Inundated

 I curl up with my back to the wind sawing through the redwood tree 

A boiling kettle of branches above 

Not a twig drops 

Gusts crescendo and murmur and ruffle the fabric i cocoon under l

It's paltry and cold 

My tent stake bends as I make a wee roof 

The earth packed by a thousand nights tossing my sack of bones down the time slide 

Some more dry than others 

None so dry as my mother 

In a closet box,

Inundated.  

*** 

The store's closed for good, that's bad for music

Unless one likes sad music 

At least the bums don't leave their Lexus in the truck zone just to fetch dry cleaning 

Across the street 

I had to chalk No Fires by the former entrance

As some are crazy enough to burn trash for a couple minutes of heat 

The awning says Community Owned but the bank is in Wyoming 

It looks inundated with poverty all butcher papered up,

A real cutlet. 

A simple gift, tax deductible, and bento man is the last guy standing, but most people throw out the rice 

And besides 

Who needs silverware to eat and drive 

And stick it to the stick. 

___ 

The cook is sick

He was hale last night, chipper fist bumping the whole band 

Will be there 

He plays stand up 

Bass when he's not sick enough 24 hours later to cancel appearances 

 So here's a guy on acoustic songwriter and a cello from utopia, beatific 

She's covering in every way as they foot in mouth their non event for number 248 per year 

It's refreshing as tap water in contacts 

Let me tell you about yahacts last month, the best cheese steak in lower mintagilla 

Don't sic your hobo fan on us 

It's regular refreshments that background stop the ballpark 

Never heard of you 

There's your two big fans to dish out some shots at finale it's rubby elbow crimes  

I'm not watching overtly your cello diva at all 

I'm inundated by the mundaccious amateurism calling in well. 

 ____ 

Over our head, don't quit 

Breeding. Don't douse supplication by the fryer. We're layers in warm straw. 

The rent rises, inundating the newly burntbeak crew. Leaf feathers alone, they're company. 

Cage free gonna be, we'll see. 

___ 

Brown shirt staff sargent 

With his ranger rick get-up is barking some demand for me to risenshine from my weather buttress 

Here at picnic in the park 

I emerge, forgoing my combat boots, standing in my socks 

To hear i'm illegal and could be arrested at which audibly snort, been here three years 

Not here he says 

Yes, exactly here he waddles back to his city truck i'll be back after brunch and betting online against hometeam 

Then off to busk this temperate morning, the melvin gargoyle ambles away pushing his life basket, dispirited from last he said I'm lucky he don't got a bat 

I play an hour, one ten, and toss a pile of tin cans over the fence, spilling kidney beans from half finished meals that had been opened with haste and few moment edges 

Another hold the piss bus ride toward the east over the volcano all dead and fertile, notably peaceful with carlack 

I do my swimming in a rainbow suit as the hot tub brims with retirees and a retarded man of color, my mix  

He doesn't want to leave as his guardian calls time to go 

His eyes mesmerized making waves in jetting fizz, a magician transforming with perma smile beyond us 

He's inundated and center of attention, will he leave? Will patience grow more calm under the variable ennui 

I swim a quarter mile, half mile, time laps away who cares, dry off and go pump some blocks of dumbbell 

As cellphone drool surrounds the absurd muscle museum full of taxidermy 

And exiting, there's the troll, skin like a dog treat from a value pack sized roadkill 

Slinking past toward the natatorium with eyes in the back of her knees, trudge trudge 

It's quite the flow today, watching reality melt down history into a teeming sewer, up to my muskrat brow 

So I inquire squire lee about is We research regarding mom's non estate being subsumed by texas incorporated 

I scribe my hardshit waiver sic like melting butter on parking lot inferno, grittyesque with facts and antimath economics 

Done, not done. Inundated. 

Happy birthday, pops, sell the union and wallpaper the flood stamps, it's life on the river and windy by trial in the wrecked casino barge, high tide catfish that's on my menu of fascination  

___ 

All fed up, cuz the pizza from the bench by the theater didn't sell 

The movie been seen before it premiered 

Pepperoni dejavoo pickemoff 

Thick foil triangles inundated so that multiple wraps can't smelter the bounty 

Out peeks red sauce, but over sparingly to my tastes 

Dough still crusty or vice versa 

It'll dry let me get a handful of tissue, that's sad 

Don't call it a rerun, fantastic planet from 1956 

That groundbreakingly just ten years after WW 2 whisks us away

Let me just tuck away for a rainy day some these still soft restaurant edibles, the barber watches trimming his last cowboy today 

He could turn down those heat lamps, jesus it's brite 

Specially when we exit the odditorium where they sell cups of grog for a nickel, and the nickels are silver screen, and everyone's handsome or about to monologue 

Don't barf mr. hand-me-down 

Grocery titan, you can remodel, and tear down the melvin statue, and make Howard again 

Just chisel away.  

_____ 

Sump pump at the community center parking lot, 

It's a new crew hosing today 

Lake graham cracker crumb from the toddler squads for it all inundated in the grate 

Cars blast it six feet out with enough gained speed, the cherry blossom precinct unperturbed by motor boats in the crosswalk and pylons around the waterfowl mannequins wrapped in terrycloth 

They're busy ordering order 

Filling up fuel catchers 

Butcher papering window bricks more secure 

I say get an auger size of  Detroit and sell it and don't stop 

Evict that bad water before it gets into the gas tank with the snorkel and hydroponic hypnosis, that's some lax oversight to build a drain that collects and pools yesterday 

Wouldn't you say, mom? 

Wouldn't harriet tubman breath easier not needing stilts to get to class? 

Deferred maintenance has a waiting list around the block, I've been looking forward to it all day, a little time for me 

So tiny time, so clogging it's dander and sediments, mostly human skin they say, and dog stuff. 

Lake go-away slough , back to the drawing board, better engineering for a drier parking lot, and learn how to use tape correctly on all four corners, schmucks, it's folding like my potbelly running toward gym. 

This is tantamount to inundation, the brimming excess, and repudiation of plumbing. 

____

"One lovely and useful proverb is “still waters run deep,” which, translated, means  

quiet people are often more brilliant, clever or complex than they may appear.  

This proverb compares aspects of the human character to hydro- dynamics" 

"Of Latin origin, but possibly popularized by William Shakespeare, c. 1590, in "Henry VI," part 2, act 3, scene 1: 

 Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep; And in his simple show he harbours treason."  

__ 

Residual snowflake, flurry of one, solitary yet wed in dance 

Over pavement carless, care dictating each to their own views from windows, 

I gambled again last night 

Got drunk in deaths clime incubator, after selling my fishman preamp I drank my treble away, boomerang 

Three pints of mountain at the park, along with elderberry flavored river, courting nightshade rowed to a rowdy stir the blood 

Pool game with paul haul, a sonabitch made me beat him and shed my layers until it was tank top guns 

Him hating his dad, 70

Poisoned but wanting the be put in his place, sassy kid 

His girlfriend hanging back, fine by me, she chides me about my daughters, she's one too 

Wants to give a healing hug no problem, drinking cheapo lite, light food high 

The chatter of a party in a long last supper table and two dozen empties get me the bird, and out the door 

I'm stumbling, falling 

My bike soften the blow, rise and hike, never got my layers reinstalled 

"Winter pries it's fingers" in my hammered heart, my pea coat saves me, I awaken to the third ranger in as many sways 

Polite on script, older than the usual clocks sent to recite and point hands at dials 

I'm warm in 20 degree bag, look out at snow ice lawns and tree bit mulch that has been Cuisinart by chef wind 

I toss my foam in the fancy litter jail, after closing off the hefty so dog shit don't besmirch later use 

Cuz who knows, other than the queen oracle, the chain off it's sprocket so I walk to shell

-Ter, counter

-ter, store 

-age, patterns upon patterns paint the road there 

Too beautiful no hangover or frost bite, temperature dropping at 9 am 

Keeping it simple, retired, slow and in contrast.  

