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.

Last night this French guy on T.V.
was going around filming the 9-11
event so someone like myself could
see what it was like to be in a disaster
of that magnitude. I forget his name.
He had a brother in one of the two
towers. Don't know which. He said
he had thought about helping people,
but realized that he didn't know how.
He wasn't a fireman, or a paramedic,
he concluded what he did best was film.
Action....the french cameraman who
ran past dusty bleeders covered in
mounds of disorganized paperwork was
curious why there were no bodies found.
He kept a steady hand on his eye as he
watched others dig through the rubble.
His breathing was increasingly labored
black specks were accumilating on his lense,
black specks of no bodies found.

dw/06

I guess it happens all the time.
Nets are cast, sink, fishermen
wait. Ocupy themselves with
charts or sails. Nothing gives
under the waves. Not a sign
of whether any tuna on the
course of hunting became prey.

Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe
when a full net scrambles the
boat feels the tug. This morning
that isn't the case. I fear the
market crowd will be unsatisfied.
The price of supper rise. I am
not sure why I fish. I prefer to
see creatures leaping from the
surface,than caught in the net.
But I do also like the taste of
them, lightly broiled with lemon.

dw/06

I'm sorry Lavonne, I just now saw your comment.  I will think about what you asked and try to give you an answer later.

Thanks for reading.

D

Hey Lavonne,

You have asked some difficult questions.  I am not sure how a writer develops. I suspect it begins with a love of language. Then experiences and emotions form a core substance that defines the soul's shape. I would describe myself as dark, and awkward, this emerged from being a fearful and lonely child.  Words were always my best defense, they would do as I asked, I could see my way out of any challenge using these symbols.

I do not consider my style or voice as formed. I only began writing poetry about ten years ago. Right now I am in the crude process of rapidly cataloging what comes to mind. If I perish, it is what it is. When I find old poetry notebooks from five or so years back I can see ways of fixing things that I was blind to before. I imagine that in five or so more years, it will be the same with what I have done here.  I'm not sure I have enough time to become a good poet, for you see, I also like writing the short stories I develop for work. I would say I was closer to producing  a teaching manual for ESL ( English as a Second Language) than I am at getting together a respectable collection of poems. Truth is, they are probably both far off, but the struggle makes me feel alive. This week I wrote a story about occupations for my Hispanic students. I got several rounds of applause. They struggle so hard to understand our language and culture that I get greater satisfaction from helping them.

I am sorry. I don't think I have been very helpful, but I think you had a good question. Perhaps if you posted it on the discussion board, other poets could articulate their experiences better.

d

Ever braver essence of wine sip
enters chasm where tongue too
timid to arc itself for the battle
over whose heart belongs where
falls limp to silence of direct cut.
Better it was my love gimped
than the warrior who must cross
over a pontoon bridge of dead
metaphors to secure a mark on
the reed tips poking out of the
shallows. Walk lightly that we
should all call you heroic. All minus
I. I without you is an unbanded
portion of the bridge, a floating
off of debris. I break form that
you might lose balance and fall.
There, in the fast currents, you
will reach out to my bright smile,
a warm sun, painful as it may be.

This is cool stuff.

Years later the pieces come.
The whys of having to take
word lists and use all twenty
some of the new spellings in
a story you made up. Apples
I wish I had now. Complaints
I had then, even though it
happened to be something
I did well. Surely the retellings
were odd mouthfuls of sonically
on topic diction intended to
help a kid get along in the
world. I crammed thoughts,
taking pride when I could
work a pair of words in side
by side. Sloppy as I was,
the exercise became a staple
of my trade.  So, to my teachers,
long lost pointers and shushers,
put your head downers, atta
boying their liner uppers. Love.
Gold stars, class clowns with
chronic sore throats. A summer
and then some of rest. More love.

Foster a year's light into phrase.
You can, and wonder that the
the light mesmerizes, bringing
forth new chants.  Withdraw.
Sensing a causation beyond a
reckoning known. Leave her to
old remedies that can't cure,
fearing a hunger no stomach
could outwinter or burn bright
enough through. She knows
what she knows. It is not a
skill taught but a nerve end lit
from the sleep of ages ago.
Best as new wakeness can
tell, it is displaced, yes, a fossil
covered in pity, relic of shame.

Raisins reason rightly. Each dream
reviewed relentlessly in hopes of
next year's grape. Black runted
and shrunken as they are, raisins
won't say the sun is a son of a bitch.
They know that punishment comes
with rewards. But shrivel me this,
at the high noon of half lost juice,
any regrets? My sweetening tid
bit of lost wine, soon you will be
a clump part shoved in a little red
box, and I shall no more check your
firmness and think grand toasts.

dw/06

There will be elbow room for miles.
No old family photos to abide your
emerging poems. Birds will chirp as
if worms were worth more than a
breath of what you wrote cold. Be
it true or not, you have encoded
skin to shed. Recant what's chased
blind or taken in the gut. Is it the
tale of all tales, or a tale among
same tales? If only pencils were
better critics. This is a castle of
what is thought today. It is of
loose stones piled where a lawn
mower will churn and spit green.
People will drive by and comment
on how finally something was done
about the unkeptness of the yard,
and the real poem will be the dead
clippings used by loud chirping birds.

dw/06

OK, this gives me pause. Makes me want to recant every negative thing I ever said.

Never is the speed of how I love you
faster than a billow of chopped green
onion tails thrown at soup. Always this
is a wait.  Coffins pile in honor of how
many alter egos might emerge trying
to persuade a call for more salt, a few
ripples blown at the surface of a hot
bowl, slurp, the addition of parsley, yes.

Damn you to oil based table cloth stains.
and wobbly table legs, without match
books to prop an intrigued elbow lean.
Did you only come to twirl a toothpick
and tell me how pretty my sister was?
Then broth for you, less than a dead
man can spit. Then tell me again, how
you came. Your way down, you idiot.

Sinister wind of invinsible death.
swirling mist about crypts and
low lying crawlers of hard fisted
life. Be you civil as a rich witch
or lewd as a just freed kite, I
crave your whiplash, gust and
bite. How do you make of full
grass a toppledover spigot of
waternot?  Blow enough to
drop a leaf on the ground.
Make it run until it finds the
proper shoe to be crushed
under. Help all things to their
ruin, friend of death, Wind.

Corregate any cruel myth that flames
consume. Wellbellow heat for show.
If it hurts to ember red in a moonless
void, crackle loud enough that someone
should learn of a hard winter ahead.
We are of moving on, leaving steps.
Stay.  I did not come this far to find
myself. I came because I was lost. It
would be of little good if I polished my
blindness with luck so that others mis
took it for know how. Empty always
were my hands. I went where water
ran clear, lingered at still pools as if
reflections held maps. Birds watched
my back, half expecting I could soar
if I got a mind up and jumped. Stay.
The never of arriving is wearisome
beyond discovery. This world is but
a crowd of doubts, and time is all
you have to bet. Save your days.
There is cake after all, and so many
fine pillows to lavish troubled heads.
dw/06

Was a me hovered as a practical vacuum
salesperson with an inferior dust come
hither now. Started off with a head full
of clever coupons clipped on the dashed
lines. My, My's. And look at theses. Pauses
were tough. Who could one up a hell of a
deal? Just listen, listen. But the guy had
light cream shag, over 3000 square feet.
A Kirby coudn't have mooched clean the
heels of that auto mechanic. By Thursday
I was fifty percent off. Threw in a power
nuzzle and a year's supply of what have
yous. He said he was saving up for wood
floors. Asked if I had any brooms, I didn't.

Suddenly a train whistle blasting
Nashville signals the unhinging of
its coal cars and the black pearls
I meant to hang around the first
hours of your sleep now huddle
under the street lamps of an in
between town. But yawn and
think how pretty you will be in
soon to come silt of better late
than lost. It is such a blessing
that gifts can't read calendars
and coal doesn't rot. Miles of
rail couldn't carry the warmth
you gave our home, but coal
I offer in return, acrchaic fuel,
an element that prompted
gatherings, as did your birth.

Seemed a bit lipnicky to
fructose the air with " I's
about to's" that went no
where. But was did. Had
a rag in who mit all day, as
if dusting the globe was
the same as saving the
world. And speaking of
worlds, some do make
them of found things, its
and bits of dead gramma
lefts like knitted poodle
cozies that cover toilet
rolls. Have discovered
another continent just
next door to the sparse
ness I use to whisk in
and skim through. The
terrain is covered with
informational posters,
visual aids, very much
like walking through a
brain. But ironically you
don't have to think in
this place, everything
you need is spelled out
somewhere on the wall.
Inhabitants who are
questioned regularly
suffer from neck pain.
Nonetheless, it is an
effort to engage. And
who am I to yuck lists?
What have my mobiles
ever prompted anyone
to say?  And there came
a wind ever so unpoetic
-ully from the rusted AC
vent, and the corners of
taped words bent over
and took themselves to
the floor face down and
silent. But the mobiles
engaged the wind and
turned as if to indicate
there was something to
follow, and some went.

dw/06

So I went. Pulled along you get
most times. Barnwood, she said.
I needed the exercise. The shop
didn't have a name. It was save
sum fast consignment slash junk
place.  Dumbat had spare cash.
And maybe I was someone else
when I bought, what I bought..
A fern stand and a photograph
Didn't know what I'd do with
either one. The print was black
and white, small. Surrounded
by more white mat than it could
compete with. Stillll, lllliked the
tree, an Oak in fog, haze of a
path eaten by perspective or
fear. There was I think a roof
behind the radial crookedness
of twigcloud mix that bore a
smudged stubborness I could
suddenly afford. I was an arm
load of no wall space headed
for a fern stand to prop this
tremendously discounted print
that was missing its glass, and
while it leaned there, the way
the spindles turned caught my
sigh and I thought what the
porch! Up higher and green
should always a plant be, no?
And I was double in debt for
the noticing. Allllls home and
placed wellll. Things comeoff
walls and new things are put
on. Life deserves a pedestal,
I made us a good buy today.

Absolootly. It was dead time
theft. Mine put boredom in
she pocknet and got as far as
Yu no wah. It is hard to see
risk vainly waylaid on wires
for the price of a click. But
chances are weeds. Just as
one checks the shine of its
shoes another unbuttons a
shirt collar, pulls out a chair.
Words want mouths. Or is
it moths want worlds? They
don't care whose. We can
forget that in the middle of
the shortest poems. Forgive
the fluttering at the light
that keeps your night, For
give the holes made in flour
bags. Flit was on its wat to
wool, wreclklessly sure of
what a migration called for.
Cedar yourself, and be calm.

