language clues

look or see,
hear or listen.
language clues
visible through
clear book bags.
sitting so far back
in the class,
have to call on
yourself.
attendance sheet,
all zeros

circling

keeping a buzzard circling
in your brain will inspire
you not to take too many
slacker breaks.
(even attempting to
conceive such will speed
up one’s pace out of the|
desert).

mental lap time

if you doubt that thinking
is physical,
then just try to think faster.
you can only think as fast
as you speak, regardless of
your mental lap time.

harder to catch

quick, take this end
I’ll take the other.
make a wish.

rainbow,
tastes like chicken,
harder to
catch.

ubiquitous

ubiquitous guard rails
saying, no need to wreck here.
no impediment for
careening mind.

forfeited

why one not an other?
as you think on this,
synapses lose their grip,
and possible connections,
forfeited.

cross-threaded

pepper cap screwed askew,
but tight.
so many minds
cross-threaded with
an understanding universe.

still steaming

I don’t hide behind
these words, veiled
though some be.
more readily, all is flung
at the kitchen wall,
and what sticks, is done.

squiggles left hanging
on their flimsy conjunctions,
still steaming.

limbic prod

sometimes perplexity
will serve as a limbic prod,
a ‘come hell or high water’
determination to find  resolution.

but

I write but
there seems no separation
of subject and predicate.

brief reality 1, grammar 0

contained

heavy yellow equipment.
mind digging hole, which
for now, it cannot escape.
no more leaning
on your shovel, you gotta
keep that thing contained.

sorts

it really is a personal war
against seriousness.
even those jovial sorts
get serious sorts of jovial.

entwined

the ivy and the honeysuckle
convene to see who will lock the gate
in their embrace.
a dog leap answers.

gestures

hand gestures bridge a gap
between our communicating
mind and our body–
that is not there.
it’s just that we are deaf to
our own tells.

damp irony

pond silting in.
a few crowded fish.
fat raccoon.

damp irony.
ordinary minds,
much silt,
yet never filled in.
water stolen
from foggy creeks
to cover shallowness.

shear leveling

sitting by the path to the old logging road,
one marvels at the pace of the mountain.
this ground once flat under sea, then lifted, now
easing gradually, piece by piece into the valley.
the shear leveling of life.
yet to slide down into metaphor would be
a defacing of a natural slope of closeness.

simplicity

too much reliance on tools–
my inclined plane keeps
falling down on the job.
where is the simplicity
that blame hides again?

illiterate wind

shedding upon one’s keyboard
bits of distributed human stuff,
every moment a stirring up and
casting forth–
mostly dust, skin, hair and used breath,
the immediate and necessary recycling
of selves until that very last dumpster dive.
in between, we reach out and pull
various clouds into stylized positions,
(proud of our impact on the thoughts of man),
while beseeching the wind to cease.

now to see that we are that stirring, illiterate wind.
and only that.

aimless wallows

skunks occasionally rely
on aimed tincture,
but then, there are the goats–
aimless wallows of hormonal
smells, self-peeing
refreshment of pugnacious
airs.
mildly, who am I to
contrast our own
repellant and attractant
effluviums?

all that enters

life adjacent to a dead end street.
all that enters,
absorbed into
pure neighborhood.

the problem

the problem with changing
one’s mind is that we rely
completely on lobbying, and
that caucus procedure is certainly
never as decisive as liposuction.

slipshod

point your considerating
beyond sense.
and beyond nonsense.
then of course, finding the
mean is also off track.
the reason ‘being asleep’ is
so undefined and misunderstood
is that it is completely misspelled.

what is that slipshod
grammarian in your head?

coated

painted plywood
always looks like
painted plywood.
the grain never hidden,
the dents magnified.
a smoothing over that still
reveals its basest underlayment.

all is painted with wet
awareness,
the drips run clean off this vertical world.
mind left coated in quiet saturation.

the original campfire

all description overdressed,
but rags speak as loud.
perhaps a muted tan
without embroidery,
a necessary hem or two,
if you say, and that fine
figure is modestly
revealed underneath.

as well,
pointing fingers
moon good taste
when a slight
nod will do.

gestures most
subtle now
take us back
to preliterate
times, Adam
would be first
to point out.

the warmth of the
original campfire.

land of nod

we must walk through the land of nod,
with totes of faulty alarm clocks,
our restless legs all in step together.
(the exits, perhaps ill marked, and seemingly distant.)
who writes this dream, this poem of endless images?
least all be lost, don’t indulge the author,
who will keep your snores in permanent rhyme.

footnotes

stop including footnotes
on all that you think.
discursive explanations are what
got you in trouble the first time.
well, not making them…just listening to ‘em.

patina

how to clean the stains?
years of coffee and tea
serve to color my interior.
perhaps the emerging patina
will enhance the grain,
as my belly is burnished
from carrying life so tight.

addicted

to be addicted to the internal life
is only way to have a chance to be
free of it.
dreams, like mice, scurry out for
quick bites, going for the softest parts.

something else

dog wants to play.
cat wants to sit.
life quick to arrange
something else.

one stick

one stick.
two dogs.
life, apparently.