Night Court

 

In a cloak of night. Litigation 

between a set of shadows. Order

is established apart from the fire. Motions becoming theater off of the light. Reform

me, my friend, beneath dimming stars. All

of me. Robed

Creak

 

The floorboard groans

Nail heads at uneven heights

Poking out to claw into the errant piece of skin that chooses to graze in its path.

Arranged in haphazard order

No symmetry

Each squawk of wood’s lament

Each one, not the same as the last

No pattern

Except the guaranteed

display of sound,

Acknowledging the discontent

at the point of impact.

Murmurs from a Murder

 

Long con with the crows

murmur assent, harmony of 

Kakaw

Flutter of wings and feathers

Swirling, amassed.

Beedy eye,

Unblinking focus

Still below the neck

One gentle reminder/fragile form

A grip and simple twist,

Crumbles in on itself

Lays barren

Gone over twice

Deprived of value

Denied the feast of the many.

Line of vision 

Unobstructed in miles

Down the road

Power lines hum

Kakaw

Flutter again

Come in the hour of need

A great and plentiful

Table for none

Is waiting

Zen Ruination Part 3: Horticulture

 

I spend a little time each day

Before the Sun shows its face,

Speaking sweet words at the flowers

I planted in our backyard’s oft-neglected garden.

Bent over them, shining my cell phone’s light to aim my voice in the appropriate directions.

I practice my intonation,

Even pacing

inflection up.

Dulcet tones

The tapping of the clavas underneath the smooth 2/4 love in my song.

My eyebrows raised,

Loose body language.

Willing them to continue growing.

To grow up safe

Without bends in the stem

To know they are valuable and don’t need to compare themselves to the others.

Each one

Blossoming and arcing towards the growing light.

Each one,

More beautiful than the moment before I shined the unsparing light from my iPhone 11 plus.

Before now,

I would bark out commands

Grow straighter!

Blossom more effectively!

A drill Sergeant

Demanding results without exception.

As you know,

I’ve burned everything I loved

Away from Me.

In the shrill demands

the impatient scowls

The disappointment

That oozed from my pours.

Each has left Me.

You have left Me.

Maybe these flowers I planted,

When You told Me you were leaving, told Me that I kept You down

Under water and struggling-my hand firmly and figuratively on your head-bubbles screaming without interruption,

These things I have tried to talk into becoming something other than the weeds

Of our home’s ruined garden,

Maybe I’ll speak the words in the right combination and unlock my fingers from their collective, and figurative, scalp. They’ll bubble up through the surface and I’ll tell them how sorry I am. How much I’ve learned. How proud I am to have witnessed them grow.

Maybe I won’t fail them

This time.

Accu-weather

 Dressed for a rain storm on an uncharacteristically sunny day and waddling out to the curb to grab the newspaper and the rubber of my rain boots emits small squeals with every change in foot position and I’m waving at my neighbor who is sitting out front with the accoutrements of a seasoned veteran in the art of tanning lowers her glasses and asks if I’m expecting rain and I smile and tell her not what you’re thinking but yes and she gives me one of those benign head shakes like I’m not supposed to see it but of course I see it because I have the vision of a bird of prey and I’m considering my option to say something but instead I just adjust my rain bonnet and make sure that my other rain gear is still fastened appropriately and nod at her to wish her and her disdain a pleasant day and each step is now a louder squeal I’m not one to show doubt in the face of opposition a war time general stands resolute and grim faced even as their soldiers are chopped apart by the surprise pincer force of a greater foe no we are men and women of some kind of action and that action was preordained long ago and then I hear a crack of Thunder like a deep bellow from a large bear and it begins to rain and as the tabbies and pit bulls fall from the sky and smash through the neighborhood’s houses we’ve spent so much time taking for granted and as my neighbor abandons her temple of the perfect skin tone and runs as a black cat with claws exposed lands next to her and immediately shrieks a warning to get the hell away from it and the houses all around us start to show cracks and holes and fill with the sounds of cats and dogs I’ll nod to myself and think that even I didn’t see this one coming while I side step a Beagle landing directly to my right it begins to yowl as only a beagle can and I look at it sympathetically “me too buddy me too”

Set Change

 

Air, a precise note

Tip of the spear.

Crinkling from below

Sun, brilliant. obscured in the over

and undergrowth’s mingling.

A gift near the sunset

at the edge of the year

Shivers of our content

In the gentle bursts of breeze

and the rustling of our soul.

Panorama

of death’s plumage 

On display.

Shadows as giants

In the yellow-orange majesty

of soon-to-be gone.

Zen Ruination Part 2

 

and

Delivery

Is 

Guaranteed

On arrival.

Not in the space before it.

Before arrival

The space and time continuum

Bends and moves like 

a dull lava lamp,

Lamp extinguished.

The vacuum

Of free space

Travel on roads

Waiting and moving

Into and out of the void.

Cue those sweet,

Goddamn

Pianos

The gentle 1-2

of snare clicks

tap tappa

Tap tatata tat

A rich sub base

Sneaking up through the floor.

Something in the water.

Your package will arrive?

When it does

You will know

It was from us.

Not by the label.

There will be no label. 

-Cue the horn blast-

Still,

all is right and everything is in place again

And we just need your signature

-tinkling scales up the high notes of the piano-

the space between has been circumnavigated without the need for dead reckoning in and without running aground in tide pools of great inconsistency.

-sour saxophone bellowing-

Just sign

Dotted line

and we’ll take you right past the chorus

To the way the pieces come together in a final appreciative din and an end that writes itself.

Seasonal Conditions

 

The tree limbs rattle against the wood framed windows.

Wind, warping it’s cries

cascading them around the foundation and frame of the building.

Sky, in shades of blackness and fog, overcast brushstrokes fade out along the fuzzed ring of a lone, distant light. Life outside a frosted fish bulb.

Electricity fails, shadows twist and gel in shapes furnished by the gentle sway of candle lights.

Everything waits

as the wind laughs,

in an otherwise still space.

For now.

 

Each one, a part

 

The saw warbles as it inquires about the age of trees.

Whistling while it works

Merriment

In the motion

Repetition 

as a source of transcendence

as a source of Oblivion.

Doing their part 

To accumulate all of the numbers in the universe,

cramming them into a dirt-caked, mostly empty light beer bottle. A film of spit and disappointment lining the bottle’s bottom.

Long since worth finishing.

Cram it full of what might as well be infinite.

Try to seal the bottle and throw it

end over end

Into the limitless flotsam and jetsam of the ocean

Bobbing its head until it descends

to join shells

dreams that have shriveled and sank

Next to the skeletal remains

of some leviathan who once 

was the man on these streets

Let the numbers leak out

try to count their number

a guessing game

as the tide rises

as the saw catches on the wood.

Alive and uncertain.

Hear the symphony rise and fall and rise and fall and wait for the curtain before you commence

Applauding.