____ 

 Between ice and hand warmers in the pocket, my speck not ascendant 

Transitory yet barnacled by fellow human clods 

Uneager for dissolution from inundation, hot cocoa mix that don't swizzle, paddle as we do with a splinter 

Pulled from the cross, red 

The gamut of exhaustion bottled, to steep in indoors 

I heard nobody pray 

I heard sharp howls of pain from one guy, squabbles and cussing, accusations, friendly banter, kind gams at sea, the chance meetings that disaster harbors 

Dogs living with cats, society's outcasts glazed sleep, shuffling feet in outdoor clothes, the crinkle of water bottles, forgiving bumps and boundaries, to survive 

Unheeded calls for help, forsaken by pecking order bureaucracy 

Legless men with smiles 

Filling our arms with tents, tarps, instant oatmeal, and brief acceptance 

At the base of Mt. Tabor 

I better look that up again in my atheist catalogue 

Now that i'm on my side 

Cheek to the snow and the other inundated with keys and coins unspent 

___  

"Just as Elijah and Moses begin to depart from the scene, 

 Peter begins to ask Jesus if the disciples should make three tents for him and the two prophets.  

This has been interpreted as Peter's attempt to keep the prophets there longer. 

 But before Peter can finish, a bright cloud appears, and a voice from the cloud states: 

 "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him" (Mark 9:7).  

The disciples then fall to the ground in fear, but Jesus approaches and touches them, telling them not to be afraid. 

 When the disciples look up, they no longer see Elijah or Moses.

When Jesus and the three apostles are walking down the mountain,  one guy gives him shreds of shelter wool to wrap his feet from the ice: traction.

Jesus tells them to not tell anyone  that the supervisor knows that fentanyl was incense in the shit room.

"the things they had seen"  

until the "Son of Merde" has risen from the dead." 

___  

Refuge in a steel box spared me from obliteration,  shhhh wind now a whipsaw velocity that decapitated the picnic manger on Tabor where the pilgrims wear shorts in the snow 

Wind sharpened to molecular carbide on Crown Point 

Wind pushed the balsa fronds of fir out of the tundra without spite other than the smite of man and his sheetrock lairs 

Following channels of cement like a pinball game, no hindrance other than balconies for viewing past the megaTV 

Rootballs of trunk lollipops, for to rest parallel invites nature a new lease 

This is the only law 

Decay, and sublimation to moss, thrush, worm, and badger  

Out of storage, the leftovers feed mouths ravenous, molting, hurry in study too occupied to hunt cook and tablecloth, too inundated with progress for the sake of shaping a menu 

To serve satin sickness 

Go climb a fallen giant and find the nests before they are sold below in thrift stores 

Go log a look 

Witness the inundation of earth fighting back, reflexive, her kneecap jerk as automatic as a catapult from the rubber mallet of Dr. man 

Freezing rain slows the dinosaur glop in our engines, we feast on Old Food from the unpowered fridge, reaching by candlelight and memory of what was deposited last Odin's day

Last Mars day, last Freya's day 

Daresay Thorsday 

There is no bearing on the compass to guide a lost bloated contagion of capitalism 

The wax expends into bee sweat as fire reaps wick 

Glaciers peninsula our shallow tastes down to bedrock 

Where pilings hold not for long, and launch platforms commiserate escape from our inundation with self destruction, in Latin fairy tales with plastic slabs of lamb, sung with tinsel jingles 

Hide behind the sequoia, it melts too under a hiccup from the Gorge 

Wy'east and Pashto take it in stride, magma boiling in their cauldrons kept at bay under a loose sternwheeler that glides upstream to memaloose 

It's talk, that's All 

The wind inundated with power poles and copper lassoes and sturgeon magnets in a maelstrom symphony crescendo 

It's sex with beyond death on a tee shirt and sponsor, that tale of cerebus Grendel

It's a high point in sea level mentality, that folded ship made of diplomas 

A helado dripping down the fist running from the bull 

We run and the caterpillar gazas us in holy pauper view 

Sic pay per view, that's how clever drips congregate  

If there's any radiating glory, it's Hanford and folly 

It's Martin Luther Kaepernick doing knee bends to cheerleaders of every flavor 

Sacrilegious sanctimony and silly potion pedigrees 

Frost heaves the homeless to safety, from tailback, from rear guard, from tackle 

That's religion. 

____ 

 

 

Ain't it sic

 Is Bill Nye science guy related to George nigh ok governor 

Is night making right rites 

Is hyde running with bonnie or just clyde colliding with jeckyl on a jackal

These are the things her notepads instigate 

Do we knead it by rote 

It's really verboten written 

Under my bed, a full grown kitten 

What're they saying on ethnic tv this old house is de-nailed 

Tho it's in denial, they braided my dial is that soap from the pope or his pits related to brad, why look at their weak eyes 

That's the character just beaming us up scotty 

This dry macbeth mcturkey nugget 

It's a self bending spork, watch it dali 

Dripping off an oaf meal earl of sandwich cuppa joe 

Is prince a dunce 

I heard twice once 

This lil piggy went to meerkat

Jiggery jig 

In a quantum pre-rigged lexicon sticcht 

That routine please opensesame my saltine 

Was god good or under a spell well understood that's deep 

I'll swallow the bird 

Gently down the sewer if consciousness rocks the boat 

Hush little baby don't say a word that's john hurt 

I'm cher of it 

It's Sunny and Bono and U2 is off the books and dodging Yankees 

Wirdle dandy a macaroni in the hat and a tesla plugged into my edison con

That's proprietary

X marks the out, out damn spot 

Dick Jane Tarzan in one nike swoop, 

All guilty of star sponged glory

It'll get hits isn't it sic, sis Vicious 

Johnny rotten planted our apple breeze 

God save mcQueen cuz we are the Champions, sic 

Resembling low hanging fruit nose, from centuries of staying local that's honey 

Running for office 

Where to, mister pi  

Just a little row to consume.  

Fiddling round

 

Could be hanging sheetrock in a cathedral 

Could by digging a french drain thru muddy stony ground 

Could be wheelbarrowing 400 pounds of razor sharp stone slabs 120 yards down the hill in jan

Could be scraping lead paint in a hazmat suit in august with wildfire smoke stealing visibility 

Could by 35 feet high on a ladder holding onto rotten soffits to paint an illusion for boss 

Could be loading dumpsters with 40 tons of concrete 

Could be hand mixing 40 bags of crete and pouring em into wrongly built forms 

Could be writing popular trinkets 

Could be more disabled 

Could be felling 100 foot tall trees alone in my woods 

Could be spreading love like organic butter 

Could be more stupid if someone'd lower the bar  

Could be tearing off a roof in the winter, living room exposed like let's make a deal 

Could be folding 40x100 foot tarps with another pair of hands or not 

Could be mowing, raking, pruning, pulling up shrubs like when I was 12 

Could be bussing tables and eating leftover lobster like when I was 15 

Could be a virgin like when I was 17 wait that's not my resume

Could be pouring beers for 3.50 plus tips like when I was 22 

Could be baking pizzas and cleaning a 600 mouth capacity theater like when I was 24 

If I had a door, shower, bed, roof, address, toilet, kitchen 

 

