Time is a messy theology
Ontology is marginalia
All the failed zoning of dreams
The horizon buries treasure
The best grammar drinks hose water
Gravity marks the spot
Chance is the logic of logic
Determinism is a just-so story
Chaos is the directory for the future
Footsteps carry a curt philosophy
The April moon is sparse of ideology
The moments that harbor infinity
Never last and never leave us
The stars are as mortal
As the peacock
Sunshine Blogger Award
Michael over at Raven’s Weald nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award, and though this isn’t my usual thing, I’d like to take this opportunity to first, thank Michael, and second, give a shout out to his fantastic blog. Michael writes intriguing, wonderful short stories, and amazing original poetry. He also gives great advice for upgrading your blog. Seeing that I’m not good at all on the tech stuff, really comes in handy for me. So please check out his blog.
I know I’m not following the guidelines exactly, but part of this is answering some questions Michael asked. So here goes:
What is a weird thought that lives rent-free in your head?
That mirrors are actually windows to another universe exactly synced up to ours, and you are really seeing yourself in the mirror/window, albeit another you in another universe.
What is a completely normal thing that secretly gives you the ick?
Sugary coffee drinks
What is a skill you’d like to learn?
Wood working. I’d love to be able to make a chair. Just like Ron Swanson.
What is something you’re weirdly good at or goodly weird at?
I’m not really sure how to answer this. Could long meandering walks be something you’re good at? I recently took a long walk with my son, and we kept coming to a bend in the road, and I said I wanted to know what comes next. He eventually said, won’t this go on forever? I had to concede on this. I have gone on walks I needed to take a bus home, having gone too far.
What I think I’m weirdly bad at is leaving comments on WordPress. So if my comments are lame, I’m sorry!
Do you think our dreams have hidden meanings?
Strangely I don’t. But our interpretations of them, yes. Lots of hidden meanings.
If you could live in any time period, when do you think you might fit in better than you fit now? Or feel better about?
Ancient Greece. Or the 70’s.
What is your super-secret superpower that no one suspects you have?
Anxiety and panic attacks. I have those down. The same way Bukowski has masted the hangover.
Cook me a meal. What am I being served?
Popcorn. I have a whole system down. Involving ghee. It’s damn good.
What is the strangest thing you’ve ever done?
I’ll throw this out there, I took a bunch of LSD and took a bus from Mexico City to Chicago. It took two days to get to Chicago.
Has anyone ever dared you lick a pole in the middle of winter? Would you? If you did, what happened?
This is really funny. But I’m not sure I’ve ever done that.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
Licks and Tootise Pop are one. Like Zen and archery.
Walking is a Reflection of the Inverse of a Dream
Trains and electrical towers buzzed in his head. The locomotive is a moth that drinks only from puddles that harbor the reflection of the moon.
And the moth, now a locomotive again, falls into the reflection of the moon.
Later that night, neither the rain nor the rain against the windowpane make a sound. It is the tree roots drinking, it is the roots of stars drinking. That resonate.
As Beautiful as a Planetarium (In Couplets)
Abstract sandwiches
Are baloney.
The ping pong playing peonies
Of electric yesterdays.
Distance is simple.
It smells feral and wears the sky on its head.
Rayguns and eyebrows
Volcanoes and arrows.
Apple unicycle bird
Barbarian heyday song.
A silly sleep of fire
Turning over like a dream.
The sun is a handkerchief
And badly in need of some tattoos.
This isn’t funny
But almost hilarious.
Writing love themes
For the galaxy.
Or Whatever Fuel UFOs Run On
The afternoon smells like a waltz. With hints of a
Mosh pit.
Tuesdays are for études. And classic rock
Tee shirts.
Let’s meet at the bodega and buy cans of beer and a bag of peanuts.
Feed the crows and make a day of it at the park.
Your eyebrows are infinite. Don’t laugh. I’m serious.
I want to open a gas station for UFOs.
Offbeat
Atonal butterflies
Like crackers breaking in half
In midair
Harmonious as a leak
Legible as a cold draft
Atonal daffodils
Are allergic to nihilism
And gardens
Use pointless random parades as currency
Robins are the first proletarians of spring
A Genius for the Margins
A genius for the margins, like a stray shopping cart rolled up and jutting from a snowbank, or in spring an abandoned yellow umbrella tumbling along the gray railroad lines in a light rain,
The reflection of the reddening sky in the west facing panes, or the first crocuses in the city lot shooting up between beer can and soda can,
The chain-link with the corner pulled up through which the kids trespass into the abandoned grain mill to paintball and graffiti, or like the pedestrian bridge over the expressway garnished with fence on top,
Late at night the streetlights filling the rainy streets, taking root in the potholes and sewer grates, as our elbows share a window ledge looking out at thunderstorm,
A cricket lives less than the summer months, a star for billions of years, though a monarch butterfly flies south for the winter, and the robins return in spring.
Even in Spring
The moon is a drought
Like a harpsichord in a vacuum
Overflowing with rivers
That are dreams
The dusk is scarlet like autumn
Even in the spring
Can a river ever find footing
Asked the lighted match
Ice is bottomless
Said the crows
From the bare winter boughs
But never absolute
The Odds Are Against Me
I make a nest.
I buy a hang glider.
I bring home a pulsar.
I borrow a sweater.
Lean against the strain
An ingenious ladder of stars
For an alphabet.
Its own stillness terrifies
The moon.
It’s true, imaginatively tested,
Autumn’s red leaves
Are capable of falling in and out of black holes.
A Dream
Preferably the dreams
Arriving from the blue sea
To the pentameters of oars
What it means
To have instead of coins
These spirited verses
Ashore the ghosts set fire
To their own ships
To bar the way back
Here they trace the portents
On the incoming tide
And make their final stand
naïve haircuts 