Explanations are available
if you are still around, you
said you were checking out,
but I still hear your sound,
I have proof of the things
that you wanted to know,
I have proof. You know.
You addled me so just
before you left, how could
you just go?

oh, man
I am having
a really good time here
all by myself,
making a lot of noise
to make up for
the silence

there once was a fisherman
who went looking for words,
(he knew exactly how close
the words words and worms was)
so he took grubs; and pushed them
up into an inconspicuous place
where they festered and were
expelled, (completely without grace)
he survived in the end, without
comment, without friend,
but he wandered, and now is here

oh ****, it's Friday
and nobody gives a ****
they're all drinking

Let me be known as the Sinks Grove sentinel,
I’ll keep a watch from dusk until dawn;
I’ll report on the news even though unsensational,
On the street, up the hill, at the store, on my lawn;

I’ll tell you the things that I hear from the birds,
Report on the rabbits that squeeze through the fence,
Sustain your attention with irrelevant words,
And keep an eye out for Marjorie Pence;

If Ed wins the lottery, I’ll give you a shout,
If the dogs keep barking, I’ll stop up my ears
If you’re worried about thieves that are lurking about
I’ll give you a call and calm all your fears.

Let me be known as the Sinks Grove sentinel,
Sensible and skeptical, lamentable, intentional.

We’ve all felt it,
been thwarted by the
thwarting forces of Thwart,
left to wonder
what we’ve done,
what was our part, well
come inside and ponder
until the forces depart.
You would think it simple
to just get up and go,
do the things that
you want to, but
oh, no, oh no,
the first tool rule is
always applied, that
the first thing you need
has found somewhere to hide;
you hunt and you search,
it’s nowhere to be found,
and you thought your organizing
skills were so sound; here
have some tea, sit for awhile
and talk to me. It’s the gremlins
I say, they are always trying
to mess up my day. Oh, you don’t
believe in fairies and such,
then, what do you think
has been hindering so much?

I think of you every day,
  and my thoughts fail
    because you are
    so far away;

my thoughts are not words
  that tell you I miss you;
    they are not pictures
    that conjure your beauty;

there is no color, no line
  no meter, or rhyme
    no past and no future
    no increment of time;

my thoughts are feelings:
  needs, pure wanting
    sometimes,
    expressions of longing

that words would fail at,
  and pictures distract from;
    only touches
    would do them justice;

I think of you every day,
  and my thoughts fail
    because you are
    so far away.

I have been to the reef,
I saw the fish,
I have been to the bridge,
I saw the manta ray
flying, I have been in the field,
and seen the people dying,
I’ve seen the clever
outsmart the hurting,
and politicians reverting
to unspecified claims,
hurling blames,
I’ve seen miners emerge,
their faces black,
the looks on their faces,
slack, witnessed the surge
of the incoming wave,
held a brave man, beaten,
overcome with surrender,
I remember it all, and yet,
I hold out to you a promise
I cannot keep, but keep
on hoping, that somehow
someday, all this will cease
and there will be a pause,
the promise of peace.

I am working up
the courage to
face you all again
ever since I laid
myself bare with
my accounting of
how I thought to
survive; by hording
my words while trying
to stay alive, but
it didn’t work, I
almost choked on them,
and now I feel like
they are just going to
spew out of my mouth again,
and shame me as before

I was afraid to go
to sleep last night,
because the two girls
in my dreams might meet,
Tatterina and Hugdalena,
so I sat up late,
drank wine, and
wrote this poem.

When I went to church
they often sang the
horrified beagle song,
and it made me chuckle
to myself, they sang,
"in my life, lord, be glorified,
beagle horrified, in my life, lord,
beagle horrified today."

I love you with my
heart, hands, eyes, breath, feet and lips.
will it be enough


I can feel them there,
heartbeats echoing softly
when I hold you close


Give your love to me;
I will treasure and hold it
with an open hand


Hungry to see you;
and even after they do,
my eyes still want more


I hold my breath and
count to twenty to quench it,
this longing for you


When you laugh with me,
my soul feels so much lighter,
my feet start to dance


Silent lips await
their chance to sing your praises,
or kiss you softly

These books of mine,
their titles bold,
which lie in wait
upon the shelves
just to be read
and never sold,
wait patiently
as I regard
their spine,
but never have
the urge to bring
them to my bed,
my eros dwindled
after years of
grand disapproval,
from them and others;
if they could speak
with pages unturned
they’d be a chorus
of reproving languor;
“you’ve done nothing
for us. Why don’t you
throw us on the burn pile?
you smile and spurn
our words and all the while
work at your poetry,
as if you have
at your command
the ages, but
cannot see the simple
things at hand;
you’ll never learn!”
So I, with dampened eyes
turn aside nocturnal
nonsense, and take one
down, and dust it off
and open up its pages
and realize its words
are eternally young,
while I’ve grown old
and spun my lifelong
web of lies, and missed
my opportunity,
languishing
in my impunity.

