Month: July 2011

I wrote under the influence of thunder but now it’s all hot water and ripped sheets. A man needs something to do. He sat by his wife’s bedside twelve hours a day for seven days straight until she died. Everybody in town talked. That’s how you’re going to get a cure for cancer, friend.

Love is everywhere, God is everything! They carried beach balls and made a little parade of it. When the horse died, they opted against necropsy. What can you do with grass beneath your feet? The dregs of the coffee inspired some thistle.

She bristled when they criticized her son in court. Rewriting is redundant. Popped the lid and found a beer can holding it all together. Your ballet is my mineral excavation via backhoe. That’s right bud, I’m talking to you.

Wild raspberries, grunting bears. The pond was dark and heavy like a dream of your father’s death. Yet we went ahead and kept going. The same ground covered twice can yield diamonds if you pay attention. My favorite writers, my penchant for cigars.

Sugar solves acidic coffee. Again solves everything. Be kind, be willing, be mystified. Also, eschew caveats.

Protection is the devil’s sales pitch. The lot was dark, filled with weeds, wrecks of cars in which young people died. I said to the field you’re looking good which I would never say to a woman. Falling to sleep, remembering ticks.

We’re all puppets at best, Fisher Price people at worst. She took the kids outside and came back with flowers. A hunger in which Christ blossoms. Scat witch.

On Sunday, church bells. In the forest, chickadees. Odd to think of so many soldiers just a couple towns away. In my dream, the cops just watched as batons flew and glass windows shattered.

We always ready always. Mired in nostalgia, bearing trophies through the shadows. A mute angel gestures where the Momma deer hesitates. We’re getting better at ashes all the time, aren’t we?

Minnesotans make good deals. My aunt employed a former employee of the soda factory. Chocolate is without definition. Medical charts order the dream of tomorrows. A pigeon feather dipped in rain. Your toothpick is my lucky charm. Her sweaterss were folded atop the dresser right next to the cat’s ashes. Certain boys in the tropics study an older habit of baseball. This could go on forever and sometimes does. Clarity is the other side of clouds. A list of favorite authors, a note on working with python. There’s wicker in my heart, there’s a candle near my shoulder. She slept with a woman who slept with you. Water bottles beaded with sweat, potato eyes all pink and moldy. We bought garlic in anticipation of parades. The vs. a vs. hmmm. Oysters raising a dim crescendo, bliss relies on baritones. Hi Alice, hi Gretel, hi Fortunata. God up in arms up to the ears. You sweet sentimental you you.

A name is responsibility. A transaction is a continuation. Tarot cards amend scoliosis. Simply angels. That was the best toboggan-building workshop ever!

I’m not okay with the poor. Paper clips are a bent ethics. Remuneration in quartz. Heaven is without exertion all the time. Be still my porcelain heart.

The keys played themselves resulting in mayhem. A pile of words that no matter how you sliced them wanted to mean something. Kind of like your typical middle class Christian. Watermelons are a circular argument. A circus mentality that heals.

Coffee while the sun rises, beer as it falls. In poetry one can be devilish which is a kind of commendation. A fine smell of withered daisies. Insects demand salvation too. My amen, your baying hound.

She sat on the bus and picked at her ear, now and then studying the waxy shine on her fingers. Later we had coffee and agreed never again. Imaginary cross bows. A crimp I can’t forget. You cried a little or so you say, recalling it years later.

Silent warriors investing in the afterlife. After dinner we studied the fair guide and were surprised to see that the ox pulls now included breathalyzer tests. Juvenile hawks circled at a distance. I could go on like this forever. Eyes closed, no less vivid.

The engine revved up, the seamstress coughed and a man she’d never met before fingered some coins in his pocket. Once in a while it does happen. It turned out we were heading to the same cafe to nurse the same desire to create. The teamsters I mean are no longer allowed to get drunk.

Time is what passes (while we’re only telling stories). Nobody says boo in Heaven. I keep seeing a woman in a tattered white gown who shakes her head whenever I opt against quatrains. Sneak attack! Cardinals in my heart, crickets in my blood.

