i dream someday
due to lack of recognition
(in my own lifetime)
my poems will be dug up
perhaps by some digital
archaeologist
finding pages ruffled
and singed from burning
stanzas lost through the years

perhaps like emily
they will find
my poetry worth only
a glance
to be moved on,
forgotten

and while i’ll never be
recognized for great words
for one small moment
perhaps

they’ll know i knew just
how poorly i wrote
and forever remember me
as awkwardly
painfully
self-aware

dress it up proper
take tums so it wont fart
stuff it, pad it, use botox
teach them to call it art

in hills like these
we wait for sun
to semi-peak through clouds

knowing now
these lost people
dwell in mud-built homes

we come and play
where they work
joy fills us in their fields

the sweat on their brow
the same as ours
though brought through toil not cheer

today i came
i saw i conquered
and left you here to farm

i hope someday
that i’ll be back
and bring you love you cant ignore

it’s time to man up
wake up early
hit the road
throw your bikes in the back and
head for better weather
hills
dirt
mud for our faces

it’s time to man up
mount up
and head out

ride for hours
and hope we can get back

winter makes life hard sometimes
the temperature drops daily
as coal dust falls silting the ground
in grey
black.
and drops and drops
reminding you there are forces bigger
than your work day
and drops and drops
you pile on more clothes and fight
smaller colds
and drops

till every man made blemish
is covered in virgin white
every sin forgotten

in snow.

can’t be cold to cold bodies
can’t feel the warmth either
numbness to numb ones

a few years back i learned to vomit
and over time i understood

should you pay attention to what you
put in you’ll soon better understand

just what exactly you’ll get out. and
lately i’ve learned to bring up blues

and greens. yellows are natural but
deep hue purples take focus, skill.

lately i cannot vomit enough. just to
stand back and see what’s come up

sometimes it’s poetry and sometimes
just prose but almost never a short

story. a few years back when i learned
to vomit, i never imagined the love

affair she and i would have. my need
to eat slowly decreasing as my own

vomit becomes my inspiration for more

education built my confidence
in things like failing and dashed
dreams
rejection letters from major
and then minor publications
hung on my wall in defiant pride

one editor called me and effer
in not such nice terms.

i learned just then a masters
does basically nothing for me
unless it leads to a degree of
cow patties
Piled higher and Deeper (PhD)
at which point it matters
not whether i’ve been published
i’m officially qualified to brainwash
you in the same manner i was
treated

welcome to undergraduate hazing
as soon as i’m tenured i’ll be a master
hazer removing your brains and
giving you heavy hopes
so when you dash them on the cliffs
of desire (you’re writing sucks by the way)
they’ll at least leave a legacy of
scarred bluffs, cliffs, and perhaps
sticker laden walls of shameful rejection
letters

disciples. love one another.
all people know by this
that you are for my will
if you have love

my nights were mostly sleepless
till hours after bedtime
where pictures of my third grade
baseball team slowly turned into
typewriters (something that at the time
terrified me) and fear was something
i grew used to. staying up nights
hoping tonight my door would be
left open to see down the brown
carpeted hallway to the light at the end
and hope to hear the voices of my parents
talking to soothe me to sleep
begging myself to pass out before
the voices stopped and i was left in silence

now i want you so badly not to fear
a thing at night or during the day i want
to protect you from anything you might
ever wonder is dangerous
to know your father is here and ready
to keep you safe. i want myself to feel safe
to call out to the One who really is in charge
and sing songs which bring comfort
in your ear as they remind me i’ve no reason
to be afraid even when your mother is
gone and we’re alone in a house much too
big for two people (really just one and a
munchkin). where the brown carpet is gone
but the lights stay on and i’ve no one to talk
with to soothe you to sleep so you scream
and you scream and i hold you and hold you
again knowing the longer i hold you the more
tired you become and the less likely to sleep
and you’ll have to scream yourself to sleep tonight
something i’m not wholly against as long
as your screaming from disobedience, or just
a lack of desire to sleep

but if you’re afraid i’m here for you
though you wont know these words till you’re
old enough to no longer fear the dark
and your sister will be there with you to hold
to hug and to read to.

and just so you know typewriters are really
wonderful things you should never fear
for anything which makes words is created
in the image of God. he used words after all
to make you and me and the sun above us we
never see.

beach reading
sun shining
tsunamied

grey grass
mere nuclear wasteland
they call it a holiday
and go outside
bundled

roaming the streets in their pajamas
as though sleep walking
stepping over trash
feces
everything but others
as the dead are swiftly swept
from the streets

they call it a holiday

the sieve and the sand hit 2000 posts today (just now thanks to my help), which on my recollection is about 1998 poems. Thats a buttload of poetry (please don’t get hung up on the semantics of the word, the truth is a boat probably can hold substantially more than a butt – that, however is why this is a poetry blog, because words are inherently more awesome than just words and a buttload IS more than a boatload even though physically cramming a whole boatload into a butt is probably nothing more than fodder for a sieve poem).

the point is, the group of gentleman(women) who have been writing for the sieve have each grown substantially more talented over the nearly two years since the blog began. and its about time we get some recognition. my plan for this recognition is two fold.

1) we do nothing and sit around like a good artist should, sucking our thumbs, rocking in fetal positions in the corner wondering when someone ‘important’ is going to report us to the Atlantic Monthly at which point one of us (obviously the most talented one – whom i shall leave unnamed as though it’s all obvious to each of us who that is) will receive a large book deal and probably a poet laureate for some second-class first-world nation and then invite the rest of us to lunch – inevitably leading to our fame and wealth etc etc….

and: (I know these seem mutually exclusive but again, don’t get hung up on the semantics)

2) somehow garner more fans for our lovely website on facebook and hope to spread the word that way or through twitter or something of the sort. we need to brag more. or at least just write more about how awesome we genuinely think the sieve is because it is awesome. not always. i’ll admit that i spit out more crap poems than most of you combined, but it leads to the occasional brilliance. and this blog has always been more about being prolific than be proficient. and then this brilliance grows with time and our crap to brilliance ratio has slowly but dramatically grown in favor of brilliance

this is a good thing.

now the sieve and the sand has risen to the top of awesomeness (there is a scale, we are at the top, directly above chuck norris and penut butter in a tube) and since there is no digg.com for poetry (please someone out there get on it) we have no way of being regularly recognized as invincibly awesome as we are except through the help of wordpress’ occasional promotion to the top of the poetry section via computer algorithm.

i’m rambling.

gentlemen. we are the giants. we bare the shoulders on which the greats have stood. and i for one am going to take this sitting down.

writing.

on my computer.

regularly.

because i effing love writing poetry.

thank you for joining me. lets bring the sieve to 3, 5, and 10 thousand in glory.

who’s with me?

minority enrolled
football injury
expelled

words are more inspiring
when composed of seemingly
random pictures
rather than strokes of
alphabets.

letters aren’t beautiful unless
strung together and altogether
forgotten in the meaning
they create

our eyes graze by them
seeing words
not fugly letters

hoping meaning wont dissapoint

a perfectly round pot
with nary a spout
holds in my rare oolong
so tea can pour out

the soft purple sand clay
on hand crafted shelf
brings me joy in the way
i bring it myself

big red robe they still call it
the emperor once drank
now passed down through the ages
that i may partake