Lab tech does dish___________

The night lab may find a cause
in a pause, or a miracle drug for
unnamed sufferers of .Call it spe
cifiicity of need. Tweezured from
a cultured petri dish where globs
contort enough to warrant micro-
looksies from white coated geeks.
Something grew. It could have
been the cold chrome under the
glass. It could have been the now
and then light that came only whe
n the door was pulled. Surhaps it
was the sight of the pale knuckles
that held the door itself, reaching
in to palm the dish, opening the
contents and remarking about how
the displacement of one characteristic
was po-ebbing another. Saybe it
was the lab geek's voice or breath.
Lick label and stick, none would be
among the hypothesees wiritten about
Y anything changes. X, since when do
samples tell? But in this case,the being
being stared down at was staring up as
well. Would have likedto have been a
cancer cure, at that clarifying glance.

dw/06

empty porch swing_________

I get the same way, the way
a porch swing gets wihen its
emptiness is enough to allow
the wind full control. Moves
back and forth creaking like it's
pining for a fallen cone to sway.
Can't nothing lean far enough
to stop not coming back. The
more opposed you get the arc
cradler you go. Helps to imagine
being pushed. To think some
one is standing there to cup
their hands over yours, least
til the ride slows and the still
takes to its own waiting again.

dw/06

If the door were
paint chipped red.
Left ajar. Sovereign
notion of admit one.
You, former citizen
of slick bannisters.
Have come so far.
To ring or enter
unanounced, fists
opened knockless
unsure. Eyes close
in. Gapes of such
less are meant to
peek through, no?
Empty is as empty
finds. Reluctant are
the guest and host
alike. A newspaper
is on the welcome
mat.  Toss it in.

September. Apple me
laughs of cooler air by
way of squirrel tails in
full swish of acorn find.
Pumpkin bash leaf piles
with jagged smirks to
ward of the coldest
of the cold. For death
comes with Christmas
lights and carols. And
I could be led off with
a peppermint cane to
where the final song is
the crackling of ice on
the pond. How would I
sing a refrain of splitting
something in half? Of
sinking into a pool void
of apples, pumpkins or
squirrels. It is not in any
hymnal I"ve practiced.

dw/06

Mind the left of what I said.
It always emerges from my
resolotions like a fund raiser
of straws for suckers with
iron lungs. There is a part
of me that hustles the lost
cause. And yesterday, in
the face of that big temp
erature gauge whose rise
was only half markered up,
I conceded to the rim of
a glass. Pillows rallied me,
reconsider, there is after
all only this. I don't have
anotherpardon who I am.
If I said I would never put
a red scarf around Tuesday
again, it was blurtoafmire
made of billboard scum. A
need to hear the pulse of
what drives an expression.
dw/06

It's not much. I found
it lying on a discount
table at a discount shop.
Half of half. I wouldn't
have even noticed it
but for its falling off
the table as I walked
by. Hand carved. I
thought the style would
go with what you own.
I know you have a lot
of such things. I'll keep
it for myself if it isn't
to your liking. I just
made me think of you
when I saw it. That's all.

Especially liked them all; but super-specifically especially like the one with the mobiles -- and some went --- indeed.  your fan, lynn

Thanks Lynn. Nice of you to comment.

"My eyes shall go bad before I
see you crisply...." Alan, ( my
butcher) was yelling before he
dropped a cleaver on the fat.
"I just hope you don't lose a
finger over it." I hollered back.
He laughed because I thought
he was referring to the cow.
Then he hobbled to the bar
with an extra package he was
holding in a towel, so as not
to bloody the white paper he
had so carefully wrapped it in.
"A few sausage links, my own
recipe," he smiled. I didn't want
sausage, but I didn't want to
say I didn't want it even less,
so I  took the gift. I thought
nothing of the  meat for days.
Then, on Monday, not knowing
what to prepare, I fumbled
for the white wrapper in the
back of the fridge. In it were
four fingers from Alan's right hand,
and I thought it might mean he'd
never write me poetry again.

dw/06

Had t've been Brad Shea who
paddled through the pond to
get Mrs. Wilson's underpants.
The old lady always hung her
laundry on a line that ran the
length of oursandhers fence.
Black pool was a koi pond, it
be normally dug deeper than
goldfish swish. All we found
of Brad was his green cap, it
looked almost like a lilly pad,
'cept that no frog trusted
it to float. On the other hop,
Mrs. Wilson's underpants had
sunk and made a safe birthin'
place for tadpoles and other
frail life. Brad's Mom was not
the same after that. She was
bottles of these pills or those.
A sentinel of clotheslines in un
expected midafternoon gusts.

dw/06

A quilter's thread flows
from having punctured
and pulled. A thousand
needles get blunted piecing
prints and colors side by
side. And after countless
patterns have been traced,
the quilter no longer needs
guidance to the big picture
being created. She may not
even know what the design
will be, except that it requires
fabric and thread, and all the
rhythms she already knows.
All trades have the same
cycle of finding themselves.
I do not go to the doctor
who only cuts flesh twice
a year. Practice is what makes
you trust the crafter's hand.
If you want to build thoughts
with words you should order
what floats through your
mind every day. Stringing
together whatever reveals
a nature all its own. Words
want to be your voice. They
want to fall without making
unintended references. Each
sound is not so much a tool
as a part hoping to land just
right in the explanation of
a vision or an emotion. Gather
what comes and give it ear.
Entertain old and new. The
first order paged is not some
committment or reflection of
who you are or how good
you write, it is only language
finding its flow. Seeing if you
will permit something above
your own cleverness, wit, trust
it to reveal stories through the
humanity it needs to construct.

( something from the submission page that got buried. I didn't want it lost because I like it.)

O, in the Kandinsky
above us are circles
of wobbly windo
wish nieghborlikes
who'll say hello in
every color known
to tongues. "I am
purple to see you",
I yelled down and
rings of what I said
encircled your wipe
turned more smile
with mouth ripples
of what welcomes it
self to be repeated
again. U must have
hollered back. Color
rimmed round mine
curve all brightnow
of yellow gone pale.
I was dot zero globe
ring circle merry get
twisted for loops of
unforseeable close.
It was the strength
of prodigal son's fist
around door knob of
finally back home. O.

dw/06

Needed? Yes. But never was
a list made or any path traced
by a fingertip.  It was more like
a voice I'd always known asked
where to put the wine bottle it
had bought and I turned around
to find us both homeless down
to the goblets needed to make
a toast. A house was too forward
to presume. But we worked the
same trade, so I put us in a candy
factory and graciously made you
the boss. I passed along chocolate
covered cherries in lines of three
by far until you didn't have the
stomach for another box. I never
had an Oriental market plan. It
was an industry wholely disclaimed
by religion, reason, magic or myth.
Only a lonely child could conjure a
ludicrous world to so busily do
nothing in. You found a girl in a
closet full of paperdolls. She made
a shoebox for a nameless game
and filled it with pretty words.

Something about how she shuffles
her feet creates an inner hive of
dust from which all comers leave
holding their shoulders back. The
latest scuff was over missing parts.
For she had been assured, asSUREd
that everything was in the box. The
cell came out, almost like a sheriff's
gun at the corral. Demands were
made, names of handlers, onlookers
bystanders, noted for future blame.
Behind her Pink Floyd was singing Us
and Them. Softly. Rather ignored.

The new rule is : Nothing comes
in before something gets thrown
out or given. Crap must find a bal
ance in this life. There are too
many stacks of me. Wobbly dust
loved towers of pages that seem
like models of DNA. I had fiive file
folders filled with updated goals
and mission statements. Calendar
dates circled on emails from two
years back. Extra chromosomes
are detrimental are they not? Yet
here I am with enough biosluff to
fill another world. How important
I must have thought I was, am.

dw/06

Winged migrations gather in the sky.
Hoards of beaks point another way
for winter's leave. Most birds have
two homes, and an inner compass
signaling when to tell the branches
goodbye. I wonder if other animals
don't have a need to move on at
some hint of change. It seems we
want to go, though unlike birds, it
isn't clear where. Maybe windows
were put in houses to help people
decide. The way some of us stand
and look out of them for sustained
periods is a telling sign. But crows
or geese are leary of our desire to
leave, and no bird is willing to hold
a spot open on a high wire in the
middle of flat plains. Regardless, at
some place in the wait you'll make
a trip. A country you haven't been
to will call. You will have an accent
of it in your mind, its food and its
music will make days there pass as
if your name was on its own door.

Don't give what you can squeeze.
You have seven bags of clothes
I take mine to the consignment
shop, the owner hands me small
checks as the garments sell. You
wear nice clothes, you can earn
enough to have some spare cash
for other stuff. - It made sense.-
Although it wasn't where my head
was when I put those brand new
soccer shirts in bags. I was thinking
more about a young man I didn't
know, who'd think, "Why would
anyone have gotten rid of these?"

Many backs wear lint bled threads.
Perhaps for retro fashion sense, or
maybe out of need. Either way, it
pains me to see that thrift stores
have upscaled. The needy require
good second hand clothes. Shirts
that have a little stiff starch left in
their collars, hems intact, nothing
unraveling as a life is prone to do.
But now it's third hand garments
for the poor. Now it's faint stains
and zippers with rough tracks. I
wasn't smart when I gave away
what I could have squeezed for
more, but it went where it was
needed most.  Because we are 
not what we wear, but we are
treated- well pressed or stained.

These are working along, using fine thread, D.

milner

D, This is getting pasted again 'cause I think it's worth another read. The opening 4 sentences chime like a tuning fork.

larry


Needed? Yes. But never was
a list made or any path traced
by a fingertip.  It was more like
a voice I'd always known asked
where to put the wine bottle it
had bought and I turned around
to find us both homeless down
to the goblets needed to make
a toast. A house was too forward
to presume. But we worked the
same trade, so I put us in a candy
factory and graciously made you
the boss. I passed along chocolate
covered cherries in lines of three
by far until you didn't have the
stomach for another box. I never
had an Oriental market plan. It
was an industry wholely disclaimed
by religion, reason, magic or myth.
Only a lonely child could conjure a
ludicrous world to so busily do
nothing in. You found a girl in a
closet full of paperdolls. She made
a shoebox for a nameless game
and filled it with pretty words.

