You are the way you think you are.
Exactly that way.
On a rope
Gripped tight—white knuckles
Tension sawing through the bone.
Seeking to loosen
attachments.
Fighting,
To stay suspended
In the space
Above
The snapping jaws
Of some ill-timed
convention for
half-starved crocodiles.
What you think,
you are.
Eventually.
Let the teeth
and the frenzy
rise up.
do the Lord’s work.
Leave the bones
Splitting at their ends
as a monument
to knowing
Thyself.
You
are,
you think
You.
Lift the arm
To accomplish basic tasks
And let the right hand
Ignore what the left is doing.
Let it indulge its deepest desires
To claw a piece of happiness
from between the couch cushions
While the right scrounges for quarters
To buy another vape pen, turn the living room into the parlor of smoke where decisions are made.
Where futures are broken and sliced up and taken apart for fingernail filings.
Let the left feast on old, hard candy. A grape-turned-raisin. Forgotten indulgences.
A momentary taste of sweetness.
Before it is put to work.
Sweat drops into the gears of the machine
clogs and gums up the timing.
Locust clouds on the horizon,
Dim the light of the heart of the summer.
Sky, a blank space peppered with smog-fine point accents of haze.
Humidity cloying-
Chafing against a skin refusing to dry.
A rigid attachment to feeling
Good.
Those Wild-Wild-Wildwood days.
The stable has burst open.
Each horse on display
Riding proudly out into
The sweltering world.
Replete with those 4 riders
Dressed in heavy, body-consuming cloaks
to stick a thumb in the eyes of those prepared for the weather.
Behind them, a parade forms;
Even an ending deserves a celebration.
Still clipping away over here with weekly posts. Share with someone you love, or tolerate.
New month-
Less new me
Aged like rusted metal
in an old backyard,
Forgotten.
Covered by overgrowth.
I have value to the scrappers.
Boil me down
To sell me
For pennies.
Copper is forever,
So is mud.
And, so is death,
I’m told.
After the rain, I tip myself over and let the excess water I’ve accumulated out. I do it in my backyard, in the small, gated corner where the grass has grown unabated, next to the trash cans.
I crouch and twist my head, let the water leek out of my ear in a flush-stagnant, ripe with mosquitos and hangers on.
I tilt my trunk and bend in a complicated yoga routine:
Cobra
Downward Dog
Warrior 1 or 2?
Tree Pose, but while tree is sawed in two
I let the lukewarm water, tinged with old scraps and flavored with the remnants of earwax, drain from me. Small pieces of eggshell and coffee grinds scratch and pull at my inner ear. They are begging to stay.
I contort myself again, letting the flow of water shrink to an uneven drip. On all fours, I shake my head-an agitated dog trying to release the last drops.
The yard in front of me is soaked through. It’s lined with the junk and earstuffs that have plagued me. The mosquitoes, now good and angry, patrol this new world, looking for a still puddle or sweet, new blood-Maybe both. I take a deep breath to center myself, drink in the odor of the foul soup at my feet. Fighting the urge to gag, I step away and close the gate, clinking the locking hinge shut to lock in what I have cast from myself.
Now the day can begin
There can be no mistakes
When the prairie remains dry
Again.
Returning to the dust of my childhood.
To the dust of bible times.
Coating everything with a thin film.
Choking out the lesser creatures with grit and haze and heat and the volcanic stare of the sun.
Fine sand caught between my toes.
Lodged in the space where I can only taste the hint of something, but feel the rough paper texture in my mouth.
We do not get a mulligan.
Each action has a cost
And there are a finite number of choices
Each dwindling based on the previous one.
The sand whirls in a tight circle,
Climbing a little higher each gust
Slow in its ascension
To a titan
To a god.
As it blots out the light and the wind’s screech moves from background to center stage.
I look up and face it.
The inevitable conclusion
Before the curtain
And the applause.
They’ll play that damn song I can’t spell to signal the year is over.