When we long,
we know there is more,
something missing
we need to find,
it is the motivation
to move on,
the essence of dissatisfaction,
the beginning of a journey
toward fulfillment,
it is the recognition
of unrest,
the need to discover
missing mysteries
in life.
Longing feels good,
it feels right;
it is the antidote
to complacency
and smug satisfaction.
When we long,
for others,
for something greater,
we reach past our dilemmas
and difficulties
and defeats,
we begin to climb
to higher ground.
Come, long along.

I saw him there alone at his task
upon his pedestal.
It was large enough
for him to turn
in short little steps
and still keep his balance
but no more than that,
as he turned and he turned,
and always kept turning.


Just a hand
on the pedestal
would have been trampled
by his continual turning,
in short little steps
around and around,
alone at his task
as he turned and he turned,
and he turned, always turning.


His clothing a veil
that couldn't conceal
the glow on his face.
And the strength
so apparent
in the task he performed
as he turned and he turned
and he turned and he turned,
and he turned and he turned,
always turning.


With his strong arms
bent slightly,  
he held a rope firmly
in sinewy hands
with thick fingers gripping,
he turned and he pulled,
and he turned and he pulled,
and he turned and he pulled,
always turning.






A strong muscled back
and large and sure legs
bent and locked at the knees;
he leaned back with the load
his arms stretched taut,
he turned and he pulled,
and he turned and he pulled,
he turned and he pulled,
always turning.


And as the rope
came by where I stood
I saw why he turned,
for licking around him
was a lake of fire burning
that lit up his face
as he turned and he pulled,
and he turned and he pulled,
he turned and he pulled
always turning.


At the end of the rope
was a large basket full,
of children all weeping
with nowhere to go,
too heavy to pull in
with arms stretched taut
as he turned and he turned,
and he pulled and he pulled,
and he turned and he pulled,
always turning.


They looked at the fire,
then earnestly to him
with eyes full of fear
as he held them perpetually,
above the flames;
In the glow of his face
I now recognized him
as he turned and kept turning
and turned,
always turning.





It was the father
who held them
and called them and told them
and pulled them and told them
that he couldn't pull them in,
there just wasn't room
on the pedestal for them,
but he would keep turning
and turning and turning,
and never stop turning,
no, never stop turning.




And he sang them a song
as they turned
and they turned;
he sang, "little children,
go around and around
and around and around
and around and around
and never stop turning."

most everyone has
something to say, a
criticism, an observation,
an opinion, but I know
a girl who just runs around
encouraging everyone,
how wonderful is that?

There is
a part of
a teak
armchair,
left out
in the rain;
I sanded it
and buffed it
and waxed it;
this is a good thing
to do, taking
old wood
and making it
pretty;
I stripped some
electrical wire, and
hammered it
into expressions
of my longing;
I listened
to the silent birds
and the radio,
wandering around
wondering;
suddenly
never happened,
but eventually
I found my way
back into
the house.
There was still
the laundry,
and somehow
I had forgotten
to eat dinner.

The whippoorwills
are a portent of dawn;
long before sun’s rising
they awaken the
alert ones who
welcome the light,
encourage the morning
with its singing birds
and countless bugs,
enthusiastic for life;
whirlpoolS spin endlessly,
grabbing whatever they can
and swirling it
down into darkness;
whippoorwills are for
the listening ones;
the hum of the freeway
and the buzz of mowers
and trimmers
and blowers and
planes and gulls
is for the others
who swat at ambience,
caught in life’s vortex.

Still ones,
listening ones,
stop the wheel!
Everyone grab a spoke.
Let’s turn the spiral
in the other
direction, let it come
from the center out.

