Posts for June 20, 2020 (page 4)

I don’t plan to binge-watch “Quincy.”
I’m not going to a support group for scrapbooking addicts.
I will avoid croquet games with people who are stoned.
I don’t see any value in learning FORTRAN.

I don’t plan to sell unmatched socks on eBay.
I’m not going to appear on “Naked and Afraid.”
I will avoid Satanic Zoom meetings.
I don’t see any value in near-beer yoga.

I don’t plan to hang glide in the nude.
I’m not going hang gliding fully clothed, at least not in sub-zero weather.
I will avoid any group tours that feature hang gliding, either in the nude or in sub-zero weather.
I don’t see any value in preparing for hang gliding, since I’m never doing it–unless there’s beer involved. . .  No, not even then.

I guess I don’t really have a life, do I?

What is polite civil society
If not a shared delusion

Pretend to ignore
The starving child
The murdered father

Here we go again
Just walking on landmines

Sweeping death under rugs
Until they can’t carry our weight
Any more.

Letters out and I hope they find
a heart that’s learned to accept some grace.
No one wanted to see you crash like this.

You might have gotten yourself stuck
in the mire of anxiety and never healing wounds
but it doesn’t mean we’re going to leave you lost.

It’s just, what can be done when the broken
has fallen in love with the space between their shards
with all the shadows they offer for hiding?

One can only get to know you so far
before they go walking off an edge
and people get tired of getting dropped,

they get tired of wasting energy,
get tired of unintended rejection
tired of zero meaningful reciprocation.

We become our own implosions
not because we choose implosion, but rather
it’s the logical end to too much self-reliance.

Humanity is meant for community.
Some mountains are too tall to climb alone
and many only know God through the kindness of others.

These letters that will soon meet your eyes
are our hands trying to help you rise
from mire to mountaintop.

We do this for the simple fact
that God never gives up on His children,
so who are we, even exhausted, to do any different?

along the road’s banks

in tall grass, slender thistles

 startling pinks bloom.

Mystery Man

He fixed cars in a garage
                 like a surgeon
he cut away the damaged
and replaced it
with new
                shinny parts.

Then,
like the picture I have,
he put on a mask and
sprayed sharp scented paint
over the body.
His breath was as labored
as the work he did.
Sometimes,
                    forty-five years later,
I wake in the night smelling the spray.

When he was finished
the car would be like new. –
a work of art,
And then he drank
                      and drank
until no one knew him,
not even me.

He went to church, too.
He carried the plate
                    and collected the money.
I watched from my mother’s pew,
                    where all the women
                               and kids sat.
I watched and wished
I was  a man and
could sit where he sat and
do what he did.
I watched him sing
                                  raising his head
                                  from time to time
                                  to look straight at the song leader.
I even watched him pray and
once he said “Amen” out loud
in the middle of the service.
When I did it people laughed and
my mother carried me outside
to spank me.
I never understood why.

On a motorcycle,
                               in another picture I have,
he smiles
                                broad teeth shining
holding me on the big leather seat,
because I was to young to ride.

He farmed
rode horses
fed chickens and
loved woolly dogs.
I did too.

Then, before I ever really knew him,
he went away
died
in the driveway
of that old garage.

I’ll always wonder
who he really was,
but one thing I know I,
wanted to be just like him
but I never was.

Tony Sexton

the ceiling proved itself 
to be more company 
than my family.
it listened 
to my silence,
my hesitation;
stamped plaster feeling 
more than I 
could every passing day. 

I’m in a raw mood
where the full fridge
is empty and nothing
in the house will suffice
to whet the palate
there’s a peace 
in this house
that’s gone sour
there’s not a road
or song to fix me
just complaints 
rattled against the skull
impotent hands and mind

where I once could fix
by baking in the hot sun
while my father lay shingle
after shingle after shingle
like an artist

and at the end of the day
I would feel tired and sun sick
but satisfied

I throw words out
into this unreal place
and into people
without knowing
what to feel

so when the day ends
all I want
is a cold beer
and that woman
smelling good

because even though
I’m not losing my lunch
on a roof with blistered skin
bleeding hands and shaking legs

somehow, I’m still going through it

They sit patiently and wait 
Until you are in a deep sleep
Then they sprint in quietly

Ten tiny wrinkled men with 
Long beards and big ears
Drills and flat head shovels

They make their way to the
Top of your head to begin the
Nightly memory excavation 

They drill they dig they scoop
Searching for exquisite perfect gems
To stuff into their bags and drag away

Like the day you got your two wheeler
The sore throat from a tonsillectomy
A tall glass of cold green Kool Aid

The Monday in middle school
When he asked you to the dance
Your highschool valedictorian speech 

Your first good paying job
The day you were married
Your first house the dog
Your first born and second
Your mother
father sister
husband

They keep drilling digging scooping 
Until the first light sneaks through the curtain
They stitch you up pack up and drag those gems away.

Bastards.

Ice cold
lovely wet torn
True North
It’s just like God to
gather sea foam in a storm

Two mules on a bed of coals
Twice-told
Half a mind
to let them take us
Let them take

I glow
’cause you told me so
You blow
bubbles shaped like tiny diamonds
in my womb

Rose Gold
fill a tablecloth with stones
tie it to my heart
It wanders
windy shores

How arrogant of me to assume
I might have the right to live
without the daily whine of saws
or report of nail guns or brain-
piercing drone of backup alarms.