NW pdx

Look it up, kitten . Haiku (2015)

 soft big eyes explore

hard world inexorable

look it up, kitten

          *

touch mynose my tail

(i told my body what to do)

clean work starts @ home

         *

bottom of litter

blues top karma plate potluck

squirm toward free nipple

          *

runts rule bully law

(who are you calling a runt!

bank and forth tales sweep

          *

 cute fang takes nice mice

home to her children waiting

      gastronomical

        *

whisk sweeps his her story

(the furrier the better)

moon looks down and nods

           *

underwheel barrow

sheltered brood discovered (oops

sorry, mother cat

        *

one by one neck haul

children lumber pile safety

confine cat castle

           *

punctured tin delight

aroma sound saliva

twenty feet running

          *

i catch my own food

simple rodents. bugs. or tuna.

swipe of stealthy paw

          *

let  me in i plead

not as dog with scratching paw

waiting doorside hours

        *

independent, yes

allergic to stroking, no

depend on that (logic

     *

milk bowladulthood

enough only one sitting

otherwise---flies drawn

         *

i draw with my tail

accomplishment legend map

"where i been is done"

          *

our pingpong ball chase

(neverending game of life)

thank goat, walls of time

          *

sister-brother nest

just leave one nostril open

epiphany air

          *

mother chews the cord

father prowls barndark quiet

these things, are given.

          *

wrapped in dishtowel love

take out baby burrito

parent practice good

          *

purr mechanism

runs purel (by seeing you

daughters trifecta!

         *

catch and release game

sharpen our human smile bark

sunshine yawn nap stretch

        *

litter conflation

no mess, nor pissy sponge sops

sibling, final friend

          *

sandpaper tongue bath

six down one to go...oh bother

go to where did they

        *

my head on your haunch

milky waterbed sister

straw built camel back

          *

father of the field

(mothered subterranean

night? anarchy rule

          *

no yarnball catnip

please, pull burrs from my fur.

supply pillow, too.

      *

crossing the road storm

stuck in treetop innocence

same difference, yep

          *

symbolic proxy

go where we cannot, freedom

mate with life yourself

          *

curious prowler

atop grandmas china hutch

cat in a bull shop

          *

in stow away add

inadvertent cat cargo

going gone round trip

          *

motions of nine lives

cheating death by pursing life

twitching cat dreamnap

          *

they fought atop fence

caterwauling "right makes might

roles reversed...it might

          *

sleeping kneading leg

owner complains of clawhurt

anyway, whose lap?

       

march 1, 2015

written in the woods of the northwest 

bloggod at 10:56 AM

Kangaroo running shoes (2018)

  

Unless you were in an Oklahoma public school, you probably didn't do the annual Land Rush

picnic day, a brown paper sack lunch all ready to go, and a stake to plant and claim one's

spot out on the playground lot there at Highland Park, after a hurried survey of the lay of

the land and its proximity to water, dry goods, and ammo: dirt clods. Unless you were some

pagan waif buried in the sweaters of 1970, you probably didn't do the Maypole on this same

playground, or know what a Maypole is at all, the crisscrossing rainbow streamers just

a social hurdle, the merry rub of shoulders as trees blossom and bees make economy in the

sun.

Vague remembrances, all those crisscrossing rainbow serpents, all those weird games that make 

no sense, and towns of faces of the conquered, dressed up as blue jean victors. Pawnee Bill,

Woolaroc, the Salt Flats, Woody Guthrie, and Jim Thorpe, place names and names of places,

veins and heart. A sack lunch, a Fox and Sac Swede, getting sacked by Eisenhower, or the

other way around. Barefoot running those section lines barefoot, past the home of the woman

at the farmhouse she opens the door as I knock, selling magazine subscriptions to fund the

school orchestra program. She opens the door, her robe opened from a couch-side nap, her

chest a scarred pit where the breast once better homed and gardened. Learning what the word

mastectomy means. 

Laid sleeping in the back of the VW station wagon Big Blue, four a.m., under a pile of blanket

on the way to Hydro, or Ames, it could be time for the farm and barns and cotton fields and

ponds where cattle drink when it isn't frozen, or it could be at Aunt's house and that time 

sledding I busted my lip as they say, and the drama of blood on snow. Loaded like cargo in

the hold, carried sleeping from place to place, checking our name tags, making introductions.

I wanted my name to be Steve, not Forest. I wanted to be the 6 Million Dollar Man, but 

hadn't thought it through, with inflation. Waiting to be picked up from school, bored, I hoofed

it toward home one day age five, or six, starting walking the 5 miles out of town along the

HW 51, picking up curious things and putting them in my metal lunchpail, lots of parts of

crushed turtles. Dad was flummoxed to find my a third of the way home, and who didn't get

the lecture that night.

Nineteen years in the same home, on the same land, in the same town, means nothing. Our 

random names, our organs and skin, or addresses. Weather, wind and water, and the variety

in fashion at the moment. Kangaroo skin running shoes, I left you on the bank of a river

as we hurried on to some destination, a museum, or scenic midway point to the next postcard.

Topsoil so loose the Land Rush stake has nothing to grab and bite into, other than the crust of

a PBJ others buried last year, in that corner of the playground where the 4 leaf clovers pop,

where there is a hole in the chainlink fence that means a home run if one can kick the ball

there with enough luck, wearing the right toenails. 

All the kids in white-face, in dirt-face, in OK-face, our own reservations. Wanting to be

Indian and Cowboy, both, not knowing anything. Still dumb, or numb, or a patient butterfly

waiting for the pin, the ether, and the placard. When you're young, you're a plot that hasn't

mapped out, a prospecting pan just dipping the stream for water, nothing else. It may look

like a feudal rodeo, if one can get the clown out of the way, and keep enough peanuts 

in the pocket for a ride up the ferris wheel. 

Slumlord (2017)

 

slumlord gets his jollies by the tongues of eels

zapping his wingnut wallet with electrodes

made of granny's pulled tooth fillings, he has loads of wire

running up his spine into an attic of greed

hoarding toxic trophies of moments recalled in the corporate sense,

filling pillows with shredded insulation and chickenwire

snippings salted sweetly remotely fathoming

doom in a slough shaped black hole of conscience

tarred with the beasts he liquefied

to make the glue of contracts shat in disappearing shit

ejecting from his every movement

2017

Portland 

Adaptismal (2019)

  

 O the wind and rain Oklahoma

Sweeping down aerial oceans,

Sending water moccasins onto rooftops

Launching snapping turtles

In soups of chemical brine covering

The church graveyard.

Pluck a grey hair from the mare

To mend the fiddle bow,

Cimarron soft shell turtles

Swim the new dustbowl mud

Over the banks

And their fiscal lies.

Helicopters noodle stranded citizens

Out of dark unseemly quagmires

Jesus forgot to subsidize.

Two million gallons per second

Top keystone,

The masonry is torn from below

Where speedboat parts return their nylons

To the oily muck.

O the wind and rain,

Doppler dunce hats and silo caps

Take featherless wing

Where monarch armies once clouded

Sky in black and orange.

Cowpokes tie ropes to their livestock

And pull their last rare beef

Off the barn beams.

God didn't forsake you

You thick lumps. Take your little

Lumps and red meat prayers,

Head for higher ground to spot the twister

Wiping the gas stations off

The map. Up the winding stair

Mountains is true

Grit and autotuned country hits,

The ancient seas are

Back, teeming with antediluvian foes.

Jesus on stilts

Will shepherd your kin if they

Believe in the

Wrath of sour grapes and elemental science. Eat the whole storm

And get free pontoons with a fill up.

