Waiting in the weighted air
Moisture seeps into clothing and hair
Damp is the cover of all
Both inside and it seems
Darkening, the sky, cloud full
Changes in monochromatic hue to hue
Wind is hidden from both view and result
Chickens are happy to roost tonight
Hoping a rain will bring a cooler daylight.
When my folks sat,”Well the boys ’round here”:
Just as I did seven years ago,
And think-
Why am I still here?
Talking to a boy
whom I know nothing about.
So when my folks say that-
About the boys in these parts,
I have to laugh.
Because girls make my heart-
sing.
Dad used to bring home LPs of Broadway shows
I listened to those records
Recordings of musicals, many of which I would never see
Kind of like the Man in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone
But I knew the plots, because they were in the liner notes
First real New York Broadway show I saw was Stop the World, I Want to Get Off
Funny, we never got the cast recording to that one.
Performing in musical theatre productions is integrated mult-tasking
Singing, dancing, acting
It probably promotes brain health
So, would we all be better off if we lived our daily lives to a sound track, breaking into song and dance routines on cue?
Let’s try it
You first.
Summer haze –
Humidity’s girlfriend –
Binds my hands,
Forces me to nap
At vulnerable times
Throughout the day
Keeps me up at night,
Screeching in my ears
Like bad brakes
First cricket sings a promise we’ll survive.
The hike into the canyon, climb to summit
on a cool, bright day, the light through waves,
shadows printing leaves on creek sand,
all the years I’ve welcomed freedom,
the buoyancy of time. Drunkenness
to hold it in. Desperate lust for what
is lost by seeking love, the consequence
of child delivering the world again,
twilight deepening above the trees, escape,
the moment that the screen lights up,
fireworks rip color through the night.
And lying beside you just then I felt the us die.
I felt the doodles burn and the photos overdevelop and the poetry run black with ink.
I never thought this tent would be our coffin or this party our wake but I guess I should have.
And I’m on something or other but I know I saw the ghost between us float away.
two pieces of bread
expressing the sentiment of love:
a couple with their heads full of clouds
I see you
heart-crooked angry
because
the biggest battle you fought that day
was with the rose bush
planted after your second wife died
and
that dumb kid at the cafe
spilled water on you
you were a mechanic
your hands trembled
that’s why the thorn cut you
grandfather, I was only 9
but I would try now to impress
those tremors
give way
to reanimation
recreation
if you know the truth
Lord, why didn’t you save him?
Did you save him?
I was 9 years old
You have my attention
your arrogance bites
the hand that feeds it
your pride lights
up your eyes
like a night sky
on the fourth of july
you say you bet
that’s the best time
to shoot a man
you shoot the shit
like a star
through stupefied space
while galaxies watch
with newfound belief
your silence is a village
the night before the first
bomb rips it
apart
Fat can kill you. Not just belly fat which everybody knows.
Fat may be replacing skin as the largest organ of the body.
But this is about vitamins, right? happy, happy, joy, joy. Gimme more, gimme more, Bs and Cs, OK take all you want.
Take way, way, way, more than recommended, they’re water soluble,
all you get is very expensive urine.
In contrast, the villainous fat-soluble vitamins
A D E K once swallowed, they stick with you,
taken up by fat cells everywhere,
the heart, the kidneys, arterial plaques, everywhere.
Of course, if you don’t get enough you get deficiency:
vision loss—A, rickets—D, blindness—E, bleeding—K old news
When Artic Explorers got incapacitating headaches doctors found
they were eating loads of polar bear liver loaded with vitamin A,
Hypervitaminosis A causing pseudotumor cerebri, a known fact.
In passing, I love saying that word, don’t let it push you away
here you go: SUE dough too mer SAIR ah brye
I could say it all day, a lovely rhythm, troche, spondee, etc
If you like, you can sing it to the tune of the old round
The More We Are Together. Sour note when it snuffs your optic nerves.
The active form of vitamin D is calcitriol, cal SIT ree all,
increases calcium absorption then promotes its entry into everywhere.
Being fat soluble it’s the gift that keeps on giving. The too much
you took today is on top of the too much yesterday and so on.
People catching every craze from Dr. Oz and all the other charlatans
are seeking death by food fad. If we can’t bring back common sense,
any professional dietitian will set you right on this stuff. Or John Prine: Blow up your TV, throw away your facebook, move to the country,
build you a home, have a lot of children, feed em on peaches,
let em find Jesus, on their own.