( thanks for reading , larry. )


Sighs of twine fell from Friday's
outheld hands, cupped near to
prayer they had been. Eliding
thoughts as if to tether one
lie's length into socks for cold
feet. Tell me you walked fifty
miles through snow to hear an
absurdly needed tale. My ears
have done the same for you
every day. But always a drift
stole the roof of where you
were from my sight, and there
was nothing left but to continue
these words as if they were lost
steps. Could you not chimney a
flame and poetically divulge the
geomake of snow you lie below?

dw/06

You will scant make of it an odd
numb misplacement of wrongest
do nots. Silence is never justice.
Worms are the John Henries of
the desperate. Cursiving in dark
loops of loving mudpush. Shape
breath for me. The lungs trash
makes a plant's calibrated reach.
Stems wait, all roots follow the
worm's lead. We should squirm.

Somewhere between the gentle
way eggs hint wet feathers into
floppy new drunk life and leaves
curl to cradle fog, I honestly use
the given drive I have to plow a
make hell way home. Only salmon
know the thirst and struggle of
moving counter to the normal
flow. And they must wish bear
claws on themselves all the way up.
I have nothing to sustain my run
but the madness of my own breed.
Were you not born for the swim
back north? I thought your marks
confirmed a heritage of outer fringe,
a glory earned by pitting itself
against the natural elements. I'm
sure I read that crudeness in you.

dw/06

You should post this one for comments. Your knack for description is a marvel.
I'm going to record this one and let you hear what I hear in the poem.

Your recordings are always a treat.  Thanks for honoring me so.


I will most not of all leave
mindless a jazz of hapclans
in lost garb for a lantern's
life on this Hallows Weave
of giggles and gimmes. If
ever a witch wore marsh
mellow creme in the crook
of her bite or a pirate had
purple teeth and treasure
worth belly aches, this was
the night. Lines of maybe
whos begged and begged.
But nowhere did I see your
wings. Not among capes
flapping fairies or the angels
that came. There was light
from the porch, a pumpkin's
hot grin. I thought all dead
souls would...but no. Well,
I left a lollipop in the mum
pot just the same. G'night.

dw/06

I wonder at the web too
loose spun, fun ottered,
trunkly held. Something
playfulme scientific. It was
meant to trap. Havoc of
love, the lightest landing
sticks. And suddenly you
are at the mercy of eight
discovering limbs. I am a
mummy of the spider's
lust. Discarded for a later
snack. The luster of my
fly eyes laquered in silk.
All vibrations tamed cold.

dw/06

And the words could not
assemble a defense, some
reticent doubt, some non
human clause of your not
shit had trapped the logic
in her throat. Swallowing
tears she got out a quip
about him not loving her
son. And no she, no she
had better not even think
to come....she was smart
enough for the hog farm.
I got trapped in the rough
ocean of her breath, in her
inability to bring an intact
shell to the shore, in the
beauty of this wreckage
that somehow survived
one son of a bitch.

I am in some blindness without walls.
Every day my hands kite themselves
as far as desperation can span only
to find more emptiness. Either this
is a desert or No. Imagine the gone
of No. Sideless void, never a door.
Switches of light unclickable. A Dali
hanging from one bent floating nail.
Or so it seemed, but all along a girl
was in the frame, an odd addition
to an artist's whim. A life penciled
in the boredom of spat and smear.
I think I was meant to be erased.

dw/06

i wanted to write you a
message in the first snow
nothing long. something
you could see from the
upper story of the house
when you first woke and
checked the world. pine
cones seemed like they
would be the most visible.
Turns out they were hard
to find, so I deeply carved
what had to say with the
right pinky side of my glove.
That night it snowed, so
this was all that was left.

i l v y u de p r th n th s drift.

dw/06

Sure, in a sec. Just need to rinse
this off my hands. I know I already
did, but five minutes have passed,
and the film  of what you say sticks
to me like the oil vapor of a fry vat.
I was just a kid. Do you ever think
of that before you perpetuate old
arguments? You were of another
mind yourself. Agile, quick to hate.
We have both hoped for a change,
I in you and you in me. But I'm not
sure it has come. Another visit ends
earlier than planned. I pack and say
the weather man predicted rain. We
can barely kiss under that clear sky.\

dw/06

One wakes from night
as if a truce with death
was barely kept.
As if the race to next day
was crossed only by a yawn's stretch.
And there,
in the light,
stars whispering behind emerging blue.
suggesting epitaphs,
coffin models
and music for the funeral.

You can see them looking at themselves
in the granite runes you pass.
Backward glints making us notice
well labeled stone.
Grass Havens of Bugs and Bone.
Where everyone eventually
owns a little
property.

Yes, Stars.
flashy realtors
in the subdivision of our dreams.

Didn't you hear of so and so
who moved in 62.
Established place, holds value over time
( or so visitors say ).

Still, not everyone can go.

You have to like faded plastic flowers
and be able to tolerate a windowless house. 
Mother said she would rather burn.
Even the ground walked on
isn't good enough for some.

miracles are smaller than atoms.
miracles are the jist of whims
riddled by blind sight.

and so in the small truths
that playfully reveal whys
is the next step.
so small a going forth that
wisdom will be short a second life.

i sought the company of an oracle
but not out of hobbling or being alone.

i sought it to keep me alert
to make me hear in half breaths
and long swallows, epics.

Terrific, D. This is truly getting epic.

milner

( thanks Milner )

All's mighted that an urge of plunging
pushes down rightly into the needle of
want. I issue a proclamaketion of eaves
drooping with icicles two feet sharp. At
three past madness I am reminded how
a blue lake is seized cold to make a sloppy
dance floor for hungry geese. These are
your eyes speaking from behind winter
glass. It is a passing thought, no glean
of it penned. The sun hurts. I hold on.
Many things can occupy a day. A wet
cloth gathers rank musk in the corner of
your sink. I crave even this coiled mold
of a muddle of, soaked in old beer or
discarded broth. Any thought is a wild
making new, shaped by how you alone
chisel time. Tell me how the geese fell.

dw

I wonder if the wren will peck the dried bread
thrown on the dead grass. I wonder if the wren
will flap off with stuffed beaks to hide crumbs in
a thicket of brush. I wonder if the wren wonder
how bread finds its way to the ground. Flutter
me a small wingspan the long way home. Say one
bird knows or believes in a generous hand. It only
takes one to lead a flock. So many want to follow
you, and the oak is your shelter, not your refuge.
Who can match a clear throat gliding for charity?
Some talent makes of gifts debts. I owe you this.
dw/06

Right. And the murmur became as plain
as a day that started out night. All along
gurgles hurled at chimes, I kept a thief's
measure of your silences. And yes, each
noise proposed a poem. Crooked slurps
swore themselves Yeats. It was enough
to surrender the lines of a page. So aptly
I did. For what was I without the sea's
song? Without the ebb and ebb of vain
promises? I tell you there morphs a stone
in my mouth. Molten in the long wait. Fit
for nothing but numb agreement to war.
And you, you reconjur the gin fitness of
the literary tongue. To me it seems you
have nicely polished the backs of your own
teeth, not so slick from other tells, but of
your own floss and pick made a sucked clean
sound that could suction trapped caramel..
to me it seems.. have you not noticed?
dw/06

Ole! 

(You missed the 2nd 'e' off reconjure)

milner

( If I would only use my spell check. Pride goeth before the fall. )

Did you ever think a hollow ornament would weigh
a year's pay? Or that tinsel was strong enough to
hang yourself with? Christmas has sinced May. Listen.
bells are morse code for spend spend spend. Credit
is more snow than will ever melt. People live in the
avalanche. I hear them all the time. Last year Larry
said the bank would take it all.  But what was his?
I really couldn't see the tragedy. Were you raised a
tick? A blood sucker on the verge of bones? Would
it be Merry Christmas or marry money in your neck of
the woods? I got no problem with eggnog or lights.
As far as gifts go, nothing never needs returning.

dw/06

Yeah. That's how it was. Like rose petals
dropped in an aisle. But things go to hell.
Nobody pushes them. I have never seen
anyone trip a good thing. So I assume we
lose our balance in dance that is too hard
for dumb feet. Then we have to crawl off
the floor on bare knees. You didn't look for
me when I fell, to see if I made it through
the strobing colored legs. I am at the punch
bowl now. You are dancing with a girl from
the north side of forever. She has nice legs.

dw/06

Roxaboxen was a place where
old mountain bits regained a
sense of being useful to this
world. Kids traced outlines
in the sand. Then they put
their stones side by side on
the lines. Maybe Linda's box
would be a house, Jim's a
bank. They also use colored
glass, broken bottle bits the
noon sun all out tattled on.
Before July a town was made.
A place without walls or roofs.
A place where hums floated
freely, neighbor to neighbor.

dw/06

Nashville is ever the tonic of all that
went wrong, from bad loves to
lost jobs. Don't know how this
or that plucker had the nerve
to strum or yodel over such thin
broth, but some did. Some forced
misery into happy beats, made life
long tragedies two step. Us? We
all said yipee tween beer sips,
knowing full well it was too close
to not call home.

To love a solid man, the bread and all.
The roof because a baby should be dry.
Spoons of oatmeal fill a life, a good guy,
that is what you'd say in the prayers.
But asking is empty if the kiss is made of
what any dinner is. Not that you are not
meal. Turkey big as hidden pride.

Surely there are pennies enough scattered
in cups and old pockets to fortune small needs
past worries suffered. Likewise I think of how
many thoughts are made no more than spare
change and hidden from the world. I think the
saying goes, " A penney for your thoughts?"
But that's too low a bid. I would pay more for
what you won't say. I would give two eyes
scanning like rescuers that still have hope. It
is true that more than not ice is under ice is
under ice, and long stayed even ground goes
the way of being hard. I have to think there
is a small seed or bird alive on this mountain.

dw06

Desiree,

  In light of that which is around so many here, this piece is very real to me.  Thanks for the read. 

