Filed under: poetry
Poems are lazy prose.
Utterances whispered to nobody before falling asleep.
Half nonsense, half imagery, half profound statements of half truth.
They’re meant to be whispered
or read with a steady seriousness.
Dripping with honor in every line.
Unless, of course, they’re the goofy type.
You know, the ones kids like…
The ones that’re supposed to rhyme.
His thumbs were huge.
He did a lot with his thumbs.
He’d set nails with a surprising dexterity into a board before hammering them home
He’d drive with only one of his thumbs and a forefinger and a middle finger on the wheel.
And he’d crack open a pecan in the winter and dig out the brainy innards to munch thoughtfully.
And he’d use them to write tiny, boxed letters in tiny, boxed words in tiny, boxed sentences.
They were callused. I don’t know how they got so callused or big.
Every time I asked he’d explain that he hit them with hammers as a kid.
But I never believed him.
Just like I never believed he actually put the coin temporarily into his elbow before producing it again.
Her presence is a respite after a hard run.
Your breath leaves your body like party-goers just wanting out
of a stuffy room when the fun is officially done.
Your heart flutters fast like a dying trout
crying “Why?” on the deck of your boat.
Your legs tremble wearily like an old dog,
who’s too tired to even shake his coat
when it gets wet from the morning fog.
And the blood rushes to the top of your head
as a hundred fingers massage your mind.
It seems that not-running is a treasure no man, alive or dead,
can ever hope to possibly find.
Then she looks into your waiting face.
The soul sighs as it clenches that slower pace.
Fall is the perfect time for the Appalachian Mountains
Everything is wet
and the sound of the mountain sniffling its red nose echoes out of every bubbling stream which you step over every five minutes
You don’t walk in those autumn hills, you crunch.
You don’t breath, you inhale the clouds
which wave goodbye as you exhale them back into the sky
The forest hugs you with her falling leaves
And your butt grows a little too cold from that rock that you decided to sit down on.
I hit the Bs today.
Checking seventy-six hundred titles in a computer program isn’t news but it does do a good job of ticking away time like tiny pebbles splashing into a pile. One. At a. Time.
So today I hit the Bs.
I wonder if Shakespeare ever paused while he wrote, letting the ink plop down on the little scrap of paper he was about to hand to the actor impatiently scratching his wig, thinking, “God. I used to be a poet.”
I wonder if Robin of Loxley ever paused while he passed out coins to hungry folk thinking, “God. I used to be a soldier.”
I wonder if Clemons knew he’d change the world by typing the first novel ever typed about a boy who hated painting fences.
I wonder if he hated shouting “Mark Three!” or “Mark Twain!” as much as I hate the fact that it’s been two weeks and the most notable thing I’ve done is hit the Bs.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!
Okay… sorry for the language. But I’m not sure, but I think she has a boyfriend. I mean, it was on my way out of the place. And I overheard it at the last second, but I’m pretty sure she said that her car was out front because her boyfriend brought it for her. Fuck! Why?
Man, I’m horrible at this. If love is a game (and I believe it is) then it’s like just about every other game out there. And I totally suck at it.
No poem today. I’m just going to go dig my heart out with a freaking rusty spoon and then stab it a few times with a phillips head screwdriver because I hate it so freaking much.
What difference do we make on this God-forsaken Earth?
Everything we do seems to matter for nothing.
All our deeds are but soil upon the dirt.
And you’d think we’d just accomplish something,
but nothing counts for anything and all is lost.
And, in the end, all we have is pain and pity.
All our good is nothing but gloss,
and we tread water in an ocean of mediocrity.
Meaningless meaningless meaningless is life.
And nothing is ever gained or won.
We work so hard and suffer so much strife,
but nothing is new under the hot sun.
And in the end our worthless life is before God and laid bare.
He looks upon it, as small as it is, and, amazingly, He cares.
Filed under: poetry
I got depressed this morning as I remembered sitting on a hill of shale
Shale is mud that was rock once,
but it became soil which became mud which became shale.
It has the illusion of being solid,
but it can give way as easily as ice over a puddle in October.
My hill of shale crumbles with time.
One day I’ll fall off
or I’ll just sit here and wait for it to disintegrate
into a field of hopelessness.
It’s sad, because once the hill was made of stone.
Filed under: poetry
I think God’s out to get me.
Not in a real vindictive sense, though.
I don’t even think He pays all that much attention.
I’m like a puppy on the floor.
I run around and around in my own little world and I go largely unnoticed
Until, one day, God just gets just a little bored
And He just turns me at just the right moment.
And I’m going forward, left instead of right.
I look beside me to see the way I could have gone and see nothing but beauty and opportunity.
I think, “Why didn’t I go that way?”
And then I splat against the wall.
And God laughs and laughs and laughs.
Very funny, God.
Very funny.
I have traversed this country many, many times
And I’ve always come upon this same wood
I’ve eaten many dishes and drank many wines
And, truthfully, they’ve all been good
But even the nicest of food and tastiest of drinks
Blends into the same ole rubbish as before
And no matter how far I walk, my foot always sinks
In the mud in front of this wood’s door
I enter again, this forest I so dearly hate
And get ripped by the roots and slapped by all the trees
No matter how much I avoid it, it seems to be fate
To be imprisoned in this cage of leaves
I sit in the dark and whisper so soft
“Why, dear God, must I always be so lost?”
