole,
you taste delicious like the bell rings when the door opens and you've got the ovens going hot.

I bring you curling into my mouth like smoke and you bring me home. We fuck. It refreshes us.
Part of me gets up into a small corner niche and won't come down until the screaming stops,
and then a hot bun with butter and whatever spilled when you swept out the door. The tiled floor.

Two open holes draw us toward them. Two more tell you to run when I come into your mind.
I'm looking for a place to hide. Watching you from within as if I were what you saw, as one.
I don't know why you never called on the good night, black, well-lit. Rising sun young alone.

You could have thought it over. Still sore about the other night you could have called out
your voice wet with foam as if watching the stars gather into the bright center of the hole
left you drifting out there watching for me to seem nearer. Lighter than sparks in the air.

-

Every Morning

Every Morning when I get up

                        I smoke quietly
                        like a cigarette

                        Old dreams come
                        off me in clouds

                        I put them out
                        resolutely alone




-

In a Moment Fraught With Flying Children Large and Rolling Heavy With Light

We know
   past a certain hour
      repetition sets in
What we were
   doing before
      simply goes on
What we faught
   for all night
      is now just us
Waving our hands
   grinning at the mirror
      relieved to be
Where we always were
   sheets wrapped snug
      nodding along


-

A Spring But Not In His Step

I am tired

If I had no mind

what color  ?

-

right to complain

agree this is the end of all
your life was better when you were small
the kids had sense the fathers held
the power and the law prevailed
your sister was a righteous whelp
your brother was supposed to help
but television interfered
and told us all the ones to fear
a long tradition loosely told
shows us the way back to the fold
agree with me that it was better
when smarter apples wouldn't let her
tell us what we plainly saw
as Father set his mighty jaw
when rules were good and God alone
could write them down
to the rod and bone
the liberal stacks of facts
rejected news from quacks
will change us all for the worse
or worse will worship stranger verse

--

Lakes in a Row

if you go out today
with lakes to make
and life eludes your
wet embrace
and dry earth sockets
bare your tears
in terse saline
with crystal mirrors
go out to the new parade
with flagging marchers on crusade
maybe mad with making change
into something else
just the same
a string of lights engaged
to a halo newly born
the ghost of more or less
water to the outworn
what you just made
and wetter in pockets
than their good years
of verse realigned

---

Fall in Full

Q: When the leaves fall (I fret)
     What then will I do?
A: Don't worry for what comes
     The wind will take what's due.


-