Laura

With all meant well, a methodic love
of spreading fingers bends to grasp
what is a sanctity to touch. But just
as quick releases what can't conform
to the palm's cradle by its own will.
I have a handful of ancient vowels.
Everytime I toss the squirming bits
they want to be further from the
tongue that invented their heaven.
Maybe they hear you now, you with
your softer clouds, your antiseptic
apothecary of knowing just how to
say when and the overdosing of a
stand beside the windower who is
never going to get past treatments
that tame but don't cure. Earlier I
think someone said it was Christmas.
Have you nothing with a small hint of
cinnamon, to get me past the day?

dw/06
 

She would unamber that still fly.
Be all a buzz with what a million
years kept mute. We would all
doubt nature for the constant
passes of her peskiest thought.
Swatting only to miss the sure
hum of the best picnic jam, an
upside down lid placed five feet
from the certainty of hell. Jesus
might be too sweet. No melting
hush or scriptures chanted could
save lazy hearts. Salami anyone?

Or some nice blood sausage? These are working wondrous, D.

milner

It started from before knowing,
human and red, on its way to a
place it had been. A path broke
A river became a pool of gelatin.
Around the black hole was a man
who didn't know how to swim.
and around the man who was
being pulled down was a world
that needed wild flailing more
than another soul gone. Next.
Next a rallying occurred. Alien
conduits removed the abscess
and the river made its way to
the heart.   Now we breathe.

it was a day of slide slip miss
aplops, of bed ridden never
get ups. a crossmix of tube
and lube and you.  Odd, to
watch someone fight their
own broth. Still, you are of
a courage made by tissues
that sweat too long in an
iron grip.  You are of the
sanctity of eyes that hold
themselves so tightly shut.
the battalion of your fever
spans infinite pores, marching
through lifted hairs, quaking
disasters beneath the skin.
when your outheld hand
tremors the world runs scared
and all that have anything to
hide are glad to be found
even if they're found dead.

Grease spats at the pouring
in of beaten eggs and never
does the cook think of how
the chick might have lived if
she had not broken open
the embryos to accompany
her hash browns. Is every
egg mine to crack? Should
I mix the peepless slime to
fluffiness without any regard
for the stolen pecks? Maybe
everything needs more salt.
And who has ever refused
that pale yellow mound of
yolk brought to soft crust?
We all feed and kill to eat.

quite palatable. :)

I don't think I will be able to eat eggs for a while now, thanks.... ;)

We should all run, and yes,
so fast our feet never kick
up the plant's rug. I know
some that do. I crawl, kill
grass in the indecision of
my every move, but isn't
leaving marks the point?
Or so we thought, didn't
we? At the onset, when
someone yelled, startling
us to propel ourselves in
a direction away from the
fear. You could not have
known not to look back
as you ran, and I did not
know how to pick myself
completely up. How you
flew when you tripped
over me! Higher than a
grass hopper full of corn.
Sad that you landed on
your chin, but that isn't
what stuck in my mind.
I remembered the odd
shapes your body made
trying to land back on its
feet. You were poetry.

Snow, or maybe prayer lint falling
off angel wings. I bet they get a
lot. Heaven can't soothe all the
whispers uttered on a cold night.
Mine alone would cover Oklahoma
in a fluffy inch, not that I asked
so much. I asked to be enough.
But yesterday it was less. Each
day enough grows. Enough love,
enough gas, enough bread. Who
among us grows so tall? Look, I
am now ten tasks higher than
I sought to sustain. Something
keeps us strong, but we will be
buried in the end. I won't much
care if the snow falls on me then.

I made a promise to the trail
that cuts along Mount Nebo
Ridge. The oaks bared their
miseltoe for the song. Black
cows stood in the cold mud
chewing a promise of grass.
Crows flew as if their were
worms in what I said. Deer
hid. Barns swore allegiance
to worn out nails. An empty
church made a new hymn
with a gust of passing car.
How could I not go again?

This last one brings a sense of PLACE into an uncommon focus and makes it as familiar as the "lines in your palm" Nice piece of work.

larry

Thanks Larry. It has some kinks, but there may be a line or two.

_________________________________________________ _


Lake effect snow
roof droop make
soul frost. Sowar
mma sentiment I
put here, my scarf,
too weary fire coal.
The mittens I lost.
The mittens I lost
playing in the cold.
But you stay warm.
You stay in geese
softness and socks.

dw/07

sometimes, somehow
a sad flower growing
fuck west of cow shit
will provoke a bare foot
to curse its nerve to
sprout. Sown of stench
comes a color of fury,
a hue exacted by the
calf's lick and possum
piss. Every buttercup
has the holdem of a
rain drop, and no hoof,
heel or plow can tell
when a vessel will cock
its head enough to spill.
Blossoms lean enough to
wash the shit from feet,
of that be sure. One drop
against an ankle deep flop
forgives as a whole flood
would rank plague of tongue.

I think America should know
that theire is nothing colder
than a war with your son in
it.  At night, when I don't
sleep, I can hear these fifty
states chattering like teeth.

I wonder how much blood
quiets fear. Already a quilt
half generation thick warms
a way of life I can't respect.
People assure me they care,
but until blood fuels cars I
doubt that spilling it will be
an outrage to Yankees on
the go. The gallon is what?

Never read a better editorial on the subject.
Makes me mad, damn mad.

I think America should know
that there is nothing colder
than a war. At night, when
I don't sleep, I can hear fifty
states chattering like teeth.

I wonder how much blood
quiets fear. A quilt--a half
generation thick warms a
way of life I can't respect.
People assure me they care,
but until blood fuels cars I
doubt that spilling it will be
an outrage to Yankees on
the go. The gallon is what?


Hope you don't mind me playin' with this one Des...nice topical poem about the war, and the madness--especially the last line and the use of "yankees" penultimate. I think I kept your form, the unified block, let me know what yee thinketh.

even the most do-right rain storm
could hold no blanket cast upon
the sun as this, forge no steel

so tightly woven around
the fist of every piss-ant on the hill—
Joe

Thanks Lavonne and Joe.  For the record, I got no sons, but I am weary of the war.

So Joe, son part dangling booger or what?   I'm warming up to your tuning fork.  I think the last sentence is also to abrupt.  Thanks for helping.

D

Oh, is that what Jesus said?
He told me something else.
His halo seems to take a lot
of sides, and somehow cons
us into thinking consequence
is destiny. I don't know all of
what he said to you, but its
true that I'm a problem child.
It takes the better of fifty of
his angels to keep me straight.
So go ahead, come against my
cloud, if you think you want
that much heaven against you.
I don't fold my hands or chant
or knock down wafers over an
extra hour's rest, yet there is
nothing prodigal about where
my innocence is.  Here.  Now.

Hey, hey, please, please get off of my cloud!!!!

You tell'em.  Liking this a lot.

Des--
     Didn't like the "with your son in it" because of the "in it" and that fact that I had to re-read the line 2 or 3 times to get the jist of what you were saying. At first, I thought you were talking about a war with your son, rather than the son being in a war...know what I mean? So I chucked the line because I didn't think it detracted from the poem to do so.
     I also put the dash between "a quilt" and "a half" because I needed a pause to understand the weight of the line, otherwise I am was going back thinking, what is this quilt metaphor? As for the last line, I found it splendid. It brings the reader back to the larger picture and puts the poem in a more definitive historical sense...not that the poem, however, isn't already there. Fantastic--with a tweak or two.
Joe

Thanks for the explanation Joe.  Good point.
____________________________________________

The well to do of not haves crowds the
empty cracker box as tight as any corner
ever dreamed to hold. They could have
had butter but instead chose the apple
crunch puree. Nothing loves hope more
than those who have holes Casper eye
sunk. Ever marked them your Is with a
look? Oh sad day. Sad life phlem ripe. I
clear my throat of hurt. But the torture
burrows like a oil rig shucks shale. Give
as you might nothing comes of blinder
aid. Need without eyes attached can't
haunt the corners of crisp naps all up
in cozy homes like saltines that fit their
cardboard mansions right down to no
salt grain misplaced. Maybe a box is a
box and you gotta rest. Surely though
some butter can be spared, and spread
by your hand. Feed what asks and not
what you heard might hunger in some
pantry two blocks off. And don't wait
for gratitude like snow covered ground
hogs cause for some winter is life long.
What is a cracker off the stack?  Think
of how the top and bottom normally
don't remain whole. When we're asked
for the first or last of what we have
we are surrendering what is broken.

dw/07

( thanks for the inspiration, mil. )

You and your invalid moons. It is true
that night has never given bold color
to a lover's cheeks, but it owns Picasso's
blue. And in monochrome, doesn't the
whole world seem to wearily accept its
faults and call a well deserved truce?

The stars.  Aren't they just bullet holes
of lies that shot aimless and escaped
their pain? Isn't there comfort in what's
not fully known, or even less judged?
I like that the world has its eyes closed
half of the time, but I do wish that it
would look closer when they were open.

dw/07

Upside down and wet was how
I remember it. His flannel shirt.
The one Judy Lynn hung before
he left. Six months has past. You
can barely tell it was red or plaid
or new. If you look close, you'll
see a tictactoe of bird crap running
crossways near the front pocket.
Come a March gust, it will almost
seem full of the man she bought
it for. To her, maybe those empty
sleeves reach toward the house.

dw/07

How happy I am to have found this thread.  Slowly making my way through it, for if you would please forgive my inadequate way of expression- I find this to be a simmer of stew, fragrant and rich, with bubbles of the indescribable seasoned with air... very rare, and much enjoyed.  delectable in the read..meant to be savored..I could learn a lot from the pages found here.

p.s.  though I told myself I wouldn't, it was the posting of today that first drew my eye to this thread and I have this to say about it- unsure if this is proper as I am new to the site, but here are my thoughts -  I come to, "Six months has past."  this appears awkward to me and I wonder if it should be 'passed' or 'Six months (have) passed.'  I also paused at the tic-tac-toe ran together like that..I don't really know, just a blind old bird cawing  :D

Thank you.  I wish that were the worst of it.  The final line is flatter than a jogger's ass.

I appreciate your reading and remarking.  Welcome to the site.

The last line of the poem 14 "was no one there to stake you..." doesnt seem to live up to the rest of the poem...a magnificent read, however, Des...tinker with the last line, if it makes you happy, could just be my mood...sorry to jump back so far, but I gotta start somewhere.

