Sip. 
Tap Tap Tap. 
Me Me Me.
Sip.
Tap Tap Tap
Me Me Me
and after I
will not recognize
who I be be be.

You.
don't don't don't
need to
read read read
But if it happens
that you do
(i'm sorry)

Life so far today has been Carlos Santana and too much Iran. Click to channel nine, Tom Cruise doesn't seem too nervous about the Paramount plunge. How long does real cream last?  I think I bought this small carton two weeks back.
Should I wear the purple v-neck or the pin stripe cream and black top with that cute bow at the waist? Polyester....which has more of what bakes flesh?
The v-neck weighs in at less than ten percent. Gotta live cool in my Global
Warming World. How do I do August?  I say, "Self, Dallas has it worse."

Work now includes a new girl who llikes to talk loud and long in the car pool.
Yesterday I learned the downfalls of her new cell phone plan. I puncuated the rant with head nods and uh hahs... and concluded that it will be harder to find
poetry on Highway 27.


 

I plan to drive a dust sucker to the last crumb. Then there is the matter of the sheets.....which causes me to think of  when my aunt and grandma folded them and I would run back and forth as they arced the fabric into tighter folds. I don't have enough fun with what needs to be done. But just admitting it will put me in the mood to challenge chores.
It should all start with a song, like we sang in Scouts. San Sereni de la buena buena vida. Hacen asi, asi los carpinteros,
asi asi asi, asi me gusta mi. It was a song of work. A song of
being able. I have come to worship the incremental levels
of what flesh can accomplish. The way it holds a wet plate
through hot water and soap. The way it ties the yellow
plastic strings of a hefty garbage bag. It was my father's
ailing frame that taught me how to cherish work.  How
now, rickety and stiff, he plods to bend over for the dog
dish. You can see the victory on his face when he rises
without spilling anything. It's strange what teaches us.
For years I thought the smell of cleanliness was enough.
That knowing where the scissors would keep everyone impressed. Now I watch my wrist turn. I feel my back lean over the bed like a bridge without piers. My reach is joy
unmatched, firm and unshaking. What I can still do is an
honor unworthy of being shirked. A grave mocking rave.

There are days without songs. Days when the forward movement of going to
buy bread is solely a concern of freshness and price. Making yourself go is the
hunt for verse on sale. And why not?  You bargain shop for everything else.

The strawberries were three ninety nine a stanza, and too small to make rhiiiming couplets with, not that I would, but you always fancy yourself a cook
in the middle of what could be served, in the dreaming.

Anchovy stuffed olives are the staple of free verse. Anything that can have the
pit sucked out of it and get repacked with briny fish is beyond reproach.  Olives
are allowed to make undrinkable juices.

On aisle two I consider the new health conscience peanut butter that contains a sprinkling of flax seed. My mouth waters as I pass by, but it would be too cliche, even without the jelly.

Have you tried the new interlocking plastic plates? Imagine, all they did was to indent the bordered grooves an eighth of an inch more....and presto....one plate can cover the other.  I've done a drop test with the test sample plate containing two leftover enchiladas. It landed intact.  Isn't that what poetry is supposed to do?  I don't ask it for more.

Somedays she is a big breathlessness of worry that attempts to move faster than her girth allows. She likes to take armloads of stuff wherever she travels. Getting her to understand your point involves the constant interruption of cell phone calls. And yet, I would like to soothe the big hurry that she is in. I would like to ask what she is carrying, and how much such a load can benefit a day? I gather it can't be much, since most of what is hauled remains in the car's trunk. What if we are too important for the smallness of our tasks?  I have a simple
life. At home, I fold socks. At work, I explain why we don't "make questions" in English. It doesn't require a panic.
I can't imagine hers is much different than mine. If we were both birds, we would have the same size nests at mid height in the oak's shade. But maybe she would work the night watch for worm squirms, maybe that's the
difference.

People pulled in many directions try to compensate in other directions. Imagine a spore, or the head of the dandelion before it's yellow bloom. Frail, beautiful. A cat's yawn could unseat it's focuses. The inner you has some radial mission to bounce off of all it hears and sees. So far, I can only absorb half the sphere, but it is a fascinating
struggle, and I think I am making a new friend.

