Posts for June 18, 2020 (page 2)

I like sunsets more than I do sunrises.
Maybe I see a sunset as a promise,
A reminder that there’s more to come.
The ending chapter doesn’t mean the book closes.
It means new pages are still being written. 

The murky hours of two or three
In the morning
Are unpredictable

I could still be up
I could be
Repositioning shadows on a drawer
Pinching myself
Trying to explain the logic
Of a full-color delusion
To ease my mind
Forgetting I’m alive
Realizing I’m alive

I could be in the middle Of a terrible dream
About my past
Waking up
From it
Did that happen?
Who knows?
What’s that noise?
Probably just the cat
Maybe I should close the door

Maybe I’ll go ahead and get up
And work

I should have a cookie
I should laugh
I may get a pop

Or I could be on the way back to bed
From the fridge
In desire of warm cuddles

I really never know

green fickle tear of tin it took—
Nick Chopper chipped his clumsing maul;
gilt body flushed with rusted hooks

of cans and crowns blithe rains mistook
for sweetbreads stuffed in offal fresh;
green, fickle tear in tin it took

to limn and ironed bosom’s hinge,
wan child’s whinging angel’s cringe,
gilt body flush with rusted hooks

abandoned there in Bethel’s brook,
our Crocus’ changeling’s crinkled caul;
green fickle tear of tin it took

to trace an iron bosom’s hinge
in unctions darkest dryad’s foist
upon which keening druids binge;

plump cardinals Mary’s sworn to twinge
in doggerels rasping, raw, and poised
to crack an iron chest a smidge

that Bethel’s surging channels singe,
bent black and brash as crippled rooks
compete to stretch a fire’s fringe

abandoned there, in Bethel’s brook,
for sweetbreads stuffed with offal threshed,
glib body flushed with rusted hooks—

a circuit’s stunning static’s sting,
wan child’s whinging angel’s cringe
wry, feral fey implore and wring

our indigo’d changeling’s clasping caul;
what thorned compulsions heartbeats bank:
Nick Chopper cracks his clumsing maul

on sweetbreads stickily gripping jaws
and cherries firm as children lankly
twirl and crease this hacking call 

Aunt Twyla churns in reasons rank
abandoned there in Bethel’s brook
along thrawn, woven wicker banks

gilt body fleshed with rustic hooks
that seized uneasy tendons, yanked
by fey who forebear’s features took,

who silvered greaves in greige caoutchouc,
thus forging steel in pinguid shanks,
gold shoddily lathed by Bethel’s brook:

some cinnabarred gorget gods mistook
for ravaged apples rooked and hanked;
unleash from faeries pothered nooks

what osier bones of dryads drank
to blunt a feckless axe’s spank:
puce, tickling tear of tinder took
for pulsing frailty’s crinkling croup.

For a woman I loved  

If you were with me as darkness falls,
I’d show you dark clouds toward he hills
above Lake Cumberland
and a full moon after rain.

Instead, as darkness falls,
I’d teach you how a Whippoorwill’s
song echoes across the land
like the far off whistle of a train.

I imagine you would roll your green eyes,
and then you would apologize
like you did in Paris, France
when you asked another man to dance.

Afterwards, you told me to
go write poetry. We never met again.
If you were here with me as darkness falls,
in rain I would read these words to you,

woman I loved
though loving hurt.

The wind shifts,
cold on its edge,
and the sky tumbles over itself
in dark cloud banks,
sheets of rain silver
across a distance.
It is witch weather
they say
and it has a strength like magic.
But I can’t figure out how to 
use it
to strengthen myself.

I’d sacrifice myself to the gods so they’d make it rain
if I thought the drought would split the earth beneath your feet
and swallow you whole. 

feasting on word flesh
it picks soul bones
at midnight
drags meaning across
pages
smearing intent
like roadkill
picking locks on doors
better left shut
but we
we who write
we don’t look
just grip tighter
let it move
let it reveal
play Ouija with
ourselves

it is only the instrument
we the instruction

I’m told my father planted a cherry tree in the front yard, between the house and street, not long before he went to sea, before I was born. That tree is in this picture, taken four years later by someone whose name I was never told, except that it wasn’t my father, who I never met. Yes, that’s my mother, sitting by my father’s tree, and me by her side. We’d just come back from the country, a trip to see my father’s mother, which is why we have clean clothes after everything was taken in a flash. It’s also why we weren’t in the house when it vanished and the tree was burned black and bare that morning. After this was taken, we went back to the country. I didn’t get the sickness while we were home, another thing I don’t understand. Perhaps it was because I was too young to understand grief. My mother mourned my father, our house and city, the cherry tree, and she fell so terribly sick, and left me to grow into an old man on the family farm, far enough away from Nagasaki to have lived, but not so far to leave my ghosts there.

The Professor is rigging the radio that the Skipper accidentally sat on.
With a few well-aimed lasers, Ultraman solders the circuits Thing points to. 
Jan is griping that it’s Marcia’s fault the antenna is bent.
Davy Crockett paces and talks international politics with Zorro
who’s following Trixie with his eyes. She stands next to Speed,
who offers the Professor his wrench, which the Professor politely declines.
This rebuff sends ChimChim into a screeching tantrum, drawing Captain Kangaroo
and Lily Munster out of their bamboo chairs to try calm him down.
Finally, the group holds its breath as the Professor fiddles with a knob,
and behind the static, I can make out my own voice.
Gomez and Tish, however, continue to tango to rhythms of distant crashing waves.

Storm clouds emerge from the horizon.
They carry rain in their hands,
cradling it until their legs
(weary from traveling across the sky)
cannot bear it any longer.

Storm clouds hide the Sun’s face.
They make their presence known,
and they are unapologetic about doing so.
They stretch their limbs,
and present themselves with a fanfare of thunder.

Storm clouds sing a lullaby to the Earth.
The trees reach their arms up
to catch sunlight,
but their roots wait patiently
for the nourishment of the storm.