Oaklawn is paved with the stubs
of races lost. A mosaic glued by
the gamblers' stomp of next win.
She bet on four to place. He bet
on nine to show, but a longshot
upset the field, and two more
stubs fell into the collage of not
enough. Back at the Arlington,
no one bluffs. No whores submit
to poetry alone, no losers ride.
At two a. m. a fire alarm goes
off. I hear it deep in my dream,
as if a trifecta has alligned in the
final stretch. Should I awake to
escape the flames, or burn a
winner in this stranger's bed?

dw/07

For her it was never hard. There were nnever illusions
that outshone the reality of survival. In the morning
she got up, a far horizon was her magic wand. The three
wishes of the poor never change. Let us keep our work
our health and our minds sane. Half known songs are a
prayer through the must, and if you should have to dance,
do it slow with someone you trust.  Now the news read
that happiness was a myth, and many cried, Disney lost.
They packed up their plastic and sat on shores pocked
with little lopsided umbrellas. Slipperless, a journalist might
suppose. But for some the clock strikes five, and it's time
to go home. It is where a few clean sheets are stacked,
where the birds sing like they wish they had yolks the
size of the ones you ate with your bacon. If ever a leaf
blows into the door of home it is because no tree could
give it better than what some would run from. She yawns
at three, two hours until a ball of unspun yarn unravels a
cat and the lawn blooms blow like a billion jealous fairies
from a tale that doesn't compare to being poor and alive.

I know which bitches bandage lies with
Iris blades. But let us not be wrapped in
any such cure. Bleed openly jaded so the
flood of your anger chokes all insecta anthems
abuzzz.  Blame nothing but one limb that fell
per chance. Curse it with vigor and be heard.
Exile every bird to the highest branches of
established pines. Trust that pas spit and tears
Spring returns, but only after every leaf has
fallen, only after the shock  that December is
not just thrity but thirty one days.

As long as you put roses on the cake
icing lovers eat. There is nothing like
a mouthful of sugar dyed red. Angel
food does not have the same effect.
It is a fat sponge that's hard to chew.
Nothing covers it. Some serve it with
the juice of berries just so they can
swallow. Angel cakes are not behind
the counter at the bakery. Normally,
you will see them in a heap of buns,
cookies and donuts, marked down.
Still, you have to respect their form.
They can be set lopsided in a basket
full of food. If they tip over no one
frets. Once home, no knife can ruin
a slice, and the cake can make the
week without chilling or freezing it.
And what is whiter than its inside?
Not a cloud made by ocean spray.

lol - being a baker of the sweetest of sweets, the wedding cake, I appreciate your observations on Love and the Sugar Connection!

It is a great awfulness that craves a rebirth.

There you find yourself confounded and alive,
and all that would spew like the Earth's own
hot spring we contrive with polished mineral.
Something hard longs past the catching of a
sun's ray. Oh, there in the light, you became
a hint of lavender. The same I'd seen on the
pearl's back when it rolled in my palm. But as
you know, that gem has nothing but a back.
Ever remains closed. The corners of us bump
wanting in. I think there is a way, but it has
nothing to do with what we want.  Rather
something wants us and we are pulling away.
Still, tension is tension says the mind, and rock
too knows the stress, molten lava chasms of
igneous mountain life wanting more. Nature
gives way, but we don't.  We carve names in
granite and put them in rows on well kept grass.

To nip the step, go left at the table
beside the wall. The sad wobbly oak
one whose lamp bulb is blown. Some
girl sits in the dark, just half through
the poem life promised to become.
There is nothing epic about any end,
no matter the length gone. You up
and move without looking back, as if
a plague were at your heels. Art films
finish like this, drop off. Next thing you
know the house lights blind your wake
to third row, aisle seat. A few popcorn
kernels are sandwiched in your thighs.
You're not sure what to make of the
last couple of hours. It's hard to piece.

Summit_________________________


It may about itself by way of go round,
happening as things do over and over.

Each curve returning gathers variations
in the whirl, in habit, things slow, lights

reflect in them less and less a blur. An
image here or there is caught, nothing

you could say for sure, more like ironies,
surprises, gifts, that conjure up the place

you wanted. That summit you imagined
where problems are below the clouds.

Later, when it's easier to breath
a freshened green will reassure
us that this calm will last. A few
branches fell during the night.
Pine cones swelled. Birds got the
worst. Nests shook so hard that
eggs cracked against themselves.

Today Nature is better. She was
that Aunt that drank too much
and screamed. We all swore that
nothing could bring us back.  But
she got up early, made pancakes.
Maybe she deserves another chance.

There are no cherries yet.  We have to wait,
cans or South American varieties are not the
same. For now, oranges will have to do. Big
thick skinned piles of them in crates two feet
high. Some say they are too much trouble to
peel, but you can slice them in wedges across
the grain, and stick them in your mouth like a
boxer would a lemon before a round. Oranges
can also be dried whole if you poke them full
of cloves, not a smell that appeals to everyone,
but an option none the less. The Florida globes
are also prized for their juice, who ever heard
of fresh squeezed cherries with bacon and eggs?
June is not so far, and all that comes before it
has a flavor of its own, different but still sweet.

Banana no manna where Alana
is from. Down there no French
nails peel back stems and tear
howling flesh from ripe pulp. Is
the way of she and hers to fit
their lips tight around the fruit.
It is what los Americanos want.
I wonder if the plantain is not
chewed with lingering disqust,
despite its being nourishment.
Seems one thing robs the next.

You want to look out and see light.
Not sun coming in, rather students
reflecting what you have said. Eyes
committed to a flicker of uncertain
theme. grasping for a better hold.
It fuels the load, the tonaledge of
what is known. For I must now give
it back, before I forget, and these
before me must take it on, broken
as it may be.  It is theirs. We both
laugh, because the task is endless
and the journey blunt. I encourage
them to persist, some do. Others
take chances with real experience.
One plus one is two. You plus me
is three. Life may contradict what
is taught here tonight, and soon.

dw/07

We are in a bowl of blue soup. The fog
smells of our work. The sun keeps our
stew always warm enough. The Ozark
ridges are the lovely rim of our humble
urn. Perhaps Grandmother Time found
us at an out of the way place, passed
us by. We stayed, made a gruel of our
houses and coats and cats.  Our smell
is kept in the shade, away from visitors
and tourists. Its the best way to keep
the bowl clean, selfish as it may seem.

One could hope to unbecome as if a
sudden cape had mothed its flounce
and all heroicness was a lame stride.

There' nothing left but to walk west,
too bad horizons only eat the sun. As
meals go, talent makes nights drool.

But chances are sold, there is no luck in
how a mind remixes its time, and if there
is any skill, it will be stolen and renamed.

You should stay. Something's bound to
remind you of me, maybe only how the
jasmine tangles upon itself in vain. Over

grown I was, proud as green is lush. It
takes long winters to make bare twigs
of fools, but who wont' forgive Spring?

such a feel i get from this -- as if i am other than myself missing, or about to miss (about to wax into missiveness) of someone or something, but not me but the other whoever/whatever. 

lynn

I often feel just that way, Lynn, when reading Desiree's writing. She connects the most incongruous ideas and creates harmony and understanding.

She flips the light switch and we see that we could never have imagined the obvious!

Lynn,  Your comment seems like many of my poems, short of the bullseye.  Thanks for your patience.

Lavonne,  I appreciate your kindness.  If I ever have a fan club, you will be the captain.


Take care.  D

It is rude to believe after such a rain
that suffering will come, that tender
leaves will wilt in the overlove of sun.
Let us not consider it tonight. For at
this hour the fireflies seem incapable
of harm, the stars sharp edges can't
be made out. Now is when blossoms
trust themselves to speak. They are
never above the frog's croak in pitch,
but the mind can feel their seduction
by the lung's fill. The honeysuckle is
suggesting a kiss. It doesn't care if I
purse my lips to the moon. There is
after all a semblance of face in that
orb, and no one ever sees it frown.

D.

I've been meaning to suggest that you post #119 on the submit page and then you add "honeysuckle is suggesting a kiss" and I get all woozy. Post them.

larry

Hey, Des -- On #120 what I meant, I didn't know how to explain.  One of those words I try very hard to avoid -- ethereal -- was the feel I came away with, sort of.  I loved the magic for me as a reader.  This comment may also require a dose of patience -- me thanking you for yours. 

Larry,

Whenever I return from not having written in a spell, I am reticent to post.  As you know, the mind functions in a different mode for poetry, and it is a path easily overgrown that becomes obscure through neglect. When I return to it, I am always afraid that I will lose my way, or get hung up.  It's kind of you to encourage me, I like #119 as well. There is progress in just being able to say that, because in years past I rarely looked back without dreading what was found.

Lynn, 

Sorry I misread your comment.  You must never be concerned to have offended me, I often look back at my own stuff and wonder what the heck I was trying to say.

btw/ I have enjoyed both of your recent posts.  Thanks for inspiring me.

Maybe one day I'll lose the urge to pee, or sleep
too deep and make a dough ball of my own ass. 
No one 'll think I smell like fresh bread. Whispers
once side mouthed by jealous neighbors, will be
uttered by my children. Home is the last place let
go, because no matter how good an assisted living
facillity sounds, it can't chime like your door bell.

dw/07

God, you stick the knife right in the heart every time!
Love this.

It came to him that sound was sound
and that like miles of water it had no
visible stop. So he braved waves, the
kind that give men big sea captain hair.
Crabs teetered on the backslapping of
the saltfresh, hoping to pinch the mast
as they flew from the exhaulted heave.
But nothing in the sea or mouth is what
it pretends.  At the waterglass start of
day placidness is the poem.  sometimes
the discarded peach pit of a deck hand
makes small rings against itself and calls
itself a storm. The mouth can do just
as much harm with five words or less.

dw

This is how we can con
nect. See I live and love
then you live and love
until less + less + less of
what my parents meant
spreads out and populates
the good land and makes
a pledge of stewardship
for all it carries forth or
gathers on the path.

I will be no more to you
than crystal salt shaker
someday. Who ever said
it was better to forget?

We celebrate heritage in
frames. The dim smiles of
dead relatives line our halls,

Sometimes, 

we pause and look at them.
They seem like ghosts to us.
Vaguenesses whose legacies
lose chapters year by year.

I wonder if they'd say the same
of us....

 "What happened to our
blood?"  I crossed an ocean and
was orphaned by the age of nine.
Three wars later I was old.  But I
am no salt shaker, that's for sure.
No, I am the taste of salt. Carry on.

dw/

The artist can wish for the sameness of ocean blue,
mixing this pigment with a pinprick of shadow or light
hoping, hoping to aproximate.

The engineer can marvel at the palm's lean.
welding together iron or steel for the sake of an arch
hoping hoping again to aproximate.

But what does nature tell the poet?
Nature is not a big talker. Mostly it sits around like
a drunk indian wondering what the hell happened.

