Year: 2008

A grumble of butter where a whimsical to-do. All allies resemble coast. Alligator bully go do do that voodoo. Better yet, breathe. That dress reminds me of a broken thumb, a family of drum manufacturers, a gum tree in summer. A dream of north, again. Do it nicely now like a milk cow might in October. Recorded suicide notes are all the rage, he said, as if that explained anything. Plans like clams end up in fritters. It rhymes so you can remember it or at least dance. I got to have a little tenderness or else medicine for breakfast. Half a dozen debutantes opted to study Gertrude Stein while two flights below them the hired band plunged into The Yellow Rose of Texas for the eighteenth time. Chagrin was his method. Relationship to situation as handshake is to gutter. Oh furious, oh specious kites, oh ambling groans of pain. The historical impact of print media always shut her up, especially when she was drunk. I’m not dead, I’m just zero. Try the caramelized onions with feta, the steak sautéed in vodka. Every snowflake makes me sing a prettily. Of the many yous, which was?

A penultimate oval to which one’s obligation is deeply felt. Opacity figures in as does the red of deity. Keep title for properly a fandango.

Nobody arrives, leaving sound of river. Crepuscular orange sentiment well trodden. The snow that hill was keeping in.

A roaring bull, a declamation. They walked regular in angles like stars. At hour when voices fade, drizzling down like old rain.

A lid, a bowl, a ladle, a trowel. A soil way of declaring proclaiming. Lizzie Borden’s broken wax.

Harrowing the rows along a memory of elm. Swing’s the thing. He wrote bearing in mind most of a favored wind.

Instrumental occidental. Keep your Jimmy Dean. The plane stoked low a redundant basket of globes.

Light found is one’s hand a plus. Char blackened bulbous as a ridden grill would also.

At 2 a.m. the sentences were like unruly sheep, flocking this way and that through my barn, I mean brain. Competing with the old execution to fall asleep fantasy ain’t easy. The naive nativity is never so nigh (as now).

The last night we sleep together we allowed we did. Faded spots farted where I’d sleep in my you. In the we moved a hallway. A dream reenacted back and forth. We rolled summer in the down hill.

All face was solace. One was the wall in near panic. Near the telephone glancing a state of pinned. Left warped whose first fear was Satan. In the record album suns a New Englandly way.

Where in winter cold and still so we. The alarm clock’s pink. Our cubbies more were boxes. An execution obsession with too much oxymoron. If that is not unhealthy, yes.

The barn an early site of intense posture reminiscent of defensive. Consider the many held with eye assumed. Were that like, it were. Any life can be weighed toward meaning. Sweet pumpkin in the guts.

Ask whether upon marriage a certain extreme of weather will deliver you. He loves centaurs, writes stories about them in his sleep, so I’m buying him a half a horse for the holiday. Avoid the patently poetic, if you wouldn’t mind.

The cardinal revisited the site of an old nest and fell briefly silent there. Memory vs. nostalgia, let the cage match begin! Well, for starters, I wrote a poem about cardinals.

It’s been a long downhill slide/uphill slog, pick your favorite sledding metaphor. The dog escaped through a hole in the fence but went only as far as the neighbor’s dung hill. Coffee stains on the work bench signify failure.

Are you ready for the fourth paragraph? Some men heft pens, others heft weapons, so let’s avoid drawing any quick conclusions. The question mark is not an ox though it may be said to physically resemble one.

The sea, my friend, dreamed you up and that’s how you came to be. What is the same for all of us? He wrote, believing it made a difference, but not knowing exactly how.

Pressed, they turned to the movies. A magnifying glass understood forever after as a weapon, a device of torture, which could, properly yielded, destroy the world. That was fourth grade, which more or less explains my subsequent boredom.

This line is for you, dear reader, may its icy contour illuminate the balance. She made a glancing reference to my shoulders twenty some odd years ago and the effect is unforgettable.

The mail coming back, what sounded like a somebody, A couple of beer cans reminded him of something but what. A double scotch with ice in a white plastic lawn chair.

A few robins cross low between pine trees, stopping to whistle from sagging fence posts. See the first nail of the moon creeping up the hills beyond her shoulder? In the almost-darkness he waited while she did.

