....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
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_______________________________________________________ Sans Confetti Thus far, in fog and fifty degree disquietude, the new year passes through the gate like gas- I do not trust it. Do not ask me why. It is a shade of a thing, not howling bright as a bauble as its brothers were; it is a cat crept in the back, when nobody was looking. Poll Question Anybody else feel like this whole country's aboard a plane, and maybe the captain has some bad wiring, maybe an undiagnosed tumor or just a lesion of the sane side of the brain and maybe we're all headed toward the fiery side of Magic Mountain while he smiles and smiles that frightening howdy doody smile that nobody can tell from a grimace anyway?--anybody else out there feel this way at all, raise your good hand. Either Or It's important to know if you're dirty or you're clean; don't give me gray- that shit don't fly. Take a look in a mirror- that's your answer. Dirty or clean every time. Clean is better. Numbnut Let me tell you how I feel if I only knew, I would, but Jesus it's the truth, I know I'm feeling strangely weightless. And the cold has gone inside- I feel I'm turning into stone, skin cracking when I move like painted over oil cloth I rolled and put away. I've put myself away. That's what it is. If I'm moving, if I'm speaking it's by memory that's the last to go. Dogging It Morning Klaxon, never ready for it- still it blows me out of bed my feet like lead but moving, moving slowly. Getting coffee, peeling layer from layer of dreams that I am covered in, reluctant -stripped of quiet, warmth. I tap tap out these poems maybe no one - maybe God reads, I don't know except it's needed. Keeps me connected to something inside connected to something outside- out where dogs are barking snarling at the winter's puny sun; they will not bark at me, I'm one of them. They know their own. Let Not The Death Moth Be Fear nothing. Fear is the only thing can ruin a life. Not adversity, not illness or pain, fear's the only chain can wrap about the chest, feel like an anvil fused to flesh and force its weight be carried: fear is the great paralysis. Even in the hard, meanness of life, man moves--can move away from shadows. But fear is like a curare dart to heart, that keeps it beating barely enough to sustain the small, dense presence of itself alone -it is the bat sucking hungrily in the dark -wet wing of giant moth stuck to the eyes -it is the four a.m. surprise when you thought the room held only you and the tiny edge of tomorrow you've latched onto- shrug your soul. Fear will roll off like a cat-weight to the floor. Go back to sleep. Dream of being freightless; remember the dream when you wake- remember, between the picking up and carrying over, there are choices. Identity It must be something important, a name. Must be like a pledge, a vow. The ink we sign in must be blood, connected to living tissue- don't want it where our secrets are, no how- for some, the real face is a secret. Skin and features far too thin for light- might burn right through to truth and the need to own it; it's often a awkward thing, thing that bears a brunt -a man standing in his own face, no face in front. Godlike If I were to scoop mud, bend spit into my hand and with the use of several foldings pushes, bringing palms together- compressing rolling, try to make a man I could not do it but I would make a mess. And one time in the mind of God, He similarly used mud and fashioned man; He made a fine companion for the stars, someone to marvel on nights of lonelier heart, someone to talk to Him, but He also made a mess- could not avoid it. We are so like our creator when assigning selfhood to a thing; once given life, creations cause a tumult. Everything alive is disarrayed and glorious yet appalled. How else to explain why the hyena laughs- he's seen himself in passing- he's a mess, a breathing mess, as are we all. Same Old Only Harder The day is pushing in on me it's corners caramel and sticky, stuck with yesterday's undones. Some days are perfectly new- a walk with clean feet across the cool of a blank slate in shriven nightdress, and then there is the flypaper feel of hitching steps on tacky surfaces of re-worked ground, each sound an echo. There's the cup on the sink the shoe on it's side, the back door waiting patiently and the world as it looked yesterday abides beyond it. A thin sun on hard road, a January morning. No Oases I opened my mouth to speak but my mouth was full of sand. Granules- dry granules, all of them separate, nothing adhering one to another, eager to fall away, get loose, opt out of the skull. There is nothing to hold them now, no moisture for mortar, Sahara brain under an unrelenting sun that stretches forever and ever the hour is dusk, not night. Night is romantic, maybe dangerous, no, it's dusk - mild unfocused, dry. Flesh is no more use to me than Algebra, a rubbery coat that someone wore to places I can't remember going going gone. On To Page 5 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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