Sunday Thoughts

In the springtime, in the valley,
where the morning sunrise grows
and the ants drink the nectar
from the dewcup leaves, the great
basin of the trees. There
you shut your mouth. You
leave it closed. The quieter you are, see,
the more you can hear, the more
you can breathe, the more you can leave there
in the valley, in the sunrise,
in the springtime as it grows.

Non-Automated Biography

A Saturday Night

The air was still. Light from the street gleamed across the porch making a triangle of bright across its surface. Mark sits writing, bent over his lap, sketching furiously. His tan work boots stick out from the bottoms of his blue Dickies. I smile at his narrow face and whisp of a moustache and beard poking through the sun-burnt skin. His hair is matted and pressed down against his forehead from the ball cap he wore all day.

Britt comes out the front door and sets off the motion light. She throws herself down and throws one leg over the other. A flip flop, black one, hangs carelessly from her toes. She lights a menthol and her cheeks sink in as she sucks at it. Mark bends down further with his brow creased. Deep furrows, head turning sideways to study his creation. Britt's wearing a skirt and a black top that makes a tease of the shoulders.

Nine years ago she was ten. A cute little thing. Now, it's deffinately something more than cute. Normally, too, it's just jeans, jeans with holes in the knees. I lean back and take a drag from the offered smoke. Its cool mint singes my tongue. I wonder why she's not wearing jeans.

Sunday Thoughts

I like the old day
when the word
was a poem itself—
spoken from the drip
of a tongue
and a mind
full of all that wonder.

Converstations from Building Twelve

“Do you know what time it is?”
“No, I don’t. It’s not that late.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“What’s on my mind?”
“Yes, what’s with you lately?”
“What’s with me?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. No I don’t.”
“You just want to pretend you don’t. Pretend there’s nothing the matter.”
“Why does something always have to be the matter? I’m sitting here. Sitting here like this pillow is sitting here. There’s nothing with the pillow, and there’s nothing with me.”
“No? But maybe the pillow on the other couch is lonely. Or tired of this damn tv.”
“Don’t you start. You know I have to watch Sports Center for my blog.”
“Sure.”
“Sure. What is sure? Is that supposed to be some silent dismissal? Like what I do isn’t important?”
“It hasn’t been for years. You know it.”
“Do I? That’s just mean.”
“How does it feel?”
“How does WHAT feel? Do you always have to talk in code? When you’re talking to me? Like I’m supposed to read between the words? If you want to Say something, then just say it for chrissake, don’t just drag out some crazed bullshit at me.”
“That’s not it and you know it.”
“Oh, Oh, here we go again, on and on about what I know. What makes you think you have any idea what the hell I know? You’re just a God damned pain is what you are. Little games and tricks. Is that what makes you Happy? Is that what-

“You have to have something.”
-makes you scream in delight?”

Wasted

I have been described three times in my life as something not fully of this world, an angel more or less. Other times, to many to count, the very hand of God, coming at the exact moment that nothing but that could have saved them. I’ve yet to know what to make of it, how to deal with the accusations.

There are times when I do in fact feel it. Disconnection. Lost to myself and the world. Only from this I am always snatched, always brought back, harshly almost, into the dim thriving of life. It’s purpose we all seek. Purpose that I have lived out so many countless times. But really, it brings no satisfaction save the dim thrust every now and again of joy.

In my dreams I am immortal, living on through the ages with ever growing wisdom and strength. My hand at the same time touches kindly and lovingly the leaf from a twig and the soft hair of a child’s head, both wet with the same dew. In my life, I grow older by the hour and think, perhaps this is what eternal is, perhaps it all ends with me.

Sunday Thoughts

You see the sun as it ends the night. I rise up
like water and melt there into it. The past
is all that remains; it is all we have,
and all that will last to blaze
through the white fires of eternity,
through the realms of our certain immortality.