A cadence of coded colors...
A five-cup salad...
My goal is to be
Neither seller nor buyer.
It's called holding on—
I get it wrong every day
First there's a wild pitch,
Then a passed ball.
Everywhere magnolia, we all
Eventually granola
Being of one-way streets
We bathe in salt dreams,
Dead seas,
We scroll down
But tonight I'm thinking about
that dessert Grandma made
The one with
Pineapple chunks, sour cream,
Coconut, marshmallows,
And mandarin oranges
Everything she got
From the IGA
The next morning the coals were there, buried but lurid, glowing like rare orange gems. Across the distance of a cold night they were still hot despite being abandoned, despite being covered by a heap of fine grey ash as the prior day's fire faded in upon itself. I walked around looking for pieces to add to the fire, to bring it back. I was out at Farm again, waking up chilled from a night in the unheated farmhouse. I was in search of fresh fuel, the arms and legs of trees, fodder for the next go-round. Honey locust, sycamore, cedar. Walnut, hickory, oak. Just-fallen twigs, young limbs, old broken trunks half-rotted away, wet with the promptly melted snow of a Missouri winter. On top of coals prevailing through the wind and dark of night any wood will do...
I return again
To the beginning
Where it's best
To start again
With me
The folk agree
'Tis their
Favorite spot indeed
Though they said that first
About the middle
Then again about the end...
Rental house done
in typewriter theme
boxed wine in the fridge
fuzzy comet up high
Typewriter ribbon
run dry
ink disappearing
into dust
lost as a sinking
creek
Baseball delayed by disease
five planets visible
all-numeric password
my wife and I
driving in the dark
in a very old town
that neither of us knew
to get our eyes on a comet
no one knew would be there
Corona is
a brand of typewriter
of beer
of pruning tool
a constellation Borealis
a fancy word for halo:
That ring we saw during the solar eclipse
that pearly glow
A gaseous envelope
burning hotter
than the Sun itself
I felt the floor move beneath me
Downstairs activity tremored my tree
Nuts fell all around, inedible, indelible.
So I went to the park, sought out shade
Set my things below a large post oak
Its armlike branches reaching down
To ruffle the grassy hair of the ground.
I tossed a blanket
Ate a butter and bacon sandwich
Tried to get comfortable...
1. It is tomorrow here already.
When the vodka's gone
it means we have to sleep
And I don't want to sleep—ever!
2. Turning and twisting.
What was all that law school for?
Those early mornings, Austin city
bus, statutes, prescription glasses,
hard attitude, I
Never wrote the checks. I only ever
sued one "person," one dumb city and
It was a win but
what is that victory now?
Bakersfield to Boston,
A little overweight.
If you saw some onions
By the side of the highway
They were probably mine.
The guy who loaded my rig
Didn't know what he was doing
So I didn't mind a few
Rolling loose back there
On Highway 58
On Interstate 40
On Interstate 44.
You didn't see any
Whole bags of them, did you?
Just so long as I didn't drop
Any whole bags.
They've already been on there for a week.
In all this sun?
I'm a little worried, to be honest.
They're paying me six grand
To get the load to Boston.
That's a lot of money.
But if I get 'em there rotten
I'll be heading back west
With nothing but onions
On my breath.
I carried a
flora & fauna
of provisions,
many of them
pure, physical
insurance,
a sort of
antipsychotic
weighted blanket.
I carried them
across the country,
burning old peat bogs
as I tooled through
buffalo lands
on cruise control
past native grasses
and sun-drenched scrub.
When it was time
to turn around,
ancient cacti
helped me
back across the desert,
pitying me my
heavy load.
Here's the pitch, it's low,
Ball four. The next batter
Is awaiting his test results.
The game will resume
Intermittently.
I am feeling average about it all. I saw an angry person spit in the face of an elderly woman who asked him to cover his face. Outside, naked people slept peaceful in the street.
2
Imagine the sound of that comet,
Its tail a contrail split in two,
Dust and fried ice, the Sun
Seething with impotence
As the comet passed it by,
Somehow staying together.
Then I saw it the way I saw it,
Wicked blue morning,
Cows in the field with
Better eyes than me
But there on the horizon
A comet
Upside down, breeching, glowing with
Prank light
An hour before dawn...
JBR.com 