At least we never hid from punctuation. At a delicate moment she farted. What ties it together? Old horses gumming damp hay.

Motorcycle gangs in upstate New York. Good neighbors help you put up fences. Right as I was about to come she laughed remembering something the dentist had said. That life as opposed to this one.

Nor would I indulge pheasants, nor bother to understand this sentence. When the rain comes, he goes inside, unless he wants to stay outside. We took soap to the river. We laughed amongst friends and so the night at least passed.

Salted beef, cold coffee, cheap chocolate and gratitude. Late at night letting the dog out to pee I thought I saw the older dog, the dead one, coming up towards me for a visit. Angels prefer birch trees. But anger loves a row of onions.

The road out led me back. A corner of the driveway I’m pleased the doves call home. New York plates, a deer print near the spinach. If it’s not artificial then it must be holy.

The asterisk in place of gender. A copper flash that indicated blades. Summer dresses, visible ankles. I’d count my blessings but I’m otherwise impaired.

You do it. Your photographs make me think you think that beauty can be made. Consider again the calf muscles of competitive swimmers. The order your inclination breathes.

Forgiveness at another extreme. He indicated he was not inclined to theological niceties. What a reedy voice you have when you complain about needing to travel. A daughter making it up as he goes.

That sonorous boom we called God bowling. A friend’s cattle, a familiar blue light. We dipped cucumbers in hot sauce, watched the waves a mile away, and never quite made it to regret. Me and you and a funny kind of sorry.

Oh, it’ll all be red flowers. Dull odor of piss, half a dozen cartwheels. I looked up and was surprised to see the Big Ladle at such a crooked angle. I’ll say I love you and you’ll compliment my vest.

Setting sun, dried clumps of mown grass. The neighbor’s mailbox, sullen as a mule. More wild strawberries please, I need to believe in God. Repetition is the key, so long as you know it’s insistence.

Emphasis? Your autographed baseball is my melodrama. Count coffins kid, that’ll help you sleep. My wife’s father slaughtered a lamb and that was the end of her dreams of farming.

I’m looking for you – here – in this sentence. I’m also waiting for a bear. She chases robins whenever she see’s one. Thinking about it only makes it worse.

Or this for a pass: he wrote he wrote. Writing is salvational if you want to see it that way. Visitors, gingko biloba, a pink bandana tethered to a crutch. Jump starts.

Milkweed. All sound has a certain shape. Thus I disagree with Denise Levertov who opted for another disability. Loosen your bonnet already.

The urge to create, the generative impulse. A list of things for later? Four clouds, two colors. Traffic sounds. A mosquito perhaps, fighting the breeze, but I am no entomologist.

I did once see a dermatologist. One mushroom blossomed nearly to twenty, marring the green surface of the neighbor’s lawn. Did I write the stranger I sometimes wave at when social custom dictates? God bless you. You and your muzzled nostalgia.

Try seeing it – the sentence, your roof, a life – from someone else’s perspective. I no longer identify as a believer. Corporate responsibility- sounds like an elective in a curriculum for clowns. Your bended knee, my pucker up.

There’s nobody out there to teach or forgive but you wouldn’t know it by me. He wrote to the muse, couldn’t you just leave me alone for once? Old men playing bocce, happy in the sunlight. It’s math, not a breeze. The universe scrambled and came up with this?

The neighbor’s chickens scratch under the front yard maple tree. He limps along in his own way. Want to know what to do? Feed yourself, feed others. Don’t ask for answers you aren’t ready to question.

Pawn to e5. Don’t call it a game even though it’s a game. Don’t call it a story. What the mail rendered is obsolete. The horses came over once, their untrimmed hooves gouging the lawn.

Forsythia, gentians, frost-crested clover. The neighbor’s wife in a bathtub reading What To Expect. Not covetous, curious. Coffee sure does do a lot of the legwork around here. More reading doesn’t mean more insight.

Three hours without subtitles! The queen was once limited in her movement yet once empowered improved the game greatly. Your Bucharest, my unfinished novel. Little digs without respite. The thing about hunger is it returns.