....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
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_______________________________________________________ The One Thing The only truly priceless thing in all the shellshocked world is the unlying heart. One face that stays the same regardless of the company and if you find one- you're in for a hellish ride, but hang on Jack- it's worth it. That isn't how you get to heaven, but it's close. Laying On Of Hands Tomorrow I go to the doctor's: open wide. Show the hanging globs of swollen strep good for a day off, wasted- sitting on paper, swaying my bare feet looking at a poster diagram of the human ear, and wondering if I could have survived this one without wearing such a a silly paper dress. Scribbled On A Toe Tag Take away all- stand me stripped, and quaking, knock-kneed in the middle of the night and I still would reach for a pen. On a runway, caught like a rabbit running, I would scribble the way the jet fuel smelled before the giant blades pureed my flesh. I am incapable of stopping this compulsive giving back of what the eye sees, what sears the heart, what death rattle feels like in dry throat. I'd like to interview God; ask him how he's doing, how it feels to have a son nailed like a skin to the wall and stretched so thin that few believe it anymore. Then I'd tell him I'm not well myself -and ask with perfect pluck, for sharper pen. Slipping By Mephistopheles Whenever we bake a loaf, the devil takes his bite or leavens the flour with knives, so he can cut our joys in two. He would if he could, squeeze every song out of the universe, but sing; there are notes he cannot reach, woven in robes we are born in, robes of laughter, robes of sacrifice sewn to light so when despair comes, pull them on and go about your business: life is strife- what of it? Death is nothing: we live on a blue ball in the dream of God rolled every which way but easy, but I say to you that death is not in the dream, it's in the ink of that devil's eyes and it's nothing at all. For What It's Worth What worries me, is that I'm a little bit crazy, emphasis on the 'little'. If I were completely crazy, I'd be free of normalcy's yoke, but I'm a little bit crazy and therefore behest to toe the party line of the lawn trimmers who show glimmers of glee at a tree well-trimmed or flower bed tended. Colors carefully blended in their homes and yards; no pardon for the reprobate who leaves her peeling, weedy home with nary a thought. And it pains me to be lumped-in with the likes of those who care about such things. They make no sense to me, as if, when dead and gone the lawn above me will be any different whether I mowed or not. I can tell you true, I will not care if it grows wild as the once unruly heart below it. Above or below the sod, it's- all of it- house and maintenance, only sod, not the god my neighbors and relatives seem to make of it. Other Lives, Other Deaths Where is the child my father saw when he looked at me- or the woman I grew into? When he died he took her too and with her all the memories, twined like vines around him, and the secret smiles that only we could interpret. There are no simple people, simple like cut outs, flat expressions painted. There are as many layers as those who know us love us- curse us- and depending upon how deeply I've rubbed into thee, some seem as though they could get up and walk unassisted, albeit only so long as the heart and brain that bred them breathes. We die so many deaths before the last one, the last should be the smallest death of all. Without Pedigree Don't look right or left. Don't read what's written on your back, don't moon in moonlight, pining for the acid drip of inspiration or the fruit of fame, keep moving keys, it'll find you, move up and down, just breathe word's breath. There are lodestones between your ears and pinkies. Pluck those. Pluck like light off water. It's your child and nobody else's. No one need be proud of a thing that breathes, that's in itself awake, that's made of shank and bone, it's found its lungs; it's walking 'bastard' under no one's stars, has no name nor needs one, whether it's stationed in a crown or lives under a stair and no one knows it's there, it speaks for itself and always will. A Very Different Drummer I'll tell you how out of step I am and always have been, putting the wrong foot down where nobody would, in ways that no one can, and if I try to explain how out of touch I am with my time and culture, it would be to say it's like a simple test to choose the most likely. Pretend you are set to a question: Strings are to violins, what blank is to a mower, and the choices are broccoli, a cash register and shoes. Those are my choices, what I'm given to survive; that's how it seems, and mostly makes no sense to me in the least. It's all of it, junk mail. Augury Black penny tails up against the wall in back of the building- no one takes it. No one is that brave; been there for weeks, turning from burnished to pitch -some things you don't disturb. The Skinny The day you stop seeing poetry as a means to an end--an identity, a va-li da-tion, recog nition or publication is the day you'll get your little poet wings pinned on and fly. The only really good poets are they ones who'd write even if no one read, even though there was no ink- even if they had no eyes, they'd see the words. On To Page 24 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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