One bird told another
and he in turn
another
until
in no time,
word was passed
halfway 'round the world;

and though the bluebird
could not communicate
the exact
meaning
of the language,
so foreign,
still, he sang,
and the sense
of the thing
was imparted;

and though the woman
did not know
she was hearing it
in the bluebird's song,
that secret thing
the man had told
the nightingale
so far away
was imprinted on her heart,
and she felt it
and put her hand
over her breast,
and breathed in
and smiled;

And the man
did not know
what the birds
had done.

human extraction is when
you pull a person out
of a situation
where they think
they are trapped
and you see them there,
without a clue,
and what else
can you do,
you reach out,
flip some switches,
pull pulleys and shout,
and pretty soon the poor person
previously captive is out,
and you go drink a beer

Hey, I need to talk to you.
Are you cognizant?
I have whisperings and shouts
needs and advice,
your response will suffice
to further your education,
of me and my clan,
and you and your plan
and I promise,
I will always play the poet
as long as I can

if I wanted you to see
what I saw, wouldn't it
be better to just point,
rather than conjure a
bunch of flowery language
gibberish that leaves you
wondering who the hell I am

when Stagger Lee
shot Billy
he had no idea,
he was just ******,
he could’a caught
the ride with Sadie,
headed west,
but no

government fraud,
it is there,
where the rabbit hole
turns into the worm hole.
do not let your fantasy linger;
when the guy in the restaurant
can't pay his bill,
the waitress does not decide

methinks, the would-be poets
have all lost their sense of humor
and are engaged in a tragic struggle
to retain their personal identity,
to keep from falling off some edge,
to decry a most miserable love affair,
to keen coyote-like at a disappearing moon,
to obtain sympathies only available
from other well-meaning sycophants,
and have also lost a certain dignity
that goes with the creative urge, the
willingness to throw off convention, to
explore, to invent situations unreal,
where they are the victors, the
heroes and heroines of a dying literature,
and to laugh out loud at all the circumstances
that have brought them to expose themselves
in such an unseemly manner
I raise a New Year's glass to you all
may you find peace, dignity, purpose
and regard in the coming year, and
overcome the forces of doom

a person,
a chameleon,
an adaptee,
the inveterate migrant,
the person who alters himself
to adapt to the local color,
dress, speech, mode,
who invents himself
to be accepted,
to fit in,
to appear at home,
to blend, must
disguise his true self,
and because he can’t
completely, because
his false description
is insufficient
to cover up     
what he was before,   
what life has molded
him into,
the shape,
the flavor,
and smell,
of his combined
historical circumstances
and conceptions
and upbringings,
the slaps
and kisses
and praises
and criticisms of his years,
then he must invent other false
descriptions about his true self
to counter
the imagined
prejudices
of the ones
he is trying to become like,
and all in all
it is lies, lies,
and more lies
and his true self
goes deeper
and further inside
until it nearly
disappears
and can only
be heard crying softly
in the darkness
by the keenest
of friends.

Honestly, I have no
feeling about now
just now, because
I am hiding, I am
not really here,
and time is behind me;
I can be here, silent
forever; but time
likes to creep up,
and when it does,
I kick it back
with my left foot,
and when I'm standing
that takes some practice;
divided right down
the ******* middle
is my mind,
and my balance
eventually always lands
on the gravity

if you would consider me for a place in the human race, without thought, then perhaps I could be bought, but I ain't cheap, I came here by dubious means, swimming canals, finding shores, you can put water that is about three hundred degrees below zero into a woodstove and it will melt and sing you the hillbilly national anthem, but I, river swimmer, am a threat?

Vote for me for poet of the year,
I can make you laugh,
I can make you fear,
I can make you giggle
like a schoolgirl again,
I can give absolution,
I can make you sin,
I can make you sing
with my meter and timing,
or upset your balance
with imperfect rhyming,
I’ll need your vote
at the end of the year
so, I thought I’d better
start asking you here,
vote for me for poet of the year.

I have unknown resources
that I have not used yet;
earlier in my life
I learned how to
overcome gravity and hover;
it serves me well in fleeing,
but I have not put it
to a positive usage:
just say the words,
"hey buddy, can you give me a lift?"

Knock, knock,
Whose there?
It's me, you ******* idiot,
who did you think it was?

Oh, ****
everything
I said before
is null and void
I have been
found out,
in the category
of preposterous.
the realm of bravado

I want to get so drunk
that I forget to eat,
even though I’ve been
working on my poor soup
all day, and try not
to remember the turkey
with all the stuffing
and the mashed potatoes
and gravy, the green bean
casserole, and the pies,
oh, my, those pies,
but I am the Christmas
outcast, the one who
denied the historic Jesus
his Saturnalia adoption,
and hurled Him and me
into this oblivion.

is my dislike for the exceptional
regional or conventional,
am I paranoid or schizophrenic,
am I a raging peripatetic
or a reasonably ignorant human,
these questions all remain
as I wipe my hands off
and digress from communication
and work my way back
down into my wormhole
until the holidays are over