poem

In Marker

Bob, , , 18 Comments 
I was buying three paintings a day
I was sponsoring chalk drawings
Anything with scribbles on it
I’d pick up off the street 
Walking alongside junkyard walls I
Wrote on the corrugated steel “Do you know
The album, Zen Arcade, by Husker Du?
Out of Step, by Minor
Threat?"
I went to thrift stores, to city fields, church sales
Just to find the pictorial of light of deity of logic of everything that is endless
And terminal of dark of sun and the more popular binary stars

Be certain
To appertain
The havoc and the intention
The intervention of fiction
As Steve Zissou said,
"Nobody knows what's going to happen. And then we film it. That's the whole concept."

Michael (over at https://ravensweald.com/) and I were talking of old bands we listened to. And Hüsker Dü came up. I mentioned, not only did I like their music, but the title of the album, Zen Arcade and the cover art itself, has been influential to me. I brought up I had a poem were I mention the album title, but had taken it down. Deciding I didn’t like the poem. But I’ve given it another shot at editing. Still not sure it’s finished. But I thought I’d give it another try. I hope you enjoy. Thanks.

Poem

Bob, , , 21 Comments 
I plan on purchasing a crater from the moon when it becomes
Available for sale. I am a motivated buyer. 
And I am as broke as an open field on the eve of
Dusk. My socks are garnishes from a leftover dream.
And I know the sea only by its many names.

I court a hectic thing I don’t have the words for.
A simple pretense as it always has been
Defying sameness and concord, edifying
Zigzag and along the lines of a hunch, this forest
In a dream is your soul’s cathedral, 
The banister from heart to head.

Walking Poem

Bob, , , , 23 Comments 
A walk is a glad
Unfencing of the 
Present. The body
Finds it meditative.
Eventually, though, I stop for lunch. 
A peanut butter and jelly
Sandwich and an apple.
I sit on some neglected ledge
Not far from the railroad tracks.
The posture of electric towers
Is impressive as I straighten
By back.

In the fields that run along the
Railroad tracks, that’s where 
I often walk, I like the belated 
Graffiti and all kinds of flowers 
And insects, the corrugated metal
Fencing of the junkyard, 
On which is spray painted:

"A spaceship 
Like a hiccup 
Lost of home"

&

"A passing moment
Not intended as far as I know of anything
At all. The rest I leave to the weather"

At the end of the path I am walking on is a 
Clearing, where last year someone burned a car,
Leaving its charred remains.
From here I turn back and head home.

Anywhere

Bob, , , , 14 Comments

In a dream you are mumbled by a group of incongruous words. You find you have the silhouette of a jet pack for a tattoo. Between your shoulder blades. No memory of how it came about. The only way around this city is by bus. And this bus is possibly only a rumor, a wisp of shadow. The last few piano keys of a beautiful melody is the only currency for fare. You ride the bus for hours. You take it anywhere. Sometimes you close your eyes till you hear the last stop announcement. From there you try to find your way home. The only way home is by hunch. All in a hunch of wind and silence and by the look of deserted shoes dangling on power lines or following footsteps in a dream to disappear into. But all goes astray, and you find yourself at the end of an unfamiliar continent that ends at the sea, and how the waves reach the shore here is like the wishing of coins into a fountain. A strange accent of rain in the tread of your boots and the wind and spring you drag after you after hours along the railroad tracks and city streets. Who will pick this up, the images of birds? And will you find employment in the growing moon?

A Poem is Hardly a Poem

Bob, , , 23 Comments 
Distance is the moth wing 
That smells like a lunar landing.


Our solar system began as a gaseous 
Cloud.

The autumn leaves this year began 
As blue typewriters.


A poem is hardly a poem, said
Vortex and valise. Said the sea, 
What is the meaning of wind
In the trees?


Homesick for what is unfinished
Like leaving a dream to go to another dream.

Marginalia

Bob, , , 16 Comments 
The graffiti outside the concert hall
Is shabby, but beautiful, like the footwork of downspouts.

The grammatically correct lightbulbs, but for the fingerprints
Of new moons.

Like the notations in a dream, unevenly underlined, then
Soon forgotten.

The calligraphy of the video game Asteroids 
Is a favorite study of Aristotle. 

Aristotle loves marginalia. 
What if you could add up all the circumferences in the galaxy? 

As for that total, though I don’t know outright, I hum the tune. 
We are all spacewalking.

Poem

Bob, , , 26 Comments 
If you find me flattering. Take that! 
If you find the universe boundless. Take me with you!
If you find me kind. Study disheveledness. 
If you find me asleep. Wake me up. What’s the difference?
If the cause is plain. And the outcome complex. Can I ride shotgun?


An almost neurotic need to start over and walk
Away from all these muddled manifestations
So I may join other muddled manifestations
In my washing machine washed socks
Bright as fiction and sturdy as butterflies
At a construction site. 


Once ever one billion years the moon
Blows its spout and takes in new air.