O the mind and b

-rain

Stupid putty

 

A winning game plan squirrels away the tidbit under the auspicious autumn

Drizzle dropped on its head

As none were looking 

Time spun onward inward 

Fleshing out nut seed twaddle 

Moving worm left

And baguette south

Energy promotes zero sum dreams memory dirt relishes 

Layers of general apathy

Ladders to several rungs

Missing sequence

Left on the draft board over at

Squirrels pad lost in

Newspaper comics like lost minds fermented stupid putty 

 

 

SE PDX 

The funnel abyss (2019)

  

nine days of impenetrable haw

sleeping beauty surrounded by thorns

as the nation sleepwalks down the funnel

abyss to a spidery fascism,

aurora's geomagnetic pulses lit up the clouds

in broken electrons and poodles of rain

haw haw swale the sewage overflows 

all over saint john.

yet no earthquake attends

the tornadoes over yamhill grape orchards

but death's badge grows

where spiders object,

pointedly. 

2019

SE pdx 

Nocturnal daylight (1997)

  

Lastly i unleash the very gem

ending the miners blisters from their 

toil, they can go home to watch TV

because it's what twits do best

Lest the miners are indeed dense

Oil must be pumped, the pumpers dumped,

old rancid pinnacles Must be replaced

detaining children's follies

behind urban playpens, costs elevate

only because tiny levers make whoopee

involuntarily grinding the slack sadness,

lastly, once else all is seated with club

in tone in tune, the city hand lost

some of the best antique marbles

very very slowly i will chew upon

art until the succulent flesh flourishes

turning levels on leaves, core heaves

symbols on edges to startle the book

of 24 hours each page disappears

folding within moment diapers

freckled speckled measurements disperse

undressing the wrappers from silken

nocturnal daylight

written with Sierra Collom

1996, Portland Oregon

Bohemian egg (1988)

  

German atheists paint rainbow landscapes and sell

Them on the corner for a cup of coffee or beer.

They eat their manuscripts and burn

Their hair for warmth

Seven moons are reflected in the storm windows of

The testament building, each is pocked

At night they blow lint across the air,

Suspending it like pain

It rests on their furroughed foreheads if they ever sleep

Wallpaper roars in agony. Moon peels 

The carbon night away

Leaving divots on the golfballs of hunger they

Clutch and cradle

Two minute eggs

On the fairway course of bohemia 

1988

Lawrence, Ks

Motif (2006)

  

pluck from yer eye

that which re

-motely resembles myself exasperated

ulterior motives incise

decisions, interior motifs externalize

the decider

poster

-ior motives blindside backsides runnin

from the fight-or-flight

response; no plane decisions

for those on fixed winged budgets

broadsiding homeplate slides,

stagnant peace glides,

lies, embredded

with sighs

Free beer (1989)

  

they had an inedible solar powered imagination

that could generate juice off the moon's reflection

in a steam of midnight piss

so; six in the morning, off to pull a binger& harken

the roommate---down the road to topeka,

to puke ah

while renting the roadspace at the tollbooth, 

our driver  bonedaddy at the helm; our booth

operator Dora Lee tapped him on the hand,

tole us have a good day

&so blessed by the psalm olived freshness of sunrise

they shot in front of semi trucks

awful fast carting dangerous

substances of mystery

& light struck the trees from Low across morning hills

causing each leaf to shrug shoulders 

in disbelief, barns were creaking stuffed fulla

yawns of livestock, valleys swept

w/foggy headed implications of Last Nite

we was feeling so good

we mighta drove a wee bit fast cuz the passing

stormtrooper lassoed us with a radar gun blast

----a pair come crackling toward our car

and sez arright boys lets see some

eye D clear keep yer hands out on that blanket

& the harris boys say yessis occifer

squeezing the graffix bong twixt their legs

-----------O the early worm was smart

to squirm out of those talons

of that stainless steel donut disposal system

with only a forty dollar fine

so they felt super duper fine and hosed out the visine,

warshing varnish off the skull of america

cattle asleep at the breakfast table

dreamed our beautiful speed as we spit out windows

at hallucinations of their reality,

the exhaust of our old selves

made us dizzy, stench of roadkill hamburgers

from hardees, hey lets stop and get

raccoon tail hats, mister bonedaddy at the

helm smearing us down the toast toward boulder

colorado-------What is ahead

whatever is in our Heads------car the size

of hummingbird, radio singing

ballads of voodoo stock car drivers

we know we ain't make it to heaven,

we just wanna free beer

we just want it to exist, we could care less

about biggest Jackelopesr

nor 666 ounce steak deals if you eat it all

nor earrings of hitch hiking inmates

better they crawl than ride our brand,

we sting we swill we skewer

we rest at a STOP. urinate, polish our uzzi

to go hunting the oriental furnishings crapped out

in utility factories for the weak We Wanna Wear

styrofoam disco diapers,

pee in our pants with Pride,

We Wanna free beer & can imagine

it there a seventy story grain silo at the end

of this high way, spigots running out

five pound chunks of ice kicked about

by bison guarding the tankard with telepathic surgery

cutting out our reason

planting wooly lust for thunder, the rush

of the road, getting gone, sitting

in front of the page

22 going on 23

my mind races my minds purpose on the brow

faster than the guestimation station

1989 lawrence to st louis,

        then straight to boulder,

        back to lawrence, K.U.

Kvetchup (2017)

 

kvetching old lady, so sour

in her nest of children dreams on six legged horses

in her web of silk envied by burlap boys

in the pits of the olive mine,

clutching squealing canaries born to sing a blacklung song

opera of nails on blackboards driving

thru with fries and a shake and kvetchup sauce

all over the dumbphone

12-8-17 Mt Tabor

Sates the ravenous bear (2018)

  

It wasn't what you meant to inscribe

It didn't pause the particles

The tracks over space and time never to love

Unfurled it wasn't a destinynation on purpose

It was amber waves of sound sand

There drooled america into an abyss

It couldn't define quantum charades

Not on such long notice

Not with big brother's overcoat of tall glass

Chiseling tedium to binary arts

Meaning more hole

Rigmarole as the axe finds relax in summers

Kindling pile of spider babies

Writing our tome in silk and splinter bait

There vanished america into morass

Made in absense of form

Out of quark hiccups and accounting shims

Rammed to the bitgroin

The united sates the ravenous bear 

2018

Pdx

Placid arc (2017)

  

the gravel full of fossils i learned to walk

was my home and is my home       once

mind crawls back to the splash that changed the world,

pushing reasons to meander

and collect on one's knees,

prospecting a quite golden sun         velvet wrapped by

silver night and noetic palladium trees

things that appeared to be of interest, as a child,

       such as the sky

from up there in the sycamore

from which she taught me to scout

       horizon's placid arc

October 12, 2017

mt tabor

Squared circles (2018)

 Guilt caught up on me in dream

This morning I think upon reflection

Eloquent slow saturday pillow wrestling

I was escaping a cougar

Who walked toward me in the dusk

I went up a chain link fence

And got stuck on the sharp top ends

That's when I awoke

Another piece of dream I was at a counter

And a weird glass box had a spinning

Bottom with some tidbit twirling

In square circles

I opened a door to get the sample

But it was bait and my index finger

Was trapped on a magnetic gravity pad

I pulled hard as I could

To no avail summoned my strength

Got free and awoke the previous

Pillow over square ear having 

Masked windows all day for painting

Up on the treacherous ladders

Perched over cougar teeth

Accidents none love

Didn't happen, my lucky devil stars

Smiling down on Saturday ruminations

With the ever pleasant voice

Of my cousin, letting me know

Moms better last night tied one in

After work with klob

Sitting downtown sidewalk sipping

Puddle hoppers as street kids busked

My fumaroles soul venting

To clear the depression layers that river

Couldn't cleanse went by bus home

Put on a white sheer tanktop

And head bandana and lo behold

It's karate kid on TV at the honky tonk

Wax on paint that fenced horizon

Jazz band leads dreams to peel like

Slum landlord siding

Got a job offer to stain a food cart deck

Floor for plates if Thai hell yeah

Maybe I'll be fired today

Maybe I'll go back to uneasy sleep

Where feelings shape imagination sharp

Offering grabs at icarus pints dripping

Off her wings too near sun

That's the mission

Peace mission (2017)

