trees stillwater made home

Looming and above all the sycamore and its metal bucket earring grown into a
limb decades ago, full of rusty bullet holes and mulch of aeon leaves, but prior
in memory was the stout and gnarly trunk of a transpired elm, limbless and 
statuesque, gaunt. I scuffed my knees on its ancient sharp bark, intentionally,
jealous of baby brother grant hogging all the mommy love and cooing time. 
The tree was soon in our chimney smoke, warming our beds.
Above the basketball goal at the edge of the concrete slab over our storm
cellar was a big tree, not sure what kind. Like a catalpa tree, with seeds in a pod,
but these seeds were grape sized, very hard and deep brownish-black, four or
five to a pod, in a gooey kind of jelly, and the outer shell of the pods leathery
when fresh, then crispy. It was a pretty good climbing tree,  but nothing like
the sycamore. Around this tree and the basketball hoop, handmade by dad
in a rectangular shape, large cedar trees formed walls ofgreen hands, helping
toss back the errant shots of hundreds of hours of basketball fun.
Under these cedar trees, which grant and i cleaned out of leaves sticks and 
whatnot, we built cities and roads, constructed empires of blocks of wood,
toy trucks and tractors and leggos, and sometimes a litter of kittens in
a carboard box with a towel over the top so they won't get out. Cedar trees
not the best to climb in for the sap, and the scratchy itchy limbs, but the 
smell so good, and the deep dense camoflage and shade of its nature.  There
were nests to peer into, but taught not to bother them, and to never handle
the baby birds.
The cherry tree we planted produced the best sour cherries, pie on the 
picnic table, homemade ice cream in a hand cranked old wood barrel sort 
of thing, and the mystery of dry ice, and perhaps we had a pear tree, an
apricot tree. Mulberry trees fruit was fun, but only good to eat fresh and
when perfectly ripe it was incredible, the purple indigo stains all around
the ground, and in the bird shit, prominent on windshields and the basket
ball arena of this childhood. Get a soldier with a parachute and go up the
sycamore, to the end of the branch near the top, and heave it off so that
the parachute deploys and doesn't end up tangled terminally stuck.
Balsa wood planes, and model airplanes, cars, and spaceships were all at
the shop in town that also sold aquariums and tropical fish. It was a prime
destination to be left for an hour, near across the street was a miniature
golf course, and also the ice cream place with a zillion flavors.
Blackberries grew all around the section lines, red dirt roads paved in
typical gravel. On the land, there were persimmon trees, down below the
pond's dam, and damn your mouth if you tried to eat one not ripe. There
was a cuckoo who lived to laugh at those who tried persimmons not quite
ready, a cuckoo stationed there like a cloud. When perfect ripe, the 
persimmon was not too shabby, not too shabby. 
Hundreds of pines, planted when I was a baby, grew year by year as I
grew and ran through them with bows and arrows and baseball mits full
of rocks or pockets full of fireworks, hundreds of pines wet in the rain
or covered in snow and ice so heavy they bend over and get warped for life,
summer blistering hot the sap pops their bark open, the good years of wet
and lush make their candles, their branch tips slowly open out reverse
umbrellas, broken off in strong winds, little brooms, riding our bikes over
the carpet of pine needles, getting paid per wheelbarrow of death-dry 
needles we'd haul to the burn pile, smouldering all weekend, some lawn
chairs and beer cans, our three acre spread had so many spots to pioneer,
there were attempts to settle the pines with a tree house, also to 
use piled stone for various forts, but vetoed by parents, whereas simple
lean-tos of dead branches or scrap wood was usually fine, until it had to 
meet the burn pile.
The view from the top of our house rose above most all the trees, 
most certainly the ones bordering and surrounding it, so one could really
see into the distant horizons in all directions for a good long ways. A
knowledge of weather spent atop trees or balanced on the peak of
a two story house, and practice jumping ten feet, as well as hanging 
upside down to show off, that's the view a kid has on where they grow
up. We had trees, and big sky. We had crazy clouds, hail, and lightning
storms that would rattle the glass and flash and boom all in the wrong
order. 
The storm cellar was a concrete slab that served as our home's main
entrance, a door leading down into actual cellar room always spiderweb
covered, and often six inches or a foot of water, and sometimes frogs,
or a random scorpion down there, with ancient wood shelves and their
bottles of forgotten dandelion wine, so gross and dusty looking, the
entire cellar dismal not much of a refuge, tornado or not. The door
would rot over the years, and then be a hazard as the nearby basketball
court was the slab, roof and floor, of the cellar. We may have gone down 
once for an impending tornado, but I don't think so. The flimsy wood
door would have gone sailing off in bits and we'd of been sucked into
the eye of the winds.
The cedar trees all around our home facing the highway, tall and thick,
part of the sound of night and sleep, with weather sweeping water and
slapping branch tips , up to the windows curtainless and clear.