I'm supposed to guess.
I'm supposed to guess what the flow of magma means.
if it rhymes, why it burns everything it touches.

Sometimes I think the wind defends a randomess
such as this, the water too, although its tinkles do repeat enough
to liken some form, but what?

Whatever nature is humming, it can't forget, it has not evolved
in so far as what it likes to hear.
Nature is a sad man who listens to the same song over and over.

Maybe once it was closer to the sun,
and now can only stalk it like a lover that has nothing else.

Someday you might reach a point where thoughts
are too weak to penetrate your mind. They might
get lost in the roundabout of the ear and be thrown
towards a pile a mulch. They might press against your
tight frown and be shocked that you've had the lock
changed. You will make do with what you already have.
You will look at blue and think lunch.  All numbers will
become obscene. One damn, two shit and so on. All
faces will be mirrors now. You will see yourself in every
poor bastard that you loathed. Yes finally, true love.

keeping that one Des,  lovely.

She saw it more back and forth.
her yada yada him uhum uhum.
Now girl has more yada into him
than walls do flat sides to echo.

Chicks do blab. Weather can be
boots or bathing suits. Sports is
who is dragging whom by what.
But shit dude, small talk can't put

no chokehold on your ring finger.
I say give it up. Ask her what she
did today, that'll keep it going til
blueberries float in warm cream.

Your turn is two words. Nice hair.
Maybe refill the drinks. What's the
big deal? Ya both know the other's
got the yada yada. Uhum Uhum.

Maybe nothing ends. Lo the sea's blue
is clear back to come round so far that
the waves we are looking at will smack
us in the back.  If so, then your dreams
too may have already made a turn, and
now your destiny will chase you forward.

So you see?  We are pulled, though all
along the ocean's edge we watch the
wind with a captain's glare wishing our
ships to the coconutiest banana shore.
And all along there is not a whistle of a
mermaid chiming in. What need is there
of helping what is already decided on?

dw

Once again, you dazzle me.  This poem contains the title of the book that we all know you'll publish. It's there in the second verse.

Watching the Wind
with a captain's glare

by Desire Wright

Your comment couldn't be timlier. I have been agonizing over where to submit my first collection to the university for possible publlication.  I have til the end of October to get my act together.  Captian's glare?  Ya think?  Thanks for always encouraging me.



 

Go for it girl.
All they can say is no.

and

Watching the wind is what you do best.

Before you know it some GD poet's
got you by the suffix and will not
concede to your period mark. What's
meant gets pulled up future so far
ahead that you will always be the
last of whatever came hither in a
lapse of who cares. I stand by the
contrails of wandering lost, and time
is far more than money ever hoped
to be. The world's got a lot of one
and who knows what of the other.
Mysteries, you can't count, so worth
up with your clock son, and don't tock
muck to the wee willie winkee's aunt.

Auntie's watching the wind again. : )

Whoever publishes, put me at the top of your fan list to buy.  You are the coconutiest writer on my most banana beach.

Not sure it will be worth the money, but I will put you on the list. Thanks.
The Only Way__________________________

Dreaming seems like a long look spent on what
we can't afford. It concocts a future of a spare
thought. To think, believe, while soap bubbles
eat away daily grime. If only windows could be
walls, and dirty dishes tabula limpias of now. This
moment is proud, it can hold up its chin against
any big bang, the first car built, or Hamlet's finest
monologue. Let me go blind from this step, as if
my legs were not assumed. To wander aimless is
the course, the plan, the only way out of here.

_________________________________dw/07

And someone says "Be a snake" as if years
fall from the body like skin. People drop,
use their hips and shoulders to go on. We
wriggle cold through mud. Maybe its the
way? But something in the ground goads
our passage squirm by squirm. And you say
I should not listen to the cries of the bugs,
or judge water to be near by the coolness
of the dirt. Don't you find that you use all
you've got.. inching towards whats ahead?

Fiona ever weaves the farce of thieves.
For in artful dodgedness the hand slips
into pockets as craftily as words make
their way to longings held out shining
like wallet corners, gold watches, or
loose rings. We went bump, grabbed
ourselves to feel if fortune was intact.
Thank God. We can still tell time and
buy beer, but someone captured our
sense of beyond this. Fiona is a bitch.

dw/07

Sullivan has dug and dug to the mottob of bottom,
where mama said China was. Consequently, all the
blood has pooled in his cheeks and it appears as if
he's nothing more than a pair of balls with a prick
hanging from his chin down to the street. How the
girls circle him, in their straw pointed hats, waiting
for a gesture, some signal of intent. Sully's just as
miffed. Got no ground's left under his spade, and
he expected more of his digging than blank stares.

dw/07

135 made me smile, I love all your poems.

Driving I can not bake,
but if a hay bail turned
on its flat side, if a gust
of wet sticky leaves fell
and covered it, if a cow,
rather than chewing its
mouthful of stout grass,
side plowed enough stiff
blades to resemble fifty
two candles...this would
be your cake. One horse
would come along, ignite
the bail with a fast flick.
Because driving I cannot
bake, but I can look off
long enough to imagine.

In the end there is just the weight of so much air
and how much a set of lungs wants. I guess you
expect me to breathe, the habitual in-outedness.
It is true that the invisible sustains and the less we
think the better a routine will keep us fed. I have
sealed a hundred chicken breasts, wiped shower
dew to unobscure my smiles. Somewhere an old
box of grits grows moths. Winter has its own dark
industry, and I respect the retreat. Days pile, each
a did that of yesterhad. I look, I hope, but I can't
say for what. Saturday. Is a waffle not almost perfect,
before the thin thread of syrup slashes it so sweetly?.

You are that one steel shining barn that
gleams along a road of falling barns. Oddly
rigid, hinges strong. Farmers dream of you
at night, bails safe from rotting in your loft.
You are why the harvest hurries towards
its death. Ever the squirrels call galvanized
metal a palace, and why not? Who hasn't
hid dry in a corner of what you stand for?

Love reading this work...

Kind of you to say.  Thank you for the support
_____________________________________

And someone smart says, "You can't miss what
you've never had."  Trouble is, you can, worse.
For there I was without, and my withoutedness
became an untried holymess, a sanctum of wow,
or wow I wish. There are no flaws, no quirks, in
what could have been. Nobody slumps or wears
flat squeaky shoes in how a first kiss is gotten to,
not in what never was. I would very much have
liked to notice how you rubbed your left temple
excessively during a joke, real life has good cues.
Minor revelations clear as any horn or traffic light.
But you will remain untried. My perfect torment.

We must have more balloons. Candy,
candy for the kids. Let us celebrate
how fucking tired we all are. It is right.
You make the most of "IF".  Can wow
some with how to gets, folding just as
real need raises its hand. It is the true
politics of way past May, be good where
it's easy to be good, and make sure the
cameras are present. I could not find
you when Mrs. Gomez had questions
and doubts. You had fifty little foil bags
that had to be stuffed with miniature
pumpkins, and who would bringing a
pinata for us to pound flat?  Silvina?

Of ourselves so much we think
as if approaches were a climb
as if terrain were sea of albatross
without another shore. I promise
land, with palms and hurricanes,
for how else will the ripe fruit fall?
And if you cannot eat the coco
nuts, there will be clams. It was
not so the time I mounted for
your mind, I found an icy slope,
and couldn't spike the upward
trail with all my heel dug firm.

I promise
land, with palms and hurricanes,
for how else will the ripe fruit fall?>>>>


Intuitive and rich writing

e

Hi Desiree:

Your words silence us with their beauty. Exquisite! Too good for comment!

Thanks for sharing.

Best Always,
John

Very nice of you guys to fan the flames,  winter and all. 

Thanks so much.

D

Egg Hunt_____________________

In the egg of it, in the brightly dyed
design smudged hidden grass deep of
who wll come to rescue or trample it..
do your best to step bunny soft and
look down. Love is hard boiled, then
lightly placed in a color meant to turn
about what is sniffing for bigger game.
There we have all taken a fall, prowling
for dozens until the right one caught
our greed by the throat and told us
to put the basket down.  I was only
a black jelly bean short of not finding
you purple and happy for fake straw.

Lovely, D. Always like Spring to hear your voice.

milner

Glad for the lack of that black jelly bean.  It's a wonderfully original take on the egg hunt, with the usual wonderfully original language, too.  May I link to this from my blog http://poemsworthyourtime.wordpress.com  ?

Rick

The going? No. it wasn't at all
eager in step, or even sure of
where to head. Seems getting
here had its own plan. Godly
elbowing every decision. That
is how I laugh. No, really. If I
had managed to become the
successful writer I was meant
to be, I wouldn't have learned
that you cannot crush an egg
held pressed between both of
your palms no matter how hard
you try. People miss that sort
stuff when they are too busy
moving like pieces of chess. And
how and when did the line of
pawns lose face? Seems you
need a front line, those brave.
Catapult the clever mare, yes,
we do. Oh the joys and luxury
of living big. It all starts with
knowing more than you need.
Finish school? Why? Because....
one more credential is God.

dw/08

Lovely.  The pawns have always been faceless.  If you knew them, you wouldn't be able to feed them into the meat grinder.

Hey Rick,

Brave of you to comment.... because reading this now.....I have no clue what it means.  I think it started out as a commentary on how fate seems to make plans for us.....but that's all I remember.

Thanks to you and Mil for reading the easter poem as well.  I think it works until the black jelly bean stuff. I often let my poems go on a whim, but that's what this board is for I guess.

Have a good weekend.

d

Hillary's Book Recalls King's Death

At the bottom the pot,
some of the pinto beans are burning,
but there are enough others on top
to smother the stench.
Hillary is at the stove remembering
when she fed a pack of revolutionaries
at gun point,
or maybe her salsa was just hot,
prompting one fist to pound the table cloth.
Hunched over the tortilla steam,
she's forgotten which.

This leads us to her rickety recollection of
Dr. Martin Luther King's death. Most probably
another lie, but certainly a better practiced one.

She pauses a long pause. Takes a labored breath, pauses again....
"I walked into my dorm and threw my books on the bed.
I remember feeling hopeless, and wondering where the country could go from there?

Her thrown book recalls it more like this.
It was almost lunch. I was hurled because
she didn't get what she wanted on her quiz.
Someone down the hall yelled  "Dr. King has been shot!" 
And Hillary said "Where should we go for lunch?
dw/08

If I plant the maple right there
where the fence slants across
the drive...it will block my view
of them and theirs of me. Not
that anybody's been offensive
on either side, but they could
think I care about their life, the
way I stand behind glass doors
jokingly telling the pine trunks
that I love their ivy half a hose.

