Title Here Poem

There is a storm a comin', oh yes, a storm approaches. It reeks like Kentucky moonshine and wears is hat askance. It is immune to screaming or feigning innocent, it is an honest storm, like hell for everything.

Wheat from Chaff

She would lay draped in a towel, lips agape and waiting for a plate of toast. It was dreary. I had a limp from a skeet-ball accident and exaggerated it for effect. Toast will make you chubby I said, and watched for her underweight face to pinch. The toaster clicked to a halt as I appeared and it lobbed it's wheat payload above my fingers as i snatched instinctively. Too late; the toast spiraled around its vertical axis on a thin trail of smoke and out of my view altogether.

I was miffed, and the girl did nothing but huff a menacing huff. Toastless and desperate, I had no choice but to buckle into my tractor and peel down a bushel or two of grain to dry and pound into flour. This was a promising task, but before I could limp out to the tractor the sunny summer sky faded to a winter dusk and I was threatened by the whir of frozen tumbleweeds. Grabbing the short shovel from the barn, I made my way out into the simmering ice storm and slapped at every icy thing flying at my head.

I spied my decimated crops out of the corner of my eye, and shed a lonely tear.

The tractor would not start, being instantly frozen by a harsh new season, so i pushed it for 17 miles until I realized my legs had frozen together. My limp finally cured, I crawled to the nearest house and rapped at the door. The family dog let me in, dragging me by my limp arm to the fireplace. I started to warm instantly, though too late for comfort as the lady of the house entered the living room and let out a mighty scream.

I was frightened and literally frozen. With no way of protecting myself, she proceeded across the room and grabbed a large broom and brought the handle down upon my head, shattering me instantly to bits. Since then, I have lived mostly in study wastebasket and am lavished with fresh scraps and plenty of appologies.

Projections and War II.

Soft cotton shoes offered only the slightest protection from the pace of a refugee. Out before the fires and well before the haunt of occupation, gone so long before that not even a smell of burning generations would reach her. Night was unplanned and unprepared for. It was nestled on moss and warm stones, shivering.

Catastrophe leaves a flavor in the mouth of the moment, but behold there are no terrified mobs - no executions. No fools gallows or lead ridden brick. Why has thine enemy become so generous? What are soldiers without an intent to punish, a mind might ask itself in the heat of this dreadful anticipation. That voice of the mind would have seen the treachery in Dresden, the lonesomeness in the outcome of WYrzburg, and though of what hearts must be forged in to claim today as its own.

Defeated, this town and I, each burning out as the sun set and the embers roared and lapped. I held a camera, but the burning screamed back to life in my spine, my guts. Breseler sat again by my side tonight, what courage. A young man and his fallen hero drifting through miles of war, in a race to bottle these pornographic monstrosities of battle into labeled jars to sit forever on a shelf labeled 'past'. I am in honor of your courage, young Europe and young Breseler, may I have the sanctity to die only after your wedding.

Projections and War I.

Thin cotton shoes do little to cushion the long strides among sharp pebbles and winding roads. Steps are with sidelong glances attached, a jutting sack of perishables, coarse breathing. Somewhere an elephant trumpets and crashes through the undergrowth of crunchy autumn forest. They let the animals free from the zoo before the town burns. Everyone listens, even dispersed from each other as they may be, and waits for a careful gunshot, a report across long drained skies that the first had fallen.

Men huddled in twos and threes, clutching garden tools, sheltered away in a distant shack or cellar. Families took to the wet gravel roads with bundles and hope. The old lives begin to splinted and smolder. The houses burn from the inside in a precession of crackling timbers and seared dust.

I couldn't stand to let it burn, but who am I but an old limping horse. I could do nothing but whimper into the coarse seats of our jeep while Breseler caught the scene in a big whir of clicks and celluloid. Admittedly, a weak point.

I knew still that it was bigger than he and I.

No Shame

I believe it was you; you who chose a life of scented candles and dull songs on FM radio to play a soundtrack to your time here. I think too, you chose babies and thick gloss latex in easter shades, dripping and puddling around the edges of doors and on the fringes of window panes. Don't look so sad in the snapshots you send me; I'm not one to gloat. Maybe you chose that instead of uncertainty - and a sharp temper. There is no shame in diapers and puree, numb childish songs and sycophantic praise. No shame.

You've had all of your life to be a good kitty

we've got little more than the pitter patter rain clouds,
somewhere to hide when it's wet.

eats, shoots, eats

I fly out on Saturday, book a short gig of old friends and old soft places to be. I spend a few days living out of a carry-on, cold coffee breakfasts and the rest of the time trying to gauge the progress of my life since then. The week will be a barometer for success. I might get off the plane with a straw hat and a pocket of pesos, waiting for some challenge that may never come. It will be the barometer that asks; have you said anything viable - done anything heartfelt - mended anything wretched. I will answer stiffly, with jet-lag in my voice. I'm still sure those might not be the best days of my life. They might not.

Libby dropped me a message a few days before my birthday. It comes up now even though she will be no where near my landing strip. It comes up because I did still hover my fingers over a reply, turned to an insult, and then becoming just dust on the clutter of thinking. I have all this time, and a fancy trip to prove you wrong.

New

Proud new cities,
Onion domes like teats or chandeliers,
The din of soft pornography in the street names,
The musk of helpless cathedral bells.

I might mistake her forehead smudge,
And think her hubby struck her,
On ash Wednesday of all days.
Maybe a closet superstition-ist,
With a penchant for the theatrical,
Leaving me in a sharp new polo,
And an avoiding glance.

And the catholics gather for fish fillet,
And talk a storm about the terrorists,
And the baptists in tow,
They balk about the homos...
And the shy socialists take notes.

Guten tag, Taipei

Molly confided in me that she was flying to Taiwan to teach English to little kids. I was headed to New Mexico to make my fortune in flier design and subversive publications. Little time to think about the consequences.

I had a year off from writing, a serious loathing for the unknown, and some bad habits like wasting time. She had a shattered belief system, some good jokes, and a habit of wasting her time with me. We figured it was time for something else.

Instead of shacking up, we picked the congruency of forced separation. We talked about it all damn day. We laughed, we drank; we cried and understood.

Molly thinks I'm crazy to talk her into it; its hard to push and pull at the same time. I hope we are just as ready in a year to scrap something together out of this. Either way, I'm writing. Molly would be proud.