stillwater home forts

Go back to the forts, hideouts, stomping grounds of childhood, before they totally vanish,
before they self demolish and are used to build new flimsy dreams. Before the shed is
just used to house the riding lawnmower, and not be a lair for desperados or jedi or spies.
Brother and I built our cook-fire in the bowl shaped lid of a steel milk cannister, got a fry
pan and an egg from the kitchen, and had our second breakfast in the pines. The treehouse
was our real home, in the front yard, in the big sycamore.
I could jump to the first branch five feet up, swing my leg over it,  and climb another bunch
of feet into the walled fort my dad built for us out of new lumber. Open wind0ws, and no
roof for the first couple years, until we added a second story. We spent hours every day in
the tree, at the top, jumping off it, clamboring around it summer or winter, leafed or
bald. Tin can phones and string, blanket roofs, koolaide and squirt guns. Having friends
over to play. Throwing the balsa wood planes out of the tree, or little plastic men with
parachutes. Very oily plastic figurines.
Who else in America had their own bi-plane? Dad built ours out of plywood and two by 
fours; doubled wings, like Snoopy, box shaped and twelve feet long. Big enough to get 
into, three feet wide, with tail fins, and a closing cockpit, gauges and a propellor that
we could spin from inside, manually. The top wing was 5 feet from the ground, the lower
wing 2 feet off the grass. It was painted with a shark's mouth, a pair of dice, checkerboard
patterns. It was a remarkable asset, and solid enticement for visiting friends. Who else 
had their own plane?
Parked underneath the treehouse, or nearby, we could adventure all over the world and
not miss the city life most of our school friends took for granted. I wish I had that passport.
Our rabbit hutch was under the treehouse, for as long as we had our rabbit Foo Foo. We
f0und him on Easter hopping around our yard, white with a several moustaches and eye
rings, a baby coincidence, or escapee. Hard to remember the end of the rabbit, or the
final days of the plane. It must have rotted to an extent beyond repair, as I spent more
time after school in sports, or at the library, and been a good soggy day burn project that
I missed. 
We never had a dog house, because we only had cats, and litters of cats. Grant and I would
put them in boxes lined with cloth, and drag them around the house, to tinker-toy and
building block ghettoes, often hastily constructed with a fort of couch pillows. There was 
Mickey, and Boogie, and Quimby. They had the run of the house and the land. Boogie would
be gone for days or weeks, come back with is Maine Coon fur full of beggars lice, or withwi
torn up ears. They stayed away from the highway. There was all kinds of road kill to 
poke at down there; possums, armadillo, tortoises, coyote, deer, all kind of birds. 
The forts on wheels, our cars, were always station wagons: a Datsun, a Mazda, and
way back when a VW station wagon the size of a candy bar. The Apache pickup was the
coolest, as we got to ride in it on top of loads of firewood, or to our land with the pond,
or to the drive-in theater.
Nearby the drive-in, on our east side of town, was also the roller skating rink. I loved
skating, the chance to flirt with girls and couple-skate hand in hand, and play arcade
games, foosball and air hockey. Doing the limbo, on skates. In the winter, we ice skated
our pond and played real hockey, with a crushed can and tree limbs, all around the
beaver lodge. Forts, nests with wings, shoes with fins, homes on wheels. And then the 
inner realms of books, of study, or the rooftop to cloud watch. Coming in with shoe
laces full of stickers, a jar with fireflies, and chigger bites. Or home right at dark, a 
stringer of gasping fish that gott be cleaned as they say, out on the slab with moths
and junebugs and the cats watching, the innards of the fish on some paper sack, and
Monty Python on the TV and then it was bedtime, again, and creep mouse.

get good and goet

the beautiful naked page so adamantly patient
for ink, her song thru broken sails
slung tardy hissing near the reef.
a merman of the sky doled out the rainbow kisses
only a vocabulary can taste.
easy mind goes freely trapping,
all the quarry has blametags and alternate diodes
to flash utter sense, senseless. run a
green light
hop a bounty, the screen and screed and scrawl
want to take care of you, in the dim hours
and drip feed moonlight, but he is
clad in clammy wool knickers and full of moths.
sylvia's sylvan slippers skip dope,
on the play ground, all the mary cunts go merrily
cunting their bunbuns to finnegan's fingal cave,
with the bad givers and their manners made of dust.
slammed doors and open atoms
make mushtomb pizzas, how sweet!
the birdies taunt death's halo, fluttering like 
parmesan over angel hair demons. my mother,
dressed in jeweled basalt in the habit of a nun,
volcanic. my father, poor as a sharecropper 
up to his nose in Oil and pussy. kitsch
lines the avenue, its all not for sale, no matter
the size of the sheep, or her billy
goat gruff said the die, landing on their sides
full of whining asphalt. rather than vulgar marbles,
our needs encompass time like filo dough.
you're lucky to get periods,
and commas, dude, otherwise the fig leafed page
would behead the knight with a comet,
their bland automaton in a helmet made of maids.
if you can't have fun, why
spend the splendor on ferris wheel gerbils says the
ratchety young spring, going squirt squirt
out the fake flower of his eye, weepy and yellowed
with autumn. earl grey and mister mustard in the dining
room with a candlestick, or the sorry parch easy
queasy doomish dildos of growing grass
under the scythe's fourth eye, that's the rub.
dumb but not deaf, the plain
all pain deludes into desert nomad donkeys
packed with alpha bets
and beta fish set on one another like fireants.
don't try to "get it"
get got.