Better views can be had. Lake
shores, or blue mountains. We
bought this house in the same
way birds look for nests. It was
safe, there was a good school
near, some friends. It's hard to
leave here now. I can't seem
to trade her broken tree house
for wider unobstructed views.

It's almost time to get the mail.
Our street is a long downslope.
On a rainy day like this, when
trapped leaves rush in gutters
like manless wild kyaks, a flash
of lightning might fool me into
thinking I see my girls trying to
outrun mulch mobilized debris.

No cards or gifts, just flyers, bills.
Walking back I see places where
the grass still hasn't grown. This
is where caravans of Barbie cars
blazed a mini route 66. I have all
fifty states in my back yard, or so
the dolls would say, after rushing
back from Nevada at the call of a
grape or cherry popsicle. When it
rains, those flavors drip with what
ever else falls hard from heaven.

Move? right, mountains and lakes,
but it is what can no longer be seen
that still enchants. Let's fix the nest.

I like this a lot.  Last 3 stzs are super!

Rick

Sappy.  A mama poem.  Guess you gotta reflect though.  Thanks for the comment.
_________________________________________________ ________


Jeeter is a flim flam of learn bits. He wants a rule or two,
enough to pass a test, to get into something bigger than

where he is. I got nothing but drills. The how you do and
how you do and do again. There's no getting by practice

for having a thing sure. Oh surely it will be forgot, but the
effort it took to rent it a while is the real test of whether

you get something bigger down the road.  Just show up
and work hard the grind is where art gets its final polish.

dw/08

As nice a statement of ars poetica as I've seen in a long time.

Rick

That means a lot to me, Rick.  Thank you.
__________________________________


Hey, Normally I love furry kids. Long as Chuck
doesn't lick me. But lately I have noticed that

pet lovers are kittypup drunk. "You gotta try
my Australian Shepard" Ann's friend says. Ugly

thing. Tonic, no vodka. Scratch-sniffily-wagger
of countless bailing fleas. Mongrolian barker at

of doorbells, mailmen and little treats. So he
clean scraps from tile and and confusingly tilts

his head. It only means he doesn't know which
one of your shoes he will maul during your nap.

If onlly our fingertips bled the colors of life,
the way it wakes us in the spring. Be sure
that then we would Midas the vacantness
of what can't bring itself to be bold. To be
truthful, there are many pale walls. Clocks
and photos do their best to compensate.
But wishing to be brush stroked the color
of -to hell with it- is at least one basement.

dw/08

The color of to-hell-with-it.  I've seen eyes that color.

Rick

We got a waivered count
of tick tock brush teeth go
get and fall asleep. It's art
as much as mountains have
valleys spliitting them apart.
Some sweep a clean porch
this a way, same way back.
that or pour more and drink.
that or pour more and drink.
Those do overs of twice plus
are in us. We seek to break
from the routine, but habit
is the first sketch. The very
lines lived within, and sung
by those left one voice less.

They remembered her way.
She always came with food.
Cans of corn, green beans,
whatever was on sale. The
gesture was a pattern. Not
less than how the waves of
an ocean wear a shore down
by constantly caressing it, or
knowing where to find shade
at high noon. Sitting in pantries
now are stacks no shorter than
the Ozarks highest peak if they
all were piled up in one place.

Information Overrrrrrload______________


This if for three o'clock. The day's first sag.
The hour when heads cock left and right
to limber the neck. The upper right pie of
what's been done and how much remains.

I grant you a waiver of the piles. We make
too much of such thin slices of tree.  Lost
pages are not the end of us, but rather our
beginning. Once we carried everything we

knew in our heads, chanting to ourselves
soft spoken songs for recall. No one knew
the terror of missing documents, or forsaw
how critical a sticky post-it note would be.

They say that all we know only occupies a
tenth of the brain, but the surface area of
a desk is limited. Sturdy piles wiill not stand
higher than globes. If there are ceiling fans

in the office, even less. Every page weighs
the same, full, empty, important or scratch.
And every hand-out we are forced to read
replaces a lullabye we were meant to sing.

Nudge you a brush into some corner
and only paint one side of a wall. It
may take a steadier approach than a
drip slop stroke. It may take a bristle
at the end of the row, or your own
fingertip. The color may look good
after the first coat, but be too dark
when you finish. Then there are the
suns rays that will judge fresh paint
from all angles in varying intensities.
Morning is kind. Even bedrooms that
face east can endure its comments.
With noon comes unexpected hints
of orange, and dusk cries for a lamp.
Never stray far from your reaction to
that first sample of paint. Dwell in how
perfect that small square of biege felt
in your hand. Maybe you were wrong,
or maybe your were Modigliani, in which
case only the likes of Picasso would clap.

I love that one, and have been made better for the read. I thank you, N

Thank you Nora

____________________________________________
 
Paint Chip / Draft 2


Nudge you a brush into some corner
and only paint one side of a wall. It
may take a steadier approach than a
drip slop stroke. It may take a bristle
at the end of the row, or your own
fingertip. The color may look good
after the first coat, but be too dark
when you finish. Then there are the
suns rays that will judge fresh paint
from all angles in varying intensities.
Morning is kind. Even bedrooms that
face east can endure its comments.
With noon comes unexpected hints
of orange, and dusk cries for a lamp.
Never stray far from your reaction to
that first sample of paint. Dwell in how
perfect that small square of biege felt
in your hand. Maybe you were wrong,
for four whole walls, room after room.
Or maybe your were Modigliani, in which
case only the likes of Picasso would clap.

In the now thick of morning smell
with birds tweeting and the shade
twitching like a junkie of sun, here
I deepfry the first thought of God
in the oil of calm, in the vat of my
mind, bubbling. Heaven tastes of
sweet unfinished things, of a pool
tarp that took on rain and allowed
tadpoles to hatch. Nothing can be
done to eclipse the virginity of it.

Just as wind no more belongs in the mouths of the dead
so are you foriegn from the heart that made a fifth chamber
of your words, but vacancies are not an end. More is echoed
in the hollow than the full. It seems that memory can dance,
not waltz, but tap, endlessly, jazzily, show after show. Legacy
is born of a desperate reach that gets held, so there you are,
still behind the curtains of my ribs, practicing for opening night.

What a wondrous crop you are growing here, D.

milner

I would love to see "Paint Chip" in submissions one of these days.......much enjoyed....xo M

The tide's got some nerve. A sinewed slime
of pod heaving kelp shore long. It means to
unsalt itself of all that gets had by currents.

The same swell overfills these eyes. My pupils
float like dyiing black jellyfish that have no focus.
Still, the moon is not blamed. I cherish it, honor

it, covet its circumference. Have I not shown
you my collection of lesser spheres, fat pearls,
gazing balls, marbles and globes? This compact

mirror is best. It is a flat moon that goes where
I go. It hides in the starless abyss of my purse,
ready to check smiles and those fast fading lips.

The tide's got some nerve.  You can say that again.  Frightening and true.  Aging.  Not for sissies.  Not pretty.  But it will go on and kelp will pile up and nature will have her way.  Its way.  I begin to think of nature as genderless these days.

You're always interesing to read, D.  No exception here.

Yucca breviflora, mojave hot,
born on the California border
where the sand understands
cries of thirst in two tongues.

It's leaves are said to be the
hands of Joshua who told the
sun not to move. Imagine day
and night all at once. Who can
scamper in half light? Where is
there enough darkness to hide?

I would not know what to make
of such time. The timid lizard in
me would keep under a known
rock until dark or light prevailed.

dw

There is something phenomenal in this, D.  Something organic [as, to my mind, the Mexican population in California is organic to its soil].  I don't know what any of the answers are to language and border problems.  I see imagining day and night all at once as the U.S. being both heaven and hell all at once; or both answer and question; or problem and answer . . .

It's in S2 wants to toss the apostrophe.  And I may have read a bunch of stuff into this you did not intend. 

It's very kind of you to read and comment, Lynn.  Forgive me if I do not always respond to your notes. It may be some time before I know what my poetry means, if I learn at all.

d

He stuck two bags of Earl Grey into a hole
in his jaw and said,"tea coagulates blood."

And I am now to learn how to die slowly.
The saviors of time include pills, long walks,

Vegetables and garlic. Someone forces me
to accept that I am living for an early death.

A gift of tennis shoes is sure to come. I blow
smoke in all of it. I was a poor rat, corporate

fueled by Cheetos and bologna. I ran many a
mile in their wheels, now they can push mine.

dw

On to the sequestered how, the mystery of being
good. It's easy to forget the joy a fresh cup of joe
can bring because the reports come first. Never are
the goals displaced. They reappear on calendars and
call to us from offices far away. But although thumbs
press on us from can to cain't Oliver always winks at
Mary Ann, a kind of revolt you come to appreciate,
in the battle of getting ahead. I used to run at the
numbers like an Indian scout, but they got too big.
Now I pick them with a Vegas whim, close my eyes
and hope harder than the last dime. It' all on eight.

A true gleeman archives untypic stones,
rough, smooth, crypto clastic, fossilized.
He then piles them at the entrance of
his small cave. They not only serve as a
makeshift door, but offer conversations
from the past. The stones tell of floods
and viscious winds, of the molten anger
that transforms the very nature of rock.
He looks at his mountain bits longer than
most, turing them in his palm, smelling
them for a trace of river bed. Now and
then a dead fish will say how it came to
be compressed into the very fiber of a
surface so hard. A true gleeman must
then close his eyes and hold his breath.

your writing has caused me to realise something about my own.
I need to take smaller chunks and elaborate.

Nice that we can all learn from each other.  Thanks for the comment.
_________________________________________________ ________

Pear halves in prison issued stripes,
how happily they left their bowls,
where all they did was bruise each
other with a decay of getting old.

Summer kitchens grieved. Pounds
of peaches tried to be better fruit.
None blamed the weather or trees,
but concentrated on the details of

that one Saturday, when a cook
armed with a sharp stainless knife
halved six ripe innocents, seared
them, and ate their marked flesh.

Pose and stay, August still. It's a Lladrone day.
This hot, humid air can suspend our gestures
in a sculpted hold. Our sweat is so much glaze.

