Month: November 2010

Wordy Twice Over

One is given to epistolary gestures. Meaning that is at one’s behest. Dented guard rails, mice bones.
Wrapped in the old quilt, shivering on frosty grass, staring at the moon. A bower of mist, a memory of ghosts. We have to get beyond all systems and also Jesus.
Deep hush of owls. The mind returns often to glistening roadside mica. The nexus, then, between power and creativity.
Ten a.m., last swallow from the last bottle of wine, newspapers burning in the old pit. Shattered quartz, watery crystal. A trip North, long longed for at last in memory.
A letter unopened for seven years owns what relationship to death? Huddled in freezing dark, laughing at religiosity. Followers whispering in the dim alcove.
Your ash is my apple wood rosary. Headlines return to air, words to silence, all mirroring the relationship between darkness and light. Given to sentences, given to judgment.
The trap now is baited. We wait, wordy twice over, never growing the wiser.
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Delicious With Dark Bread

The sun just below eastern hills, the bright tumescence of night-wandering cumuli sucking the orange fire. What clarity beneath the maple trees, stripped of every leaf! Barbed wire fence for a witness.

Thus does one stanza beg another. The mug is unaware of and does not care for the coffee it contains, thus solving all my religious problems. Why ask again what has already been answered?

Ron asked who was speaking thus and thus and the answer was I am. Moldavia, because of my accent. A sudden profluence of pronouns that signifies what.

Bear stew is greasy – less so with yearlings – and delicious with dark bread. We spotted an empty room and filled it caroling. What clarity in the white cold, watching the older dog sniff the dry leaves.

One minute Jesus is wiping tears from your eyes, the next he doesn’t even know the internet exists. Love letters to Emily Dickinson. Thus christened, thus this.

Can you hear in the distance how snow accumulates, anticipates? Gather ye rose buds, it’s time to make some tea. What clarity in my dreams, once I handed them over to a family of thieves.

Oh you, reading as always, with one hand on your hidden heart! Oh you and your ashes, you and your crumbs.

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The Road Opening

Dreams of peace. The road opening just after dawn, mist rising off the blacktop. Thanksgiving dinner and no one a stranger.

These then are the eyes of Christ . . . Whoever has ears . . . And the unending focus on song . . .

Fear of lucre, of compromise, the absence of joy. The road opening in my dream and I began to float where it turned into Worthington. “Blood ink in bibles.”

For you, then, these twenty sentences. These fragments. For you, then, all these compliments!

Elision, lacunae. God’s eyes. Place the emphasis on parallelograms, won’t you?

It was quite a year that year we gave to God. The ropy guts of the crushed skunk carrying over to the ditch. Also orange juice.

The road opening and filled with light. What a year, what a sentence!

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Categorized as Sentences