I couldn't say how blood leaves,
where the juice of a thing goes.
I only know some hearts are left
pumping vinegar. Nuns say prayer
sung prays twice, that when sad
hearts sing souls heal. Nuns say a
lot of stuff like that. Because at the
altar of macaroni and cheese, you
can barely spoon in enough to live.
But some of us live for the wrong
things. What if a man should put
his want into a child? And if each
day the news is more and more
of want forced upon innocence?
What is a chilld? When is laughter
learned? Who will hope if not the
young? Remember when cheese
was real? Before orange powder
made the macaroni clown bright?
Did we sing then, maybe happy
songs, at our tables? If hell finds
a course in your viens, let it stay
on the back road to cutting your
own throat, and not the highway
to someone elses. That is what
nuns will never say out loud.

dw/06

I use to think summer smelled
of peaches, but as it turns out
peaches smell of summer. The
sweltering of long days eclipses
both garlic and red peppers.
It is the weariness of heat, the
sun's baking out of every drop
ratholed in the shade. Either
way, shoppers passing lemons
haven't notice that time's been
picked, cleaned and priced for
pies. Sunburned orbs, bruised,
are crying  these were our lives.
The juice August robbed from
rain has pock marked our pithy
fuzz. The past is being past over
for less than a dollar a pound. Must
be that we were too timid to live.

dw/06

Remind me to buy a muzzle for
that yelping yorkie next door.
Why would anyone pay what
that pooch costs to be driven
to blatent puppycide? The little
bastard must hate fence planks.
He reserves his high screeches
for each nailed up board. All out
yippity he gets for the lack of
what is kept beyond. I can no
longer trust myself with tools.
I am tempted further than the
snipping of twig tips along the
other side of the fence. Come
closer puppy, come closer.....

What is the tip of asparagus
to an artichoke? How is it that
one stays faithfully bundlebul
while the other aspires itself a
cabbage? What is it inside the
artichoke that explodes? What
is it inside asparagus that feels
more comfortable in a group?
And after the length of alone..
why does the artichoke desire
to be bound to others so badly
that it forms a tight community
of its own leaves? And after the
long closeness of sprig on sprig...
why do limp heads of asparagus
always lean out from the bunch?

dw/06

I haven't figured out if these bits of living are here instead of 'submit' for a reason, but I'll do anything you want to alibi you for silencing the puppy.

Great reads.

larry

Sometimes I like to write more than what the submission board needs. I put a couple over there, and put a few here. That way I am not burdening readers with too much stuff, or cluttering the posting boards with too much me.

Thanks for reading.  D

I can not say why it worked.
After all, it was a hard sell.
And who would trade two
ears for shores of incoming
clams? But I tell you that a
place exists where one on
one proliferates notions not
capable of seeing beauty if
masses become involved. I
knew you as an opener of
envelopes. I was the same
to you. What if what tongues
licked, and glue stuck, was
the best measure of thought?
Your words smell of cedar
now. In a way, you are  like
sap that returns to its own
wood and smells of forest
again. Sometimes I wonder
if and where my old words
are kept, I don't wonder
if they are read. Two who
correspond always look for
news from home, even if
they haven't been to the
home they yearn for.

Wonderful reads.  I think I've said it before -- love the way your mind works.  lynn

Thanks Lynn. Ditto.

I know it must be hard to make the
sound of crushed ice shooting from
the fridge resonate like Ezra pining
from as far as cho fu sa. But each
bit that chills to form a glacial speck
is diamond to my ears. And then
the water added to the glass, how
the pieces reconnect as if to form
an island that no thirst could ever
swallow whole. Do not take your
eyes from the white mass as it floats
toward your lips. Drink as many
gulps as it takes to suckle a chip
of pure north. Notice how its
coldness becomes smaller and
smaller in your mouth.
See? You needed nothing but
water to remind you of me.

I am keeping watered three holes
for the Magnolia Janes. Mud wet
clay gives up slow. The shovel is
no convincer of depth. Each day
I hose the wider craters for the
hospitality of roots. Pine cones
want to feather my nest. Don't
know if the trees will live. Looked
for others of this kind around the
neighborhood. None, a bad sign.

Pink blooms in early spring, keep
semi moist, half sun, half shade.
This is what the focus is before
the root bulb is tamped, before
the invasion of fungus and mites
crosses the bark mulch mound.
Then, enlist, keep vigile of the
tender reaching of transplants.
For you once stretched arms
skyward in the wild making of
who you became. Was no one
there to stake you when the
spindliness of drought came?

dw/06

I am interested to know how yo developed your writing style. Why your poems so often look the way they do? I read your work work with relish but it is sometimes hard (which appeals to me.)

I have to chew your words and digest them thouroughly before I fully understand them.