Five years ago they shut down the crowd when everybody knew. Passing through on a Saturday, pretending afternoon. Her pickup was filled with crates of lettuce.

The same gray as lazy lemon, weathered and muscular. A drifting quality, dreaming on his feet. I know that one by heart.

Barter red deer tongue, flashy green butter oak. If somebody wants to steal, then all for market farming. A lawyer in Vermont got involved with divorce.

Montreal overnight took a last sad place. The drive you need to become the relationship hanging over your shoulder. Across the river, New Hampshire.

He opened his eyes in the darkness yes. He liked thinking of moonlight, the forest, newlyweds.

White is the new blue. Gone are the lost rat’s tears. While being here with you is the night song embodied.

Sliver of old fairgrounds on you and me both. Cast iron wedding plans heard hissing with grist. Or not or else or what.

Be patient, precise, literal, in a letter, or email, to whom. You and me sort of reluctantly out. Oh hell, just call ’em love poems and get on with it!

Turtle girl you crack a bit of smile and boom my crusty heart goes bang. The writer wrote she’d had it up to here with winter and beyond. Blustering consumers, rotten with coins, you’re about to be bitten by a crow.

It’s this poem, not the next one, that contains the all-important fox in the far field. Declare your intentions or prepare to meet your doom! Halberds, really, who can take them seriously?

The muddled heart leaps like a gazelle over thirteen years into all over again. Same old town, yeah, but now with you in it! What else but wisdom amidst all this useless longing?

Your heart is, was always, the idea of safe places. Years later, glad tidings, you glow to me so dearly.

She urged in his last letter a different narrator. Though few developing will consider stories. So I think all into all one text document then.

End up last ends midsentence. There is now parts, a whole, an ending. Narrowed down pondering narrowing down.

So possibly nine! Some combining, some some absorbed twin. A little lost what pull.

Got around watching fall save his life. Pillow and blanket, raisins and almonds. Our old dog was also I in part.

Just reheat old myths verbatim. For a cult I’d once been part of I was fast becoming weather-beaten. Starved faux riffing off.

Was at that point castles on paper using volume. Reading green, building moon. Other dogs, other obligations, and yeah, other directions.

Charged with that inner Albany sanctum again. A lot of stairs, a lot of doors and then just yesterday this flying.

Rain beside grass, broken rabbits, and all morning the dog chasing robins through the wet leggy asparagus. The mountain difficult before light back gracefully. Apples bleed green fire seeking roots.

White circle above crows between that eggshell hour of day. Goose eyes, too. The hunger out back, that fading scree.

The pulpit was like dying off to a grim beyond. At dusk, a cell phone, a robin’s egg sky. Remember what it feels like and you’ll never be alone!

Rocking chairs on a back deck nobody sits on anymore. My daughter offers old friends the cities of the world. Besides love, sleeping with you that summer was the only upshot.

Halfway up the curves past the talus. Underfoot, nobody. A string in summer unimpressed with cult worship.

Loosestrife in rain off a river disappearing overhead. Ten thousand songs filling empty bottles, your brown tattered sweater. Where pieces everywhere wonder at noon can I say to hell with it and drink again hard?

For a long time there was only the idea of you. Over tea, your eyes were there with me, ignoring the weather.

Driving north into the country of no leaves talking. Suddenly tobacco fields become familiar, the valley fills with light. Are we my father now but years ago?

Eviction leaves cold between holes up crying. “Play,” the last dog whimpers. Because the nights won’t pass without drinking.

November trees between New York and a funeral, stars bright wherever one gazes. In Vermont where it snows. Staying up to write while the dog follows me down into hell.

Plane smoke, carrots, a bone about another. Expect miracles and suddenly . . . Bits of turtle on the highway and all I do is talk or laugh.

Old songs remind us to pass judgment. Reproachful eyes beneath withered apple tree limbs will see, probably. Ask if we will ever become rich?

Boiled cauliflower for lunch. Bob Dylan while the dog sleeps. Coffee for the newly married has a bitter flavor.

So sit, watch, and sing along! Watch the miles between us evaporate like tears!