Posts for June 6, 2024 (page 15)

(A Sestina)

After a week away from home
we wake before light hits the land,
in the house everyone’s asleep
so we make black tea in silence,
tip-toe outside into the fresh air
and load up into our prairie Prius.

You drive. In the quite of the Prius
I doze and dream I’m already home,
no long miles or air-conditioned air,
just the gentle contours of our land
– but an abrupt swerve ends the silence
and any hope that I could sleep.

The interstate never sleeps
and as the worn tires of the Prius
whine, I worry and read in silence
the billboards: Try the down home
feel of Western Wear;   Ozarkland,
where we have hookups and free air.

You start making signals in the air
for me to drive and you to sleep,
then pull over at Produce Land.
I stretch. You walk around the Prius
to a plowed field and like at home
come back muddy. I drive. Silence

never raises her head for air, Silence
is smiling and sailing towards home,
Silence is you in the beauty of sleep.
Illinois, Indiana…      our Prius
carries us on into Bluegrass land.

********************************

we never know where we may land
it could be laughter or silence
it could be something to pry-us
apart, this trip was dice in the air,
a reminder to always sleep
together whether away or at home

now at home on our land
we let Prius have her sleep
and we can hear the silence of the air

Eighty Years

This day, day of days, she rises, spreading out, reaches toward
les tombes autour de la mer à la recherche de moi.

Around the sea searching for me, she picks through tombs unknown,
les tombes autour de la mer à la recherche de moi.

From the sea. Died at 23. Washed away miles, she frets, hands out
vers les tombes autour de la mer à la recherche de moi.

High school played marimba, xylophone, saxophone, clarinet, violin—
Je sérénade les tombes autour de la mer où elle me cherche.

My caretaker hears music, finds me, clears old growth and flowers away
des tombes autour de la mer à la recherche de moi.

She sees the stone. Recharges, her search ceased, over now is
les tombes autour de la mer à la recherche de moi.

What of me? Manuel!— be thankful we can be human together in
les tombes autour de la mer à la recherche les unes des autres.

One to the other.

It stopped raining for a day and a half,
long enough to dry puddles in the driveway,
leaving green shimmers and spongy mud
that cut like cake with a weed eater. 

Cars thunked, clunked down the pot-holed road,
dirt carved out by Kona Wind and torrents of water.
The echoes of machines whined and droned,
slicing and devouring ragged rain-worn paths.  
Lawn mowers, hammers, voices out and about
set off a barrage of dogs barking, alarmed by sounds,
people emerging, working, discovering summer again.

She just want somebody to pay for her Fenty 
I tell her
It aint on me, it’s in me 
She said 
Then i guess it aint gon be in me 
I said 
Well that sounds pretty empty
to me
You look up to someone
cuz they in a Bentley 
I look up to someone
cuz they always friendly
I mean kind 
Dont be mean 
i’ll try 
All these bad thoughts 
Leave em behind 
All these bad thots 
Test your loyalty 
You gon stick by her side 
Or you gon stick it tween her thighs
Let your moral compass slide 
Stop me when I tell a lie 
Play the hand im dealt 
Third eye the big blind 
Universe tellin me 
Its been your time
But I had that shit on mute 
Had like 6 other tabs open 
One with a beat on loop 
Distracted in the lab smokin
Gettin ashes in the potions 
Like poof 
Rubbin on dat ass 
With some lotion 
Nah I mean im workin on dem glutes 
On the road to nowhere
swervin bad news 
and half truths 
Stop for the slow death of fast food
Everything around me 
what cash rules 
We cant seem to make the time 
Time we just pass through 
Do your best son 
That’s all I ask of you 
As this mad world spins
That we’re fastened to
i stay high like above the rim 
Got latitude 
What is sin 
Well that depends 
On what matters to you 

Coffee in hand, you invite me
into your room, under the covers
by the window, to share your morning view –
pale pink roses soft in the mist, early light
shifting through the cypress trees.  

When were we last in the same bed?   

You ask if today I would like to go
to your favorite bakery then to an art fair
then take the dog for a run on the beach
then visit an old general store up the mountain,
finish with an outdoor meal in the redwoods.    

I say yes and yes and yes,
but if my trip ended right this moment
I would feel content.

Fog held the neighborhood
in drug-induced bondage.
An adverse fortuna scribbled over
our designs on the day
like so many fingernail scratches
on the lens of the eye.  

Kevin slept in
his own piss
on the bathroom floor.  

I flushed and turned from the window
above the toilet’s milky rejection, stepped over
what could be his corpse.
Trying to forget last night
and what I have become.  

Shaved in my own room. Rinsed
the razor in last night’s water
poured in a dirty coffee mug.  

Little black and gray bits of me rose
in the foamy head and then disappeared.  

Later today, I’ll flush them too.
Consider drowning.    

Everywhere.
Piles.
Everywhere.
Clutter.
But… nowhere is you.
Clutter left.
Wasnt just that to you.
So now it’s mine.

I thought the piles were here 
Because I was taking “care of you.”
No time
No time to take care of my shit…
When really there was no time left
          With
                 You
And still… 
Here the piles sit. Worse than ever.
I don’t care to move.
No motivation to complete…
My shit… sits. In piles. 

Where now I have your shit…
           Because it’s not shit at all.
It’s all I have left of you.
And
I want to carry it…
It represents you.
It’s all I have left
Of you.

So. Here it all sits.
Yet he doesn’t.
And here I sit, surrounded
With almosts…

Well, perhaps what “just was”

A whisper of twilight past
Kentucky bluegrass, the horse
park, fences, hedges. The high-
way fast dark when the rain started. 
Smartfood and chocolate Fairlife
for late dinner at the nearest Love
stop. Outside Lexington, the highway lights
farther & farther apart, the rain harder
and harder. Down to 55 and hazards. 
Trucks on the shoulder and me up 
against the wheel. My last nerve
shatters when the wheels feel
like they’re levitating above the asphalt. 
Pulled off at the Waffle House parking
lot, I call home. Check my phone.
See Elizabeth’s picture outside
The Kenwick Table. It was still
light & we were beaming. I turn
off the wipers & wait out the storm,
scrolling through the deluge. 

**Even though this is dated 6/6, I started it at ten minutes before mdn! It took me SO long to get home!

i met my favorite home today
her path said hey when i least expected
kitty-cornered the sidewalk’s crook
i took a look up from the cup i carried
and stared starried at the front door
tucked back beneath her rounded roof
she smiled at me with a cross-hatch tooth
gaps between open eyes that have no choice
just a century of scenery selected nor a voice
just the joyful screamery of her inner child
or the tearful symphony of an older elder
or whoever held her until they selled her
maybe one day that’d be me
maybe one day i’d see 
some currency sum up to make her mine
then make a dime in due time
from the next body to buy her bones
or maybe just die would i
and let her lie here in peace
she could fly away with me
with windows like wings
land of the free