51

51

How is this stasis

Static

Associated with stability

And friction 

Simultaneously 

Forces fighting one another 

Into a state of motionlessness 

Creating energy

And stagnant at the same time

The sink drips

The dishes cold

The floor dusty

The bag unpacked

The coffee is the coffee 

The cat is the cat

Some change. 

50

The Long Nights Moon 

Wakes before sunset 

And stays up through the dawn

The Cold Moon

Though many are colder

The distance of my eyes

To the eternal

Reflecting the light

Back home in the dark 

49

I'm returning to the words. 

The absence may be accounted for 

And counted out 

In a language older than this.

Numbers like feathers, like sand,

Light on the 3 column pages,

Sift through the double lines.

A desert in my heart

Turning a man's labor,

His hours away from home,

Into bread and shingles. 

The taxing business of living,

Of owning what cannot be taxed.  

48

48

The debris of life

Clings to me

And falls from my lips

47

47

I would be stoic bully breed

An invasive rhizome with seed

Hoard up everything we need

Count the day's hours from east to west 

Plow a row ahead when you lead

Be generous with all your greed

Bang your bars consider me freed

Count the day's hours from east to west 

I swore an oath and lied my creed

The hounds of your hell have me treed

No award for unpunished deed

Count the day's hours from east to west

46

46

weight

hold

slip out

cut it off

worn down to the toe

polished smooth and round in the cold  

45

45

glean the cream
from the fat cat's bowl
the hogs sleep
the cows starve
let the horses out to graze
and the chicks come home

44

44

The carthartic art

Of purging

Violence from my throat

Singing brimstone 

Out into the heat of the sun

Open all the closed rooms

In all the dark nights of my history 

And let the storm come through. 

43

43

The well is poisoned,

Venom from a vein of rock

Cold and void of life-giving. 

The rain is troubled,

Nails striking our uplifted hands

Hard and hollow bullets. 

Water for the birthing pool,

For the drowning pool,

For the stone ship. 

42

42

Nature gives us the choice to dance with words in time to our hearts. 

Imitate the iambic, the trochaic tragedy, the ethical epic. 

Metre, measure, multiplicity, merit. 

Ludicrous and transcendent we speak in scale to express and entertain. 

It exists inside everything that ever was or ever will be and continues on outside of us. 

If language were machinery instead of machinations of the mind, what towers would it build, what acrid smoking pile of rubble? 

Our tongues fill the holes of our souls up with these words, wrap them in our slippery guts, climb out of the world on their backs and fall forever from the cliff when we lose our tenuous grasp on their imagined meanings. 

41

41

Locked step

Shaken down 

Pinched fingertip

Between incisors 

Cuffed hard

Booked up

Inked lumbar dip

Above drawstring tie

Backside 

of a billy club 

Strip tease