 

Champlin sailed from New York 11 December 1942

on her first convoy crossing to Casablanca,

here's looking at you kid said the torpedo

from hydra spewing palladium over the radio tower of

wardenclyffe manned by cyborg anti patriots

who were in denial of gambling, gangsters, and

guac stains on the khakis

covered up with gold star families going to the gong show

at anne hutchinson's trial in boston

leading jung Jeffy Champskin to elope with

rode island just in time

to tame the english impulses to throw tea out of the

harbor back onto dutch jamaican cornershops

with sitar, mosque, and free speech

for even quakers facedown in their porridge unbuttered

sailing into port full of dignitaries

leaking from the stern

stamp of fascism

across the 21st

centurions

oil based

miss

-shun

12-8-17 Mt Tabor Portland Oregon

Gist-schism (2017)

  

energy, child of hell  (spoilt                 yuppie spawn

gushed russian giddy-glue           across our lawn

soaking hart roe                             stag& fawn;

         stealing life's   

   cradle perfect yawn

stasis brews                            primordial eyed

bangless photons   (without mullets) sighed;

humor vacuum,                    black holy thighs

                    in which light sinks,  solemnized.

break: (scatters( planet-balls,               solar systems,

    symmetry congeals            human pistons;

union reveals entropy visions                gist-shisms,

   yang spins yin as blot /told                  shinto-isms

   Try (just try, expanding hair                  back into skull

     Extinct with right whales in              man's rabid Lull

12-14-17

Mt Tabor Oregon

Thanksgiving turkey (2005)

 

glorious day! scooting off to parsimonial pardon

excuse me if you notice my ultraliberal hardon

fetch the rover by the throne

and send him packing his buried bones

don't delay the deal made of public steals

nor frisk the wrong majority pleader at the terminal graft

better a bush on the wing than a bird on the table

thinksgivin came oily and we ate the whole fable!

Never mattered nohow (2005)

  

this is a post

this is a communication

this is a spit in the wind

this is a barf in the trough

this is a grasp at the infernal

this is a sleight of hand

this is a pooch on a walk

this is a country on mental vacation

this is my gift to taunt the tawdry

this is a peach that is all pit

this is going nowhere fast dont you see

this is a freak of natural inflection

this is a duck that bites

this is an outpost on the fringe of the fridge

what do you care mr robot

go plug in yer missus and portend we never mattered

Facademia (2018)

 

Ultimately the facade was defaced in ivy

That ate the lead paint chips

In soggy relish just down the blvd on rye

As decadent decades deformulate

Sending ultimatums repurposed in roses

Whose thorns made epitomy a razor

Under swordfern

-soft dogshit shadows,

Ultimately the wuthering heights weathered

Ladders smellnotof rosy gallops

Teetered toward taught layers leadpaned academics

Scabbed in leagues of creepy ivy

The facade faced suns other music 

Raucous Hocus pocus (2017)

 

Whereso snock yon nobleman, besmirched

Yon maiden tent in showers autumn-gold,

   Young jim there spilled his bloody perch,

   His fighting fish, on lawn:     vomit-bold

Far removed from gut-spilling biddys

(Who booze-pumpkined) young jim whils't strum guitar,

   Last Prance charm trance, everyone giddy

   Blankets, weed, trailmix; wine in jars

Twenty bands of the city, a barn off the grid,

Folk dopehead goddesses, rich from sold lids;

   Capping the captains, down in the mess hall

   Raucous rock weekend, welcome were all

 

  Die o dionysus, remit gut's remainder

  After such show, such gallant retainers

Adaptismal (2019)

  

the wind and rain Oklahoma

Sweeping down aerial oceans,

Sending water moccasins onto rooftops

Launching snapping turtles

In soups of chemical brine covering

The church graveyard.

Pluck a grey hair from the mare

To mend the fiddle bow,

Cimarron soft shell turtles

Swim the new dustbowl mud

Over the banks

And their fiscal lies.

Helicopters noodle stranded citizens

Out of dark unseemly quagmires

Jesus forgot to subsidize.

Two million gallons per second

Top keystone,

The masonry is torn from below

Where speedboat parts return their nylons

To the oily muck.

O the wind and rain,

Doppler dunce hats and silo caps

Take featherless wing

Where monarch armies once clouded

Sky in black and orange.

Cowpokes tie ropes to their livestock

And pull their last rare beef

Off the barn beams.

God didn't forsake you

You thick lumps. Take your little

Lumps and red meat prayers,

Head for higher ground to spot the twister

Wiping the gas stations off

The map. Up the winding stair

Mountains is true

Grit and autotuned country hits,

The ancient seas are

Back, teeming with antediluvian foes.

Jesus on stilts

Will shepherd your kin if theyismal

Believe in the

Wrath of sour grapes and elemental science. Eat the whole storm

And get free pontoons with a fill up.

O the mind and b

-rain

If they need it more than you

Put on a little weight

And some wrinkly underwear 

Tie a double knot shoe 

You've time to spare 

Feed the squirrel yer first bite, give crow yer last 

Try less to be harder 

Go soft on the dingbats 

Smile till it hurts 

Drive 3 under the limit 

Throw back that old cat he'll be there next year 

Call the cops for sugar and bring it back, a nice hot cookie 

Throw the bum a dime even Stanford slime gotta do time when they steal billions 

Lend your day a treehouse 

Burn off that big pile of bills

Pretend someone's smarter if they need it more than you do, you can't, we will

Sirensong duh (1994)

 

nowdays prometheus cleptos

zippos @ cocktail whingdings,

elegant venus steps naked

out of virtual reality beerfoam

to impassion the dullard epic,

hercules cleans not the stable

rather scours congress

to emblazon history with parsley myth,

odysseus don't poke

out ogre eye, rather flips on donahue

to equal access the siren

song duh

Maui, Hi

1994

Return Deposits (1994)

 

flipflops on hot sand

that's why dolphins ditched their hands

to ignore the urge to forge

adopting  sonar giggles,

undersea nipples, while whale

had backbone to regress

floating beauty's bulk

backwards for return 

time deposits

Maui, Hi

1994

Stone Treehome (1994)

 

time builds home outta vacant

utopias, sprouted plywood

sunflowers, raku parking lots,

volcanic sun song land.

tranquil memory glue

suffices Present,  delving

toward relentless baby 

love, art galore, 

accentuated

situational lava 

1994

Maui

Not yours

 

Company unkept

 

Have you felt feather dismasted from bird still perfect only shed as gift 

Here, I brought tortillas today moist from cast iron 

Toss it in whimsy, a shred to lawn 

New homeowners peer parkward from front door the bank owns, I hope they're not cannibals they have a dusty car  

Boy rangers in matchy brown shorts arrive in big white trucks, walk around with trash bags, there's nothing other than loose dogs they ignore

Two butterflies circle 8 I've seen it before the photo self crops, there's pop a beer 

Alone with the company I don't keep, feather trophy mounted in a banana I'll eat perfectly 

