if i

poetry

if i better understood what was happening
perhaps i could control it better,
keep from being swept away

look forward to the right things
have hope where i should

if i cared less i could do more
if i was humble more i would move straighter in exactly the direction I thought we should all go and then everything could just line up and work and be easier than it is and there would be profound rest instead of mild dread.

it would be nice
if i could just… somehow…

Water Poem

poetry

Pools are fine to tarry in
until the weather cools
and you are forced to drain it
half-of-the-way down
and add a mix of special chemicals
and wrap the top with a thick
taught tarp until springtime

The river becomes quite attractive
should you have a proper vessel
and though the ice won’t form
so heavily to stop your cut
the cold will be close to unbearable
at times, and there is always
the fear of rough rocks and
hard current and capsize

I think I’d like to brush up
on my sea-faring bends and shanks

The pool was perfect, after all,
for learning how to swim

Almost North of Town

poetry

It is early in the season

The leaves have slowly begun
to turn and fall and scatter

You cut a fine form in this
chill, half-covered moonlight

You don’t want to hurt anyone
(you don’t make any promises)

I mention I have toughness in spades
(you assure me I do not)

When we turn back down the trail
I am not cold or uncomfortable

(but I shake sleep from one leg)

When we return from the trail
I think we are both smiling

It is early in the season,

after all

you are a great adventurer

poetry

although my soul is an overgrown
jungle
where both the smallest and
largest things exist to eat you
wholly
you perservere there, in the middle
carving out a home and making
friends with the monsters hidden
by shadow
you are a great adventurer
and what’s more, you are still beautiful
even as the vines encroach upon you
while you sleep
to hug you in a deathly way
your smile is the only light around
as you carefully trim your way through
looking for me

i don’t know where i am and why
you would look for me
and it is my confusion that grows the
jungle, anyhow
yet you search for me
with a warm embrace
you, a great adventurer
whose heart is warm like a million suns
whose beauty shines beneath layers of
jungle-trash
and i love you very much
for searching
for finding me
and so much more

loci

poetry

up ten stairs
through the bare wooden
door with no handle
and around the 180 degree
turn passed the small room
on the left and the attic
door on the right there
is a white door with an axe
mark just up and left from the
fading gold doorknob

on the left there is a big,
wide bed and on the right
a CRT tv sitting on a
flimsy wooden stand with a wooden
facade and broken plastic wheels
next to maybe sometimes an equally
flimsy corner-desk with similarly
broken wheels and ugly wooden facade

i can stand here whenever i please

in the middle of the room
with two windows facing
west raymond st
and maybe a 6 foot ceiling (if that)
a converted attic room with strange
stucko patterns scraped carelessly
on a ceiling that feels eternal

there is a large, wide, white bookshelf
in the middle
of the two windows where so far
all i have are two pictures inside
one manilla envelope
one of myself, wearing the vicksburg
bulldogs junior varsity soccer outfit
at 16 years old, young dumb and athletic
and the other of my two parents before
they hated one another
holding me in front of a tractor somewhere
my mother was pretty with big hair
my father had bleach white sneakers

the newest addition to the room sits
in the right windowsill
he looks black but in the sunlight you
can see that his dark fur is brown
he has big, loving green eyes
and although i used to come here to sit
and contemplate things and store away
memories in devoted silence

i now just sit with tiny

his purring so loud that it clicks
as he rubs his head against my arm
and licks me a few times
as he is happy to see me
frozen in time

Thoughtfulness

poetry

I’ve thought about you on and off since February
sometimes in broad daylight on short walks
other times in the calm dark shadow of a ceiling fan

Once I hoped we would be good friends forever
regardless of how the hammer fell and the shoes dropped
I hoped we’d be on speaking terms, at least
Perhaps that I’d keep your photo in my phone’s directory.