I am a figurine of walking dead, on display in
any shade to be found. Oh to be broken by
a sudden breeze, or know rain. Proudly once

I floated in refreshing pools, sipping tropical
concoctions to calypso tunes. But the water
got too hot. Today,Tortellini could become

al-dente left unstirred (during the peak sun.)
Say you'll come with an oscillating fan, a block
of ice, a parasol, a lemon lime creme popsicle.

Somewhere there is a cool slab yet untaken
by a corpse. I wonder if they would have us
for an hour or two, at the county morgue?

a ball of twine______________


And so it was...that a simple loop de loop
noodled itself around until a bouncless ball
of wool thread fatsphered a universe only
a cat could unravel. Meow. I almost forgot,
you too possessed a feline mind, delighted
in the overlapping order of diverging angles.

And just as mesmerizing was the rolling out
of the yarn, a single thread that said it was
the middle of any two things. You pointed
out a right and a left, two halves, maybe
one better than the other, who could tell.
You kept a clear focus on where opposites
meet, and saw how after a long unraveling
there's nothing left to divide. No left or right.
No ball, no string, no crazy cat scratching.

Mining my own badness______


Mining my own badness________


I learned about Algerbra mining for
tears in my elbow's crook.  There
in the dark, one minus self respect
equaled wrong. I never earned the
pay of one who knows, nneither by
off hand compliments or cash. I've
heard it's well known that injustices
of such mines are still in existence.
I think the school janitors can atest
to that. When cleaning pencil marks
from tables some encounter water
droplets that can not be explained.
You see they look up only to find
that the ceiling tiles aren't leaking.

nneither=neither?

as always, love it, it just flows, and reminds me of my school, how much I hated math, among other oddities.

Thanks EB.  Nice of you to read and comment.

_________________________________________________ ________


Parasol in Cocoa__________________



A front dipped, chinook like, glacial, nordic.

It caught me under dressed and stood my

pores at attention for the geese overhead.

It told me winter was a long cold, nothing

to be filled with books or mindless crafts.

I resolved to make a fire by the only way

at hand, flint of my flesh, ignition of birth.

I subtropically contorted to the onslot of

an endless blizzard. And when that snow

melted, I put a parasol in my hot cocoa.

Obeah________________________________

Maybe it was you I found, buried in the talus
sludge, where rock connives to form words or
tints the earth copper love brown. I couldn't
excavate your gaze. It had the hollow hunger
of my own. But I did step back and allow the
sun to bathe your crypt. Your discovery could
have made me for life, it had a noteworthiness
of rare significance. All I had to say was "Look"
and my colleagues would have swooned, dug,
gathered every mud plastered hair and finger
nail with the gusto of sure fame. But I covered
you up. No glass cases or cross country tours.
Stay in the peace of the unknown, undisturbed. 

Were you out in the falling leaves?

In October those dropping colors

makes us feel like heroes in a tinker

tape parade. Were there squirrels,

busy as politicians at the close of a

campaign? They have the game down,

you know. Clever thiefs. They stuff

acorns in their mouths and leave the

caps pointed up in the mud. You or I

or any grublover thinks we see food.

But we are one turn from an empty

hope, another promiseless platform.

Boy, you said it.

Delightful, BTW.

Lutein____________________


Yesterday was strange. It was
sort of like I'd forgot to take a
vitamin, except for that I never
take vitamins. Uh..redefine you
as plastic bottle of wellness at
most backness of highest shelf.
But what does your label read?
Surely not glucosoman, omega
flee. My squinting can make out
a lutein gel cap, a balm to heal
my eyes, and yesterday when I
didn't get a dose of your colors,
the sun seemed painfully bright.

Who does not want their apple candied and rolled
in pecans? Every goblin of October has a wick left
over from July. And every popsicle stick wishes for
something else to hold. True, caramel is a topping
known to be a mess, but at the core of anything,
there is a seed worthy of the fall. Nibble just a bit.
I mean this as crisply as the hint of never vanishes.

My Magic_______________________________



Glass does impede,

but for the preservation of art

we sacrifice angled views.

I have a Seth Winegar that hangs

carelessly by a west facing window.



The print is titled "Misty View".

Glass mocks fog well, so in the case of

this particular piece,

some level of obscurity always

compliments.



At times,

I too am all shine,

and put a glaze on everything I hear.

If a long vowel holds past the count of no...

I believe my high gloss has full permission

to decieve.



You can take fog for glare, or glare for fog and

in the lazy hazy misterious step asidedness forget

that I am likewise aided by not being seen

or understood.

This is the kind of air that has a tell,
a winter hint, a wet mitten warning.

though often chimneys contradict,
promising soon hyacinths. I saw you fall,

in the mass execution of the leaves,
spinning counter to the will of life.

Demanding, in your haphazard descent,
all back wages for the shade given.

Des, #202 is good, really good. A perfect observation of nature and man together. If it were on the submit board, I'd pick it.

I took your advice, Lavonne.  Thank you for helping me.

____________________________________________

Rafting has both placidness and moments
of unbalance. In quiet stretches, we float,

hardly noticing the current.  Look, here fish
seem still. But in reality, their tail fins churn

against the downstream's constant nagging.
And what now? Fast as an overhanging bluff

steals high noon sun, we go in tow, holding,
paddling rickety toddle adrift, splash~swallow

~splash. Here it takes every muscle we have,
and a few we didn't know about. When the

guide says back peddle right, any hesitation
could throw us inspinso -hold on- keep level.

We have run this stretch twenty feet higher
and not swallowed any surface scum. Just

around this curve is a channel whose layers
are magnificently colored, so whatever you

do, don't let the camera drop. It'lll be hard
to get back to this place again any time soon.

i met you first at ringing rocks

tapping on a boulder with the

heel of your boot. my crossing

was unsure,  i was moving on

all fours when my locket struck

a stone not three stones from

you. most notes sound and go

ignored. but I think maybe we

both heard something unusual.

here, you should have this, you

should have this, you this have.

I would not have you starve bear.
Though the seas rise, and the ice
melts, and the glaciers fall apart in
chunks of indifference too big for
the sea to swallow. I wish you so
many fish, bear. Dead red belly up,
bloodying cub tides, making pink
rosettes of the floating ice. Pick
a salmon bear. Eat of it, bone and
all, but don't be surprised if after
there's a fossil imprint in your paw.

Bastard leaves move in droves.
broken sticks are madder than
dirt that can't push up weeds.
I tried a life. Everyday I upped
and swore a pulse, made word
soup, the mumbles of without
you. My broth has chilled. Gone
still as clean spoons. No taste of
good laugh. I can't seem to find
the pasta vowels to say what I
use to say during those hearty
meals. I miss the slurpwipe spill,
the tandem snap of our napkins
unfurling in their eager undress.

Sexy napkins!  I'm delighted by the surprise of the last 2 lines!  Good poem!

Rick

Your hobby is the bomb. Better than free

pizza coupons or two for one beverages.

And I would run ahead with a sign, a big

sign of a big box with a big bow. But I'm

sorry to say hardly anyone would follow.

There is this suspicion now, about ornate

gift wrapping paper and a desire to give.

People suspect more is meant by it than

it intends. They're now convinced ribbon

binds and tape sticks. I opened what you

gave. And I must admit, they knew best.

The Nail______________________

So there I was, and rather than have

the wall chop my head like a guillotine

I punctured first. A hammer was glad

to assist. Once in place I sat without

a single wire around my neck until the

likes of your exhibit needed hung. Axis

and Atlas cries then, chronic soreness

of display. I gathered by conversations

overheard that the weight of what was

framed merited distress. But only those

taught to appreciate could really know.

Me, I was relieved there was no glass.

D, for me this is one of your better ones. I think the double spacing does more than simply change the view. At least for this one it adds breath and breadth. I want to read this more than once...

Thanks Larry.  The space does give the writing a little room to pull breath.  You are right.  Thanks for reading....d


Late is the hour that tries the mind's reach.

Here I would say in my exhaustion, I agree.

But hovering larger is this course in check,

and I anguish that a rabid skunk will lunge

in front of us and you will yell, look, God!

Plainly, this page was where you first

filed grievance on my lips, condemned

my only grace. I broke your pawlessy.

No tang unzapping by tongue allowed.

Then I was find twenty hollers, really!

You got no lesson but for what I kiss.

I like the sounds of this.  Got stopped at pawlessy and had to ponder.

Rick

A play on "policy" Rick.  Nice of you to visit.  Thanks for reading.

_________________________________________________ _

People do update. Good as what is, critics deem it of another era

and mallots show up. Walls never come down as easily as they sat

straight. Something about holding back for a long time reinforces

why they stand, as well as what hangs on them. I envisioned this

wide open space, an area that let light in from all sides. Who knew

that the between of what couldn't be was a load bearing partition?

The later something is the less you look for it.
Over two months ago I placed an order for a
pet nail trimmer that never came. First week
out I checked the front porch every four pm.

Week two I wondered if my neighbor got the
package by mistake. By week three I thought
about it only when I saw the ad on television.
All the while I was being scratched the same.

After a month, I no longer looked for a painless
way to cut the dog's nails. I just lived with the
assault of happy claws as a matter of greeting.
One day I recieved a notice that the trimmer

had been in great demand. Along with it came
an apology and an assurance that back orders
would be filled soon. I shredded both.  I wasn't
home the day my pet nail trimmer finally arrived.

dw/08

From above, was it ever clear enough to see
a sunken galleon in its grave?  Bet not.  Fins
keep sea kelp circling enough to conceal all
treasures that storms hoard. Wrecks deserve
their peace. What withstood the sea's back
hand and ultimately sunk is a legend only for
the deep. Gurgles make of clam tripe, pearls.
And hulls become the condominiums of coral.

Lovely Desiree,

  I'd nix "the" from the last line. I don't think it will mess up the shape.

Sue :)

I think the beat needs that "the" Sue". Excellent Desiree, thanks.

B.]

Clear Cutting______________________________________


This time of year, the turning of the trees reveals where the
lumber industry clear cut Mt. Nebo’s slopes. They promised
to restore what they took, but replanted only pines, one far
stretch of unpocked green runs the along the bottom of the
ridge.  If we continue to believe their lies, the colors we have
known will not have the range or expanse for those who come
after us.  What we got in return for the oak was a boom of new
homes for sale.  Houses no one could afford. Houses with blank
white walls that run for one far stretch of unoccupied domicile.
More or less the same that was left for the birds and squirrels.

dw/08