As if that’s going to power wash away the resentment I’ve splattered on the siding of my house all year.
Well-wishers are pigeons and chickens, fighting to claim scraps. Squawking and warbling encouragement to me as they pass by, honking their horns as I grab another handful of resentment and let it fly true.
I’m tempted to scream their noises back at them-loud voice, unblinking eyes. I’m not trying to make a scene, though. No, I’m working on a monument.
A monument that says, “Right now is actually the best it’s going to be.”
The birds will say, “it’s a reset.” Also, “chirp, yodelolodoodleadaddaday”
The monument responds, “the turning of the calendar is not a reset.”
The birds will say, “arroookacoo” and extend their streamers and drink sparkling cider in celebration. Tut-tutting away from the monument.
I will stand next to my work. We will own the message and the intent. And, despite the chirps, we know that one of us is telling the truth.
In the space of the flash
We see them all
Wrenching open their mouths
Clutching the sides of their faces. Revealing the whites of their eyes, streaked with freshly broken blood vessels. Straightening up to their apex or folding into themselves.
Movements in minor shuffling and jagged step patterns become
Falling all over themselves.
Dissolving into the light
Absent a whisper
Or the clicking of a clock’s second hand.
Or the screams of every molecule in existence
while being blended in the whirring jaws of a Vita-mix.
Not a word or a speck of noise
Then the light gives way in a cascading wave of sharp contrast
Until it passes
And the only noise left
is the color seeping back into the frame.
Another Saturday, another entry. Tell your friends. I’d tell mine but then I would be less mysterious.
I have seen the Hero die, clicked rewind to see the moment where the betrayal moves from wind to solid ice chunk. Sharpened to a point. Forward and backward. Living and dead. Absorbing the knife. Rejecting it and regrowing the skin.
The past and future are a ball on a tether. Sliding between the void and the majesty of existence, based on the angle of the end points.
Puppets in the hand of an old VCR and the cumbersome remote, the one that feasts on double A batteries, a gnawing savage with a deeper hunger. Knowing only one direction-more.
All my helpless victims. Believers of free-will: the beginning and end are always guaranteed. How and when, are entirely up for interpretation.
I play dress up as God, but really I am the magnifying glass in the hand of a child on a summer day, scorching ants on the front steps. Feeling important, but just leaving a small message to the other ants. Really though, the ants will just think the ones who got burnt had it coming. Stupid. Careless. Deserving.
The point enters. The point exits. Nothing changes for the victims or the bystanders.
Eventually, I’ll put down my toys and make something of my life. I hope whoever is watching gets some kind of satisfaction. Likely though, they won’t even press rewind.
They’ll just think I had it coming too. An ant with a VCR and a remote with dead batteries.
Another lesser known figure waving out of the window of a Honda Civic that’s revving its engine at a stop light. Neon glow strobing from its undercarriage.
The passenger waving their arms and babbling in unintelligible shouts over the boom of house music.
Young, wild lovers
On a dark summer’s night.
Squalling their voices in heavy clouds of moisture,
Unleashing
To the buildings,
Mixing with the noise
from the cars
and the confusion
Pouring out from the rest of us
Here, left on the darkening sidewalks
of the early evening slow to age itself.
Wondering if the beat stops
Eventually.
Maybe from a collection I am working with here. Not sure yet.
Let the sage burn and sneak into the four corners of each room and crawl between the cracks in the foundation to trap itself behind the sheathing and clapboard.
Achieving absolute peace
Serenity, without qualification.
The world sees this success. Nods in appreciation-inhales and exhales in a perfect syncopation. Pulsing in easy shudders. Order is equal to the sum of my part when it is placed in the proper location.
Sun and clouds a diorama, suspended and rotating like a lazier morning with coffee, alone with the sound of a gentle whir from the cicadas and the simple swell of a breeze.
Looking out at the grass, stuck in the pose of attention.
The sound of a bird. The hum of held breath.
The way the world contracts and expands when the breath is resumed.
All is
As it is.
