61
When I closed my eyes
The sun went behind a cloud,
And it was Friday
62
I can remember
When I didn’t even know
What Lowe’s was
63
On a branch silhouetted
By my neighbor’s window,
A cardinal braces
64
In the midst
Of a roaring party,
An old coffee cup, broken
65
As I wonder
At a light bulb —
It bursts in my face
Cybersuicide saves lives. If you wanna die Go die online somewhere. Leave us the living Alone.
There’s people I haven’t met called John Randall.
There’s a guy who’s sick and shoeless in bed called John Randall.
There’s a man with tattoos and a tie on, singing a song called “John Randall.”
There’s a fifty year-old governor who just drove his precocious
aide to the top of a hill named John Randall.
There he is in bed again, still with his shoes off, John Randall.
They’ve got their arms around each other, asking someone to take a photograph.
With a pillow over his head, John Randall.
They don’t realize it’s a tabloid reporter, byline John Randall.
He’s in the back of a portrait of a bunch of people in an apartment drinking Bud Light. He is drinking a beer called John Randall.
He’s holding it there — not someone else, John Randall.
In the seventies his hair was way long and wavy, John Randall.
He has drinking buddies in college and there is lots of promiscuous sex, John Randall.
Out to pizza with his family, look at that cute dog there, oh, that little squirt, look at him he’s so cute. Now the dog is barking, the barking is driving him nuts, actually making him physically sick, causing him to think, God, if a dog is this bad, how the hell am I gonna have a kid named John Randall, Jr?
I thought I heard the soundof someone tapping on a plate,the sound of someone finishing a bowl of cereal. The kitchen window —someone climbing in,causing the blind string to hitthe dishes in the drying rack? I am bolt awake now,no sense in ignoring thiscall for a second time. I am up, naked, and rushing in. … Continue reading Dialect of the Fridge
dancing rabbit sawdust latrinewindmills whipping like silencer trainshigh above the prairie lobut there’s a real trainand another and anotherall throughout the nightas rain dances acrossthe top of my tent like a milliondancing rabbits, little ones.
56
When I watered my jade
With Schlitz
Of course it died
57
To set the clock
I look to see what time it is
While holding the missing clock
58
It’s been weeks
But finally I hear it —
The rain
59
Stuck but not
Dead in winter
Plotting Spring
60
If someone came and
Hacked to death whatever —
Quiet home
Solid investing always slowly develops a taste for bad flirtation. Vacation rental, cucumber petal: Sipping on the tea of Colombo — Oh yeah, just one more thing...
Nightmare ham, dateline America. Tonight's top story: the inimitable error: the journalists all died at the truth. I'm stuck reading about this left-behind sense of beds made poorly — pissed in then slept in then folded like cardboard. Next time will be a different screw-up. The great, big puke-off was only a rejection of any kind of appetizer fresh from the ocean & served with marinara.
Over this side
And steel.
Most moisture
We’ve seen in months.
Rusted linoleum
Tractors cowed
By the slender whim of God.
Banks?
There are no banks.
This is why you don’t wait.
People gonna make mistakes, sure. But
This is p’cisely why you never wait.
Waitin’ for rain, for the aqueduct.
Waitin’ for the war to end,
For interest rates to move.
Nobody in this family waitin’ for a goddam thing.
Well, sure we dropped a well.
And dropped it,
And dropped it.
We found that, ah, cone of depression —
Some bottles of dirty water.
Our poor Mother, ya know.
She loaned us udders of water,
Buried deep down in her soul, like.
Sandstone-lined. All she had.
We was just children then.
So
We gone back to readin’ the clouds.
They’re beautiful really.
Cirrus curling into nothing
Way up there. Just ice crystals
Casting down white light.
There ain’t s’pose to be such a thing as white light.
But I tell ya: I seen it.
I’m going on record with this
Because I’m in plain need of an elegy.
Sawbones gave me, oh, a few months.
Don’t matter much.
I came from this land
And I’m going back to it.
Now I’m telling you:
I want a Viking’s funeral.
If you can find ‘em, throw a thousand husks
Of corn onto my pyre.
Take fish from the hole I leave in the ice.
Despite everything I’ve said,
Regardless of whether there’s snow on the ground,
Whether the crops rise,
Whether anyone’s left to see me go.
Third cup.Jazz.A man is talking with Ray the barista.Hum of refrigerator.Coins. Tip money dropped in a glass jar.Coffee maker — frothy release of steam, metal stirring along metal.Drums. Piano. Saxophone.Fridge door closes; cushioning.Ray greets a customer, “How’s it going?”She orders a latte mocha triple shot.Talk of parking, a popular topic this morn.Coins again.Ray laughs.Air ducts … Continue reading Coffee Shop Audio Sketch
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