I’m watching an Amos Lee video on YouTube.
The camera pans the audience, lingers
on a man holding the twisted hand
of another man seat-belted into a wheelchair,
his head lolling to one side. The two hands bounce
in the air, keeping time with the beat.
The first man turns to his lover/brother/son/friend
and grins.
Just two guys grooving to the music.
Blue!
you Gangster,
hangin’ in the shadows
down the alley
You think
I don’t see you
sliding ‘round
the corner
I was not expecting you
to come into the open
into the light
And now
you’re there
I’m beguiled
again
like always
you consume me
with that crazy
cobalt tie,
ultramarine vest,
cerulean suit,
matching teal hat and
tapping sued shoes…
Tapping, tapping, tapping
raising my veins
making my blood
look blue
like you!
You Gangster,
Blue!
Marriage is a couch
new: comfy, colorful and exciting
aged: spots of wear,spouse-conforming clefts
Repeated fluffing of cushions
new, bright pillows:
revive the color and excitement,
preserve those comforting clefts.
Slipcovers hide flaws:
sitting reveals them.
new visual.
same vibe.
Reupholstery changes
the look, the feel
and the vibe:
revitalized.
I can’t believe I just got an exclusive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle order:
everyone knows the turtles, I know they do,
so which one would be you?
It’s okay, I’d be Raphael too 🙂
(An erasure from the prologue of Carl Jung’s Liber Novus)
his silent life
played
anathema to the community under heavy attack and out of concern unwilling to know until
sunset . In last interviews when asked to respond to
God ” I don’t need to
” in a Faustian bargain
his concepts could
start religion.
the tenets of religion were
declared dead and
foresaw the fall of order in Europe with
agent 488 creating Hitler
and other Allies.
dog bark at 3:00 a.m.
summer’s night chill in thick darkness,
I awake and get up.
65 degrees, mostly cloudy, I say to him,
opening his kennel door, He runs out,
desperately relieving himself.
I return, feet padding across cold floor.
I’m getting old, I tell myself.
Can’t sleep,
I lay, listen, think
of the old photo Joy Harjo posted,
infamous ‘Napalm Girl’ 50 years ago,
imagery still grips me, her naked vulnerability,
shudders of war, her fear and pain
caught in my throat,
caught in thick darkness,
first memories of my world view
scattered on the news, black and white,
guns and soldiers, remain, embedded,
children fleeing
children fleeing
still.
I’m awake now
in memory of her.
I always fall asleep on lunar eclipses: I never know when
to go out and look to the night sky unless I’m told.
Eve by eve, I don’t rehearse lunar phases,
sounding them out like nursery rhymes.
Crescent to crescent, I can’t recite their full names.
Not the twelve for astrology, that’s easy.
No, the ones from the mouths of our ancestors:
Wolf Moon and Flower Moon and Harvest Moon.
The moon’s always somewhere. I trust it enough
that I only sporadically check in.
I wish everything didn’t have to be past tense.
Like the way I talk about the weather
or the flowers on my deck
and how angry I was when the squirrel
dug up the sunflower seeds
leaving big holes in my pots
and dirt everywhere.
Like the way I talk about summer
and how I should have gone to the pool,
should have knocked off the heat wave
so I wouldn’t blow my top at home,
sweat dripping between my breasts
and making my thighs chafe.
Like the way I talk about my boys
who filled my house with big feet and big appetites
and how I cooked mountains of food
just so they could eat leftovers at midnight
after I’d cleaned the kitchen
and turned out the lights.
Why do we always talk in yesterdays
when we are standing in front of each other
now.
Resignation Meh
An advance taken due to ever-present need, spent, then forgotten
The hard deadline came, five hundred requisite words artlessly written.
Nobody liked it, not the writer, the reader. ’Twas meaningless scratch. A conversation of questions and no answers, the present-tense world
