Why can’t I just say it
plain why are there so many
modifiers on this bright
morning of single digits the
dog imitates a restless sea
at various locales as she
wishes while darkness sparkles and
each is questioned and crumbles
my fingers slowly covered in
spots will lunch be any good is
it too early to give up and
have a smoke too late to burn my
stuff and start again too late blinded
by the icicle’s gleaming drop
II
I am still tired and hungry and thinking about the sea. I mean tea. I am coming and going. I’m thinking of buying that pen. I am scratching my head. I was thinking about the dog who wandered into our yard and stayed two days four decades ago and we bought canned food and a box of Milk-Bones. I was writing about the past before. I was trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together in the dark with my hands battered and tender. I’m making up a few things and being honest about others, but that hardly matters. I’m thinking of Canterbury again, though we’re not a week into February. I wonder if it’s too late to bake a sweet potato. I watch the dog’s little rise and sink rise and sink the sun shading one side on the blanket her new toy by her head. I was thinking of a friend who used to live nearby. I hear the wind tour the chimney and out around the yard and back and watch the bare limbs of the locust try to scratch where they can’t quite reach. I’m thinking of Neil Gaiman again and I want to read the Vulture article and at the same time I’ve already heard too much and someone said can we expect the guy who writes creepy stories not to be creepy. I wonder if he thought of it as a kind of bastard research or as oh why bother with this. I really liked the few things I read and don’t know if I’ll ever read what I haven’t. I am tired of news like this and at the same time pleased people are speaking up whether or not folks I like get flushed. I thought of that song towards the end of Joe’s Garage he was such a nice boy he used to cut my grass or something like that. I fear I am falling into prose. I feel a certain energy rarely. I see shadows out of the corner of my eye wriggle and escape. I am second cousin to snow and icicle. I am half of what I once was and twice as something as I may have been or something. I think I should delete my Facebook account. I want to be familiar with GBV’s entire catalog but I’m already 50 and I’m not sure if I have the time. I am dissolving in abstraction and thinking of graham crackers and chunky peanut butter and maybe I’ll do more stretching, but maybe first more tea. I feel as though I’m hypnotizing myself. I wonder if that dream machine works. I think a somnolent mind might be somewhat more prone to an hallucinatory stimulus. I think that line sounds best in a quite post accent. I would like to rest my hand. I am worried that I won’t be able to something in the morning. I wonder why we never swim in the ocean. I would love to feel the enthusiasm I once felt for a variety of people, places, and miscellaneous whatnot. I would like to remember in a clear way unimpeded by the meddling mind unmolested by ego. I would write it down in a little book, once edited. I think it could be the inverse of Pandora’s jar. I hope you look it up. I will continue and try to say good.
After crawling on 95 after
a salty meal after recycling the
last ideas pinned to the moldy cork
after snoozing some forced friends then after
humidly leafing through the museum
of wasteful catalogs after walking
the dog and cleaning up after the dog
washing the towels plates and small forks of
our ritual dessert once the air is
cleared of sulfur and mildew and the old
toilet is passably clean the new car
charged the simple altar dusted we may
find a stick and throw it into the sea
and see what kind of tomorrow we can buy
I am miserable / too full
of the wrong / energy / why did
n’t I / start this differently
but instead say the sea / say the
stars somehow / in those distant dawns
before days / what do you want / from
me the mountain / rising up / sure
and slow but / these flowers / have not
yet shared / / a single secret / through
stamen or petal / and does this
dream / always have / to have a / car
chase with an / explosion / but the
pull of some / feeling I don’t / want
but will / now set in / moist concrete
so I said why not take a stab at taking a break see the sea and see what happens but now it seemed to present a note of late summer grass too long submerged in still water so let it rot and replace it if and when any other if and when reach ripeness though who knows what colony may have flourished on the washed rind of that tepid advice for a queasy smile as far as this stomach can walk while empty a small star broadcasts its lukewarm burn
who birthed
a stone
shining
through cries
broken
picked it
up kiss
kiss put
it down
this white
page still
hates me
no that’s
silly
after
all the
great sea
flashes
stop that
the night
humid
for what
was his
name John
didn’t
he have
a big
something
car and
maybe
I’m wrong
headed
eyebrows
foreheads
who walk
by my
window
why do
they breathe
so close
to me
so pick
up the
white page
try to
forget
the names
swarming
the heat
In the morning you can reach out and see on the breeze in the mind the damp stone tightening straps keep him in place the pain in his cell the confession conversion meaningless at this point or the life by the sea rough stone grey the children I pushed through and lined up in the earth and the cliffs so beautiful lonely one time one town on the frontier barely built I can still smell new cut wood that simple home sun creeping through seams in the wall another sunny place warm weather sweet breeze always fetching writing down his many thoughts the wine was good
other animals 