Bedtime Haiku
It’s almost midnight
words keep wrestling in my mind
I may never sleep.
Middle Aged Kentucky feels like:
The buzz of all of us
carrying home the deli packaged
limestone limbs, tasked with unwrapping
our jowl bacon potential,
useless alone, base for smoke.
Limited ingredients; just salt.
Always fearing the meat will turn
before we make it, the beans will burn
on our watch; How many southern bodies stand
as evidence aligned in wait
Longing in parking lots, in slow moving traffic
swallowed up by apathetic urgency on 75.
Heavy appetite to get “home” and hide
hungry for more than mountain mourning.
Too tired to brew a future,
Freeze the meat again and sleep to dream of
sustaining dishes. The stuff of safe memories.
Grandma gardens. Enough hope to plan
for safe keeping. Mason jars in the dark
what it means to be hungry.
Where do you find southern living?
when April comes
I cannot be expected to do
anything
but listen,
and watch
the world be born
everything is young again
exuberant
lucid
the birds are singing at least a dozen songs
and I’m trying to learn the notes,
to find new sounds
in my winter throat
the gnarled
arthritic apple tree
I had feared was dead
has finally put forth
a timid bower of pinky-white blooms
right at the top
right where she’s closest to the sky
bees come to greet her and
dance in the scant petals
they marvel
they thank her for insisting
I was foolish not to see the life still in her
thoughtless to fear she had nothing left to give
after all
she couldn’t have died,
someone I love
rests
in her roots
we are made of the parts our souls remember
from the lives we’ve lived before
figments of each others imaginations
the people outside of us are Sputnik Sweethearts
bound to the ovoid orbits they’re given
pull and push, pull and push
people never keep
just like fruit
I am back here again
hundreds of years in the vaults of my mind
tailored like my coffin;
ten years of writing, toiled
over all the things not done.
There is dust only left in the flask
of this body it curls up and weeps
alone to all the stones
which I carry up this hill. If
pushing rocks is my destiny
then let me gouge out the good eye
and be ‘phus in this form
as good as any shape to become.
Things, as they are, are their own becoming;
I am unbecoming again
on this dust cloud I worry upon
nothing takes a miracle pursuing
a title dream in this daymare
spectating this nightmare becoming dizzy daydream
again. I am spectated.
In observations, you see my fits
for who I really am; am not
some greek myth. I am not
pushing daisies or rocks up
my spirit will not allow it. I am
writing in an old notebook, thinking
I am special. It is labor coded
in love lose and nicotine
I am back at it, if by duty
if only by duty I am blinded
by dust all becoming this image now
I am lost to myself still
an echo. When I exhale
I will leave this tomb of it all
leave this tome to the all
to the all seeing nothing that is
II.
recuperating
missing
the myth of me
in the story of you
longing for the hero
journey of my mind
in the heart of yours;
III.
the minotaur of my blood vessels is hungry
IV.
I am hungry too;
for tools more like myself
the wrench in my lungs
pliers around my tooth
a crowbar is my femur
I’ve cut off all my fingers
to make space for unsharpened pencils
what I am is one big pencil
just yesterday I was petrichor
by the name of it by naming it
there is no blue in the sea
of the green that is me;
in the dirt, rough-set in patches,
gray-to-brown to ombre out
the pavement, mud splotches, impassable
buildup of the debris is the hard stone
set against the better thought rattles the heart;
that it lies eaten up in the shadow
of Everything to them places the colder
darkness in the bright summer mind.
What of the vines that used to choke out
the rotted wood & the new growth
that emerged from the plastic
empire? What of the theory of Idea
laid out in abundance at one geographic
point? What of the soul of an object,
left to develop on its own only after
the humanity has been slowly removed,
opening the space to allow something more
humane? What of the stone half-staircase,
path upward to the free-spirited meadow,
downward to the urban oasis? What of it,
you say; what of the paths diverged
to link back together at the right time?
What of the keystone point of their
connection? What of connection? What of hope?
What of the dying spirit that no longer requires
the universe that no longer requires it?
What of a few memories, scattered,
dandelion seeds mowed to the waste bin?
What of ends; what of these odds and ends
of brick tossed aside for the reckless pirates
who discover another man’s treasure?
What of theft? What of the hoards in the beach
kept deep and looted some thousand
years later in the name of archaeology?
Yes, what of it, of everything and one square yard
sand-shoveled to the ground? What of the life
of an Idea? What of the unbound soul of Inspiration
itself, now a ghost with nowhere to hold on?
What of hoping at least the satellites
wouldn’t be smart enough by now to realize the concept of an end?
i’m so tired
but i can’t sleep
because the television is too loud and
the remote is too far away from me
the television is too loud and
full of reminders of how small the world is now
how pain and suffering is broadcast
right into the comfort of your own house and you are now
left with the thoughts that you have that keep you awake at night
because every story that comes after is a constant reminder of how much you are all struggling to stay
afloat
but the television is too loud and
the remote is so far away from me
further than i can imagine
from here because there can’t be a world
where a parent carries all of their hopes and dreams
and love and despair and anguish and suffering and hurt and love
in two plastic shopping bags which used to be one entire person that was here
that was real
and it exists on the same planet where we all sit
and do nothing at all about it
there can’t be a world where i feel this helpless to stop it
there should be no world where you live in fear of dying
because of
who you love
how you worship
who you are
where you live
and i’m hoping that there is a perfect place
somewhere in a world, light years away, where the remote probably is by now
where the television isn’t so loud
the remote isn’t lost forever
and these anchors aren’t so stoic and emotionless
but since i know that i have no control over this
i’ll do what i do when i feel lost every night
i’ll write down these thoughts
turn off the television
and turn off the lights
