groceries were bought
but temptation calls, my dear
chinese takeaway

I’ve stood at the edges of canyons

At the bases of mountains

Toes pointed at the rivers edge

Eyes fixed on the ridge

My memory stores paintings

Of the moments I’ve kneeled before God

Wind whipping in the valley

Birdsong filling my mortal body

A hymnal

Pledging witness

To my human condition

you carried on your shoulders
a lifetime of experience,
of unexpected joy and
unspeakable pain

ten children and a
tobacco farm,
kept out of trouble
because of you

you were up before
the sun,
caring for the animals,
preparing equipment

while we slept, deeply,
caught up in dreams
that had little to do
with bringing 
the tobacco in

your wife,
my mother,
would make breakfast,
waking us with
our noses

you often came in
as we were finishing,
a cooling plate of
food waiting for you
on the countertop

you would 
sip coffee,
take a few bites,
then head back out

most of us
would stumble outside
over the next hour or so,
though some of the girls
would stay inside,
on pretense of helping
mother clean up

the boys would, eventually,
start helping with
minor chores until,
at lunch, we would all 
stop and pray
and eat and you
would assign to each of us
some bit of work for the day

teaching us,
without words,
that you, as
the bringer
of all we had, were 
also setting an example,
preparing us to be
bringers
of our own

Failure lies in wait amongst the weeds
with its partners, ego and victory.
They conspire to make me believe I am
the paint, the brush, the perishing canvas,
not the quiet lidless eye that sees it.  

—a soft shoe whistle
lapped over the bathroom
walls,
            the powdery paws of a cat,

slack traces of nameless Pinocchio pacing
the balding switchbacks lolled from a straightening
rem state,
                    what burled blocks piqued proud
                                 of the cat’s tongue tickling
                                 fleas into taciturn
                                 roadside attractions, much
                         like driftwood
                        clumped in a buckling
        dam

        that the dry-washing river
        massages or bloodlets
        into this mock-up of
        Hadji Ali, who’d
   gargled the verdigris
scum of a wishing well
into disjointed
music—                                scattershot puce and
                                               mint-to-be shreds of

                                             Pennies from Heaven, perchance.

A mechanical bank
worked down from a rock
with a cat-tongued thong throbbed,
star-cinched grip of a golem
the dippers had churned
from a trilobite fossil
interred in a sleep-rocked spall of slate;

a mechanical bank
relenting—letting the
                     loll of a coin assuage its
                     bones,
                                  its tidldibab
                                  bird bones
                                  buckling
                                  graceful
                                  as guts of a
                                  chuckling
                                  cuckoo clock,
                                  to churn

of what frail wish flipped clumsily;
what gruff brush strokes lapped ‘long the velveteen
neck of a catling, eyes licked verdigris green
as abandoned pennies peer up amongst
roiling wellsprings; what lush talcum
                                     so softly alit upon
                                     dander pricked
                                     in the ken
                                     of a velvet Elvis,
                                     in dream; to churn

of which seam-ripped rivet such purring
or whistling summoned from seemingly nothing
more hard and fast than the pass of phantasmal     

            hands,

which urge our driftwood Pinocchio, Dance—

She would have been swayed
by that love song you played
on the guitar you made 
out of reclaimed barn wood

oblivious to your confessions
of infidelities and aggressions 
all the sugar-spun indiscretions 
deafened by your beauty

bathed in your drama 
wrapped herself in your trauma 
charged your red flags like a Brahma
then crafted them into a ball gown

She
was me
before
no more

I became immune to those topaz eyes
velvety voice and muscular thighs 
knowing too well you’d be my demise
if I lingered on your potential

noted: obsessed with his mother
has children with three other
and simply cannot discover
a job worthy of his unique genius 

loved you at my leisure
accepted four nights of pleasure
then buried them like treasure
and released you to the night

I write the best poems
Know all the best poets
The MIT poets
All very intelligent
Especially me
Covfefe

Sharks and batteries
Change weather with marker
Drink bleach
Windmills bad
Tyrants good
Covfefe

There once was a llama who broke out of his pen
When for a wander he had a great yen
He jumped over the fence
His roam to commence
To seek a good scratch down in the glen

Place a pumpkin
In your compost pile

We make oatmeal, pancakes, hot chocolate
grandchildren play in the shade
wide grass overgrown
they run run run
play low basket basketball
throw balls at each other
one cries the other says
I’m sorry
after her father insists.