Hellos

  

A sunset breeze over sunburnt arm hairs, tree limbs harmonize

Children chant as their family plays soccer

Birds narrate the available space 

Gravitational hellos thrum every atom re relativistic theory 

Cousin called, brother called, universe hung up 

RIP Uncle Jim

 

  

Under the coastal redwood, I wake once rested, upon a crib of roots, mostly nestled in soil its own child, million composts before mothers two legged hug, before spiders orotund hunted prey, predating sun in her nursery rhyme glow. Blinking winking wind nods assent, blowing boats into underground streams, nutrients coarsely course until storms grapple the freeways of furry bark and exhume roots reach, unanchored to thrust worm toward park sheltered crows. An errant dog off leash shares my June, nothing is sniffed becoming something, school nearby says goodbye to it's acorns, eggs, juice box ambassadors, brick guarded pages, crushes and thwarts. Nameless birds call across the neighborhood, cars appropriately pass, exhaustless poison, logoless pegs to their awl. Each with own, inherited in communal oblivion, I find a new station on my radio to dodge the tax of classical fundraising, a drain I've blood supplied season by season in making a giving a melody, my type finger numb yet accurate still. 

  

Persevere, the squirrel stands toetop, not chilly but earnest in eyeset, turns nose up at flour tortilla with a dab of beans, returns perfunctory as nothing more puritan emerges, quicker oats done sown elsewhere, or perhaps it's doppleganger squirrel, well rounded in definition self exemplified, mouthful too mush, got a leg up on the competition, whiz.

 

To imagine, mom in tacoma, 1959, her mom teaching in the public schools, single, older sister older brother groanup, marriage and war, the puget sound nothing like oklahoma city, airplane makers oilfield roustabouts whales and cattle, plaid or pendleton, tacoma must seemed worldly, at the edge, is that the space needle glinting across the bay, it's all fabricated, stories and stories just to eat a banana split and look thru 100 pound opera glasses at the trolley or pier or penthouse, tacoma log trucks, asian people, maybe some russians, mom the new kid from the rodeo oil musical swept across the plains, landed in tacoma, fallout shelter drills, flowers flowering mushrooms trees a car could pass thru the ocean fog and smell, just mom and mom, father far away further sic further sic vader sic postcards sic homesick and double entendre sunset Tacoma 

  

Loving teaching, feeding teaching, learning to teach, being taught, teaching love, loving feeding, thought food for thought for teaching 

Barefoot, mud boots, heels, tennyshoez, pajama feetie it's Sunday hello 

Makeup, make off, olive oil, apricot scrub, cigarette in bathtub, whole bread, versatile, worth a smile, industrious, destructive, counter bagel, pax deconstructive, moody did I menshun foody 

Unrelenting, skeptic mystic, overead illuminous hippy, doctor teacher, completer, puzzle bumper, sabot chucker, sophist pourer, flapping leaf, giving spring, parameter diner, shoe pebble, poet poet, mom hero, universe tongue, henna vogue, liver fire, pine mulch, night swimmer, study icon, family totem, provocateur manic, movie drinker, grandmother star, web preunraveler, rapunzel tattoo, rumpelstiltskin topping, andromeda dressing, hera pumps, vedic sunglasses, roosting squab, unmitigated mitigation, detour whale, small colossus, glued ruin, feeder breeder, selfless egotist, grammar gladiator, brick biter, heavy lightness, example human. 

Insolvent periphery

  There's no cry from the black eye, wrongly named in grackle  hue 

Swollen enough to bleach with clearing drops, it weeps and is tender to dab dry 

A peach dropped hard, days pass supposedly, tree overladen bends down to merge with lawn 

Cheek pit ruddy in blemish will pass as flesh wounds do

_____ 

Pregnant woman rubs her belly, looking both ways to jaywalk 

5 blonde women at bus stop by library arms full 

Girl with hardhead baby gowz past, I almost dripped on you says her mom 

Mama the Russian man in track suit calls across the street  

Is there a theme 

____ 

Playing playing under the shuttered eaves on my swept few square feet at the co op 

An hour passed I make $8 

We need more street violins she says, I'll be back some other day packing in my falling apart case bungee cord  

All for naught the missed call as mel has a smoothie and old man with a bag of cans a heavy guy with a walker another grey beard with bruises dotting arm, a top gun freedom some shit by ball cap  in priority seating, a fuzzy pink hoodie w hearts it's all legit tho not too heartwarming on the periphery 

____ 

What you used to be wrinkles 

Bus through purgatory all characters exit as bus nears the river, it's city fair week 

A merry go round so close one could leap to it, younger 

____ 

Your time, my time the ferris spinning cupcakes with umbrellas it's overcast can't dial the sun on rotary landline how many tickets 

All'em and the perforations too 

Soon it's fleetweek, war fish clog the muddy promenade they want to be seen not heard the draw bridges draw 

____ 

Contusion barnacles only granular aboard the 20billion year old crock pot that science scrapes a few grams off it's full of life ingredients and water ready to crash the party as ticker tape nears insolvency that's america in the mirror 

Chatham

   

Is there anything you want, yes to see my tax returns, I'll leap out of bed call Bob Woodward out bringing in the asparagus he's part of the microchip satellites I can't talk just listen then no I told the FBI microwaves spies following the school run by terrorists that's just a front I can't breathe let's go to the beach and sit in popcorn it's here in my eye I lost it you'll be sorry that's nice you look good in blue that's our birth order from Campbell or frau whatshername with cinnamon roll perfume and mineral rights space laser genomes and truman show showers making the getaway rothschild bildenburger and rockefeller exempt it's got grapes and feta and walnuts but don't worry bankers boxes stack higher than the blender on bottom can you reach that it's the one I need by February if not mailed them paste it on the car and drive around the courthouse for noam in his beetle doing psy ops after 15 minutes flip done sample the part I don't want to recall that was his show mocking faculty the chemtrail nudes in clouds I don't need a cat in the icebox the royalties up down a thousand book bookshelf daddy no lithium blacklisted supreme court chuckle chuckle shop creepmouse filo dough a little wine gouda amadeus the movie it's Xmas all wrapped and nor coffee rings on paper dreading taxes can I see them flyswatter 

"the European head of Bilderberg, Victor Halberstadt, coming out of a pharmacy in Lisbon, clutching a packet of barrier skin cream. 

 Halberstadt didn’t just ignore a polite media approach he flat-out denied that he was Victor Halberstadt"

Relic query

  

Forgetting what the body requires to unremember, losing facets innumerable that keep life strident 

Not balance but a recipe, self stirring, childhood the essential ingredient, ubiquitous 

Fortunate to have a positive upbringing, taken for granted not by me  

No broke bones no beltings good grades all sports great food decent clothes a nice home on acres close to town 

Insomnia or simple patterns of late bring wakeful hours pre dawn, mind traffic open to dredgings random 

Following mom's imminent death, months, weeks, a year away, toss and turn there's a pinecone under my thoracic

Dad, some museum peace all mum in his enclave, self curating his lack of sons

 Nobody is out to get me, they're busy being somebody 

Who'd resort to islands full of nuts 

When the shell game is run on peaguts 

We're all allergic to in theory not practice

Good with jelly unavailable but on back order 

The weight in line takes all time, grinds the flowomind 

Easy to lose waiting, meanwhile 

Everybody fat dwindles to a box around the cat 

That both meows and barks the tree a new eternity

Held by a string that's just theory, 

Pull on the belt that's where the navel officered birth 

Nothing is out to fetch me 

High on the alps of snow, flakes stair the thousand year stares, aeons to go 

Save the bloom, the bloomadier 

May pops in hospitable warmth the next allthing, 

What the banker hoard a bouquet of numbers 

Smelly to bears for honey reminders 

That's how where get found, parsed in lost and ground 

In the bulk twit aisle 

On the escalator smile, not waving hello redwhitenblu 

But how'd you do in the middle of the chew 

Cotton for candy that's her best relaxative, 

Picking apart teeth for the fillings subtracted 

Buy a parachute it softens the know, 

But we wooda chucked it to the dumbchuck that's how monopoly lops, 

Ain't nowhere not to be, that's public infamy, watering the tree 

Pull your pants up, lace round the shoes, every action is guilty to the board of allfence 

Neither hardy or transparent 

But full of brave guesses, darts keep flying and no target misses

New Feckless Eggs

 I'm far enough on food stamps 

Don shove as accoutrements 

Belly swagging 

Dr disturbing deliverance

Love my community 

No prospect every woman my wife 

That's counter intuitive, so dipshit number one

Is going to train the old wreck new trains?    