I don’t hope for anything to do with you these days;
not to speak to you, not to catch your smile,
not to get your regards from a friend of a friend

I think my only hope, these days
is that you don’t think of me
at all

hip hop will make you (jump jump)

poetry

wood legs and broken glasses
you wade down this river on tubes
gliding on your asses

the water freezes your arms
and your legs
you never know if you’re just
someone’s misplaced pegs

pegs out of place at this job
pegs out of place in a mob
breakfast, dinner, more broken glasses,
on your couch like a worthless blob

but you live life you get up every day
you work hard, or (so you think) till you hit the hay
and your girl she smiles at you faintly
and your dog still listens to you gaily

now it’s the weekend, screw on your leg
and get down to the river you worthless peg
these tubes aren’t going to wade by themselves
this river is effing cold even for elves

that shit

poetry

done gone and hit the fan
like a flood in Louisiana it was no small deal
and now (due to the fact that the fan was on high)
shit done gone and been flung all over all your other shit

time to clean that shit up and get on with your shitty life

Five more than a circle

poetry

It was August of ’15
and all the colors and sounds
were perfectly in season
with the heat just so,
though the humidity was
lower than it often was

I remember riding an empty bed
clutching a pillow imagining
all of the ways a man could
betray his brother

A shoe dropped 210 days later
and in a moment I thought I knew
at least a few of those ways
as plain as if they’d
come to lay on me

But now, in august of ’16
I am left sitting on the porch
of my old-fashioned city home
and I am forced to wonder;
if a man could betray his brother,
were they truly brothers at all?

Distant Points in Space

poetry

Perhaps I am no bigger than a pin-head and
no brighter than a firefly fluttering
in an infinite blackness dotted by
yellow lights, some that flicker and some
that seem to have burned forever and ever

Perhaps those lights are just like me
in the vast wide blackness that I flutter in;
perhaps they flutter about, too, hoping
to reach one another

Perhaps they are simply distant points
in space, flashing as a beacon so I may
know just how much of infinity I have
fluttered through

I have not fluttered through much

flies live so long

poetry

flies live so long
on excuses to stay
with crooked flight patterns
both pointless and unique

oh flies live so long
and yet you can’t kill
them  fast enough
for more will fill
in their place

is it best to just wait
them out?
until there’s nothing
left for them to eat?

and do your best
in the meantime

but why do flies
have to live
for so long?

Do you know what your problem is?

poetry

You do not understand passion

So, when it overtakes you,
you feel as if you are crazy
and you became disgusted
in your uncontrol

Then you make up reasons
that you hate yourself
and you sit quietly on a sofa
with the television loud enough
to dull your senses

and you wait for every feeling
that you do not understand
to slip away from you,
not realizing that they
are what could save you
all along

Dreams of efflorescence

poetry

Not even a line
To say: i don’t write anymore
To 2014, I lost
lost to fear, inaptitude or insecurity
A student of life
always failing

But if I were a tree
I’d be beautiful and inviting
my branches
perches for many a colorful bird
My leaves lush and green
a caress call for the wind
and my sap, a dizzying sunshine sweetness
gods would come fill up their cups
And when I’d bloom, I’d bare my soul’s essence
a soft luminous scent floating into space
My roots would run deep into the dark soil
a bond dating to the early song of beginnings
when the sun was young and life new
And if I were to be cut down
I’d become a chair, or a footstool,…

If I were a tree
I’d know
what it’s like to be useful
What it’s like to belong

 

Amidst eternity

*~* Alternate title and word of the day : Jeremiad

 

 

 

these two weeks I give you up

poetry

for these two weeks
and these alone
I take a break from you (unwillingly)
and want you to know, if they weren’t making me
this would never be a thing

you’re made to be held
you’re built for use
every smooth and rough finish therein
but these folks consider you a risk
and I have to pretend I agree for a time

tin, leaf, bowl, bit, and only tobacco be ye
pot would be more quickly accepted
for it is nicotine free

absence will make my heart grow bitter
I need you to be strong for me