Working on some longer form prose right now. May post some samples soon.
Unoriginal
This is my father’s world.
Jesus freaks on the road
to the county fair.
Only a dim recollection
of them in a median
as we hurry by.
My parents younger
than I am now.
They’re too old to understand hippies.
I’m too young.
Polyester suits at the hymn-singing
counter-protest to modernity
or at least whatever version
that hates the war and big band music.
Entanglement
for the woman I saw this morning on the sidewalk outside a Planet Fitness, wearing jorts, drinking coffee out of a to-go cup, and smoking a cigarette.
I’ll begin by admitting
that my entire train of thought this morning
as I worked my way through elliptical,
lower body, and arms
which is where I saw you,
as I was resting between sets
seated at a machine
which is a clear violation of protocol
at all the many gyms I’ve been a member of
may be based on fallacy. You may
have looked through the glass at us
and thought haha losers in which case
you are philosophically miles ahead
of this chautauqua
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
I don’t normally just post links, but this is interesting:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/52293/11-celebrated-artists-who-didnt-quit-their-day-jobs
The Dream of Going Through Boxes of my Dead Friend’s Stuff
for B.W.
My primordial mind has transposed you
with my father’s preacher friend
who died about ten years younger than you
on a bike, wearing no helmet
so it eventually dawns on me that the
helmets, ranging from an ’80s Vetta Italy
to a Giro Prolight with the Roc Loc retention system
and the Shimano cycling shoes, with Look-compatible cleats
(with the patented 9 degrees of float)
are yours; I think (I am very close to waking)
of the short story Content of the Dead Man’s Pockets
by Jack Finney, and I think that your pockets
are garages, the fourth bedroom,
and perhaps the third.
After a Year of Drought
We went to my friend’s lake house
hoping the water was still up to the dock.
It was, but mud ran alongside the pilings,
made it look like a construction site,
with bottles, cans, and one boot
of a sort fashionable among young girls
in 2003.
Or as if the land was creeping back
to reclaim its own, after
the Hydroelectric Act of 1939
or whatever thing the legislature enacted
between dime-cigar bets and happy girls
flooded the land between two counties
mocking that part of creation where
dry land divided the waters and it was good
but it was also good to get out
on a boat and see the pine trees whizz by
like a flooded out interstate,
or Venice writ large and southern-style.
My friend pointed out trees
hanging on to dry land
roots leached out of the water
like receding gums,
or an uprising.
written in response to a dVerse prompt.
On the Anniversary of Coltrane’s Death
First a self-referential shout-out:
John, I wish I could tell you I understand
what happened when you played
either spiritually or technically
I know just enough to see the promised land
but may not enter.
The Dream of Tartness
Often after a trauma
there is the mundane revery
if I could only
mine was a dream of an unbearable tartness
in a drink of volcanic coldness
I sipped metallic hospital crushed ice water
tried not to vomit up the simplest of soups
normally there is the gift of not desiring
the smell of nausea clings to things
that can’t be kept down but
I conjured up something like limeade
as a nuclear bomb is something like a firecracker
while the tubes of lukewarm glucose, morphine
and hot piss kept me alive.
written in response to a dVerse prompt
Conductors and Composers
My worst experience had to be in high school playing Duke of Earl on the flute at football games, I’ll never get those precious hours back. Why do conductors and composers torture musicians? Were they inspired to become parasites and see if another family would claim them as their own?
– Anna Montgomery
We like it better when the composer is dead.
– The wag that sits third row in every second violin section in every orchestra, ever.
For A.M.
Conductors extrovert their will on the wanna-be.
Composers sit alone, some scheme in mind
some puzzle without the parts
until those pieces forge themselves on the framework
of theory problems that arose along the way.
poetrytech 