 Ole McDonald spike a drive, 

E I E you ken,  

And on that road, he cut some brakes, 

E I E you ken 

With some poison here  

And 6 five goon, 

Tearing down the cabin with a fatfuck quack, 

Dragging off the studio 

With our doodlebug whacked, 

Ole macdonald had a spat, 

U I C a kook. 

( Sung, sprightly.)

There, cathartic, again

 Fuckin my friends, our kids all of 3, learning abc 

Fucking the dead landlords wife 

Bathtub beau 

Gave nelms a blow as they moteled it  

Both Junko pardners the same nite, found out at Sarah's wedding when kiddo chipped her tooth 

Ma met squat in an orgy, how'd I know that, cuz another guy came to our booth looking for his fling 

Then when I had  new flame, just 22, maw took her whisky drinking and went for her too 

Don't tell me about crazy don't write off my calluses I've had a firm grip from every rabbits Alice's.

  

Grandma Dorothy died slowly, getting chemotherapy for a brain tumor. She spent the end of life in her bedroom in the only house she'd been in since I was born. I was 18, would drive to Dallas in my 280z, go look at SMU,. Pro tennis match, went there with Kevin my best friend from stillwater. Not the final visits, those were with my mom. Grandma, hairless from chemo, propped up in bed, wig as usual. Was she loopy when she told me I was her favorite? Her husband had his own bedroom, the entire time, since the late 1969s. She had her own bathroom, privacy. Harry Byrd had his xylophone, music room, and his office with cushy recliner chairs that grant and I would watch TV from, served snacks on trays. At the mall nearby, bought the Tracy Chapman album, spun it in the living room, as her final weeks passed. I was out in a field in stillwater the moment Grandma died. There was a dress up funeral, and meeting of the extended family. Great Aunt Ruth paid for my college education in Kansas. Uncle Jim managed assets on my mom's behalf, as she was newly divorced from my father. My mom claims that Harry Byrd was forward with her, inappropriate. It was believably disturbing. I smashed my hand thru a glass. I broke my hand on a wall. There, that's over. And a new life, 19, in Lawrence.

No fatigue

  

An okie refugee, nor where a choice person wannabe 

My soliloquy dumb founded

Pound on pewter ringdaling spiro mounded 

Mama earth, Venus de Milo

De villandorf 99.9 per kilo 

There's less stollen than challah 

Greasy gripe listz dame dolla  

Not up to flee, back to t league 

There be no fatigue.

  How many hamburgers we brought to Grandpa Ralph at the nursing home, wake him up, surprise him. Fast food but a step different than the institutionalized plops. He smoked in his room, no tv whatsoever that I recall, 1984, there were 4 stations including PBS. Braums had the best burger and fries that we'd usually enjoy, years before in his last rental home, he'd walk brother and I there, with ice cream if not entrees. It's not poetry, it's not porn or titillating political theory. It's treats. Some wax on the hood after a machine carwash. The dust returns, so what, or mud. With pickles.

Magnet

 

There's live music, electric guytards with awkward stage banter. I have the best seat, a booth on a riser. Two beautiful women ask if they can sit, of course, I respond. I'm phone engaged, reading, texting. We all drink. We eventually introduce ourselves, Anna and....um.... Courtney? Wrong. Men are staring at Not Courtney, she's stunning. About 40, long wavy strawberry blonde. Small chest, tall, in a rock t shirt. Men try their luck, approach, leave. Who cares. I hear her name, as Christine peels off her glue on nails. We drink. I mind my own business. She swats away the barflies with grace and patience and smiles. A third pretty woman sits. They're slipping rings off their fingers, about 10, trying them all around. There's no rings on Christine. The band cheers on their buddies in the audience. "Hey, it's Waylund Jennings!" He's a handsome guy, of course he tries his luck, tells me I'm lucky to be seated with beautiful women. It's my table, I offer. He bats zero. Men can't help but stare and try. It's stupid. She has a boy, she tells him to ride his bike, I half hear. Who cares. The nails are goyne, she's thrown them under the table.  

Classy. Waylund keeps asking me what his name is. I spell it. He asks more. Loudmouth, I reply. That shuts his yap. 

 It's four twenty. The loons dive and flounder. I close the bar as our super bartender kicks everyone out. Another night of no consequence, other to remind me of my married life, how being possessive is a constant drain. 

 It's my table. Take a number, try your luck. 

https://www.geni.com/people/William-Jennings/6000000008630921519

Canned

 The grounds a carpeted in cherry petals 

Precursor of pit harder than metal 

The sky sunshine blue make my heart swoon 

For the succulent dish that trees give bloom 

        *** 

A long coldwet morn that's what's in store 

I get out my fiddle to play my chore 

Making some dough that's on my agenda 

As the union passes handbills the color magenta 

    ***

There's trouble at the co op, the boss from Wyoming  

Walks his dog round the food a leash on a leash pretending 

Control isn't too down to members who built 

Every day stock cans, boxes, produce without guilt 

        *** 

What's the reward just ten laid off 

The shelves half bare with the empty time cough

The security guard hovers not over the registers box

But over the canned workers grievant hard knocks

         *** 

I took back to the store the bbtwas purchased 

It's not my style here's my receipt I'm no conscript 

I got back my cash, spent it on beer 

Out of harms way, loaded with cheer 

      *** 

Cheer up you cherry

There's birds on the way 

Love get loaded with optimism sway  

Don't crack a tooth on speaking the truth 

El Paso we pass thru each moment uncouth  

Pitch in the long haul 

None said it's all berries

The spine and arms numbfrom 

Cantilevered poses  

Bruise not or blemish the strawberry skin 

Tom Joad still walks with a rucksack grin  

A tarpaper hovel that's more than enough 

To house the betterhalfs stuff  

There's blame in the wind and confetti cloud anger 

Each buck a scissor the shopper dangles  

I'll park for a carrot and cafe olay my dry cleaning 

As shopping cart settlers do their gleaning  

Conscience is clear, I gave up a dollar 

To the slumped cardboard sign to ward off a holler 

My wine by the case and veal in white paper 

By most novels a conspicuous caper 

Do you know the tune desolation row 

Here's all my change have it a Gogh 

  

I've lost my power she said 

Encapsulating reality 

Succinctly, in a whirl of incoherence 

Did you get my package 

Too deep to fathom with a dearth of oxygen and retinue of gaspy happy drugs 

Reaching toward Ritz ungrasped 

Or a last fling to the new people in scrubs,  

A change of scenery bleak but preferable 

Flew the cuckoo nest to perch in a vulture amusement park 

Free, too free, too powerful 

To subdue. 

____ 

 Little Boy Nazis, too powerful to imbue with other, 

Decrepit focus on infinitesimal nihilism 

A Germanic fairytale 

Susceptible to imprinting 

An easy target with a streusel tooth, there at NASA, Hanford, Alamogordo

Mom a month old as her great uncle developed the oil to crush the foe 

Into new plastic forms cosmetics, fertilizer, jet fuel,  

Too powerful and beyond control, mind diverting rationality 

Father zapped away but still there, injustice became the standard measure,  

Books and an early marriage to my father homesteading among like hippy  

The back to earth pinnacle works for awhile, as the not sees grow back spore by koch by spore.

______

  

The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are

From his low tract and look another way.

 ___ 

Duteous to a squalor of heart, rent by money 

Liquid faithful flees 

Down gravity's boob unto lips willful honey 

Tongued please. 

Impurient sensibility thou art buys all censor 

Approbation in corner stalls, rounded by crow 

Pecking the walnut clean it's denser 

As every physicist know. 

The original a palimpsest of long deleted quality

Our template an etchasketch in pearl immortal 

Views thru a sea of diamond infinity 

Memory transcribes eternal. 

 

We pass and are handed around in hail Mary 

Beermugs for a pinch of elements quarry.

 

Sleep as must view disparate parts of that which squats mind 

Uninvitedly unguarded 

To share most personal entropy or surplus from the banquet life affords 

Rest delivers a demon hornless dream, no less than sharing a bed with an unmannered tyrant 

With another body in between 

Then gone, leaving me alone with seditions detritus pawned soul 

Fat corpuscle half laid on my torso, nothing more, but in trespass nonetheless

I say I'm moving over the other way, that's the dream 

The wrongest person ever in my backyard brain 

As perpetual rain and diminishment prevails in regular hard scrabble life

 Exasperation articulation 

Wanna medal for participation 

Put ya in a spell manipulation 

Man up you lotion 

Read in a haze of trafficjamification 

Drama reticulation accordion jester 

Gotta look back rearview mirror fixation, cuz comprehension is not your forte fortification 

Treat yourself to a gratification 

Open Pandora's box get an elucidation 

You can't teach edification to doctor Aunt so put some spin in the spine excavation 

It's there sumwhere 

Under all the zeros, favors muy guapo leads to hesitation 

You took the reins without notification cuz that's the modus operandi situation 

So pay attention commodification, 

Step back the education of one on par with deification 

Here under a tree we don't need notification, got squirrel and owl participation 

If healings the goal in family unification

  

My mother, cleaning my small face each morning as sent off to school, 

A warm washcloth 

And breakfast cooked from scratch. Actually, cooked from what scratch was. 

No testing the well water,

Nor the history of textile imbued in the scrub vehicle.  

Just love. How my own eye boogers, the skin pores, lungs refresh with effort. 

So little, we'd rarely remember. 

2-13-23

Empty ballcap

 

Cody kicked his bucket

But I know nonothow, heard the idle chatter on the last bus home 

A gas station guy on the counters other side

He was ringing up beers just yesterday  

 *

Bussing from the pool over in cheery blossom

Feeling not too bad for Thursday

There at the mall got on the grimnews, out of the mouth of Rene  

*

He just die

Just like that

Another hard fact

Just like that

____

Probably the Covid I'd think, he was heavy, 40 in a wide orange vest

Smiling Colorado, a blond ole hick, said he knew

             Nostradamus from his history class 

Lived at the corn, the unicorn inn, said his nayburr near                     burnt it up,

He smiled and moved his big ballcap, rubbed his belly

 tweren't a flu, twas MTN spew  

*

He just die

Just a fact

No more alive

That's where he at

___

Sweating in the field there                         pump #9

Idaho family gotta make good time, 

school starts up and dad's three jobs 

Cody wipes his brow, sounds lots like mine 

That's why I'm here on the worst damn road,

  filling tanks

 with petroleum 

*

Back inside turn the slushy machine, 20 little cameras record the scene 

A maskless montage of death on the go, 

   poor Cody poor Colorado,  we all know 

Life in a motel

 so far from home, friends to all but close to none 

Standing and breathing just hours close passed, 

 Cody lie still and none soon asked 

____

Why we go 

Just like that

Leaving no mark 

Just an empty ball cap.

SE PDX 

8-4-2022

Montavilla 

Skit

 Help help, throw me a rope.

I can't, I'm allergic

To cotton.

Well, find a nylon one.

Those are itchy. 

Drown 

Drown. 

Hey quit kicking me.

Are you dead yet? More kicks, water sprays from the ears.

Can't you hear me?

I'm here to help.

Kick kick kick

Tuft luck

  Dependable liar,

Self dealing promises

Stack the deck 

A bowl of very white 

Lice and the stewed bits 

Made you pretend

Assumptions were currency, 

Wobbly principles

To say the least 

And a pattern of deceit that apparently is in fashion among the geriatric hens roosting upon their 

Tufts.

Carving pumpkins (1988)

 

. this is a poem about writing about poetry,

like a cigarette you think

you're only getting tobacco but yer smoking the paper,

like religion you think you got god

but it's just opinion with trace elements of motive,

but unlike other products this poem

has substance and a vague nature

  Q: does it smell like the wet oils of mondrian?

       does it do descarte's illusory polka?

       does it shrink, cotton-candy in the saliva

           of your mind, or does it explode,

            a dream deferred? does dream smoke

               exist, rene, if all thoughts run dreams

the question is, what are you missing

         art thou a happy green cow?

                         

                         *

                       

b. for you lazy sack of silt readers

this is an aesthetic poem, meaning

it don't address the mystery of the locked nest monster

nor does it issue a fashion statement

nor does it stimulate emotions deeper

than nausea, loneliness, ennui.

          tonight we carved pumpkins

cut around their stems& pulled out

strands of gooey slime

we piled the entrails on paper sacks cut down

the middle& pulled flat

my friends took them into a dark room and that made it

even darker, they glowered like demons

like a proper wedding

like god al made one with a smiley face

&put it in the gutted out torso of an old TV set,

an innocent model from the 1950's

its shadow flickered onto our faces

we thin gin

we sing sin

we die soon, build fleshy prosthesis controls

we remote control kids

we say no, we silly putty cracks,

we are the envy of the world spanish maid,

indian doormat

god on my side get off my cloud

pumpkins in the office, the classrooms

                   *

we used to get our milk from the goldenbergs

when i was little

when family owned little blue an ancient VW bug

we'd go puttering up to their farmhouse

on the south side of town by the public pool

where brother grant and i first played with black kids

they rubbed baby oil on their skin

to slide thru that water

grant and i would wait by the car when momma

went fetching, the front of the hood

tied shut with rope fenders red white and blue

by the farmhouse was a hedge apple tree

that gave us ample ammo for the cows

in the field their udders all saggy

leather clouds

none of them had bells around the neck

none wrote dissertations or baked perfect pies

they perfected Moos

they never tried to jump that moon

Once we saw them deliver a calf next door over at

harvey's barn in the middle of night

by the light of kerosene lanterns we say it

get born and it was swirly

                         like a red beard full of snot

                         like a frozen sun

                         like heart's drain plug 

mom would come back out with gallon jar

of natural milk, tinfoil rubber banded lid,

at home she separated cream off the top

tho invariably a tiny white curd

or two made it past and we'd wish for store-bought

milk, real milk

i'd like to think she told us sorry that's life

but i think she took it and framed it

on the mantled wall, next to a swatted fly stain,

not the thing itself,

its image.

1988 

stillwater Ok