the last twenty five

the roof keeps letting the rain in. i think they have made some sort of deal. so we sleep together in the same bed, the rain and i. it is a strange love affair, very serious, like half a funeral. i awaken suddenly in the early morning to a damp pillow, and for a moment i think i am crying. i squint at the grey sunrise, laden with the feeling of train stations, my dreams still pawing at me from the purple. not entirely myself, and not entirely anyone else. and in those spectacular, gloriously bleary moments, peering through a haze of sleep, out the window onto a world that is half made up of dreams, i am a little bit sad and a little bit ecstatic and i don't possess the proper machinery to process the feeling, so i nudge the rain over, lay my head back down, steal back some blankets and fall back into sleep.

self fulfilling prophecy

oh those salted wounds of the epic battles we hurled ourselves into that no history will remember and no one will sing songs of, with their taste of iron and hickory smoke, marking our guilty flesh that we may remember the bodies of comrades left and lost lingering in our dark places, wearing death masks and painting with finger paints over the gaping eight year holes the images of their never to be lived futures, their could have beens, and the child faces their ever closed eyes will not spy again. we are healed now. all the books say move on, march forward, be brave and act as a soldier should. the televisions have wandered to more interesting stories. the rhetoric says what it always has said. we are good and honorable. proud and many. strong and willing. we will find a way to paint this positive. we will ignore the truth. we are very good at that.

the never-was sailor

standing on the deck, staring out over a calm sea, like eternal pancakes running forever to four horizons; hoisting the sails to bleed white in the sunset and carry wind in their palms; aching through the long lonely isolation of that enormous blue wilderness, that alien landscape, while my beard pokes further from my face and my heart hurts with the dull shock of longing; thirst floating on an ocean of undrinkable water; a triumphant return from far lands to my wife and children, and the rise up of that blood feeling like electric eels inside of me, ecstatic, before the old itch returns and i feel the pull of the sea once more; all the things i have never felt because my legs have never left land for long enough.

the book trials

the beehive is buzzing beneath my skin. i am zippering up the last melodies to fold up and bed beneath for the winter. be a tree for me, sling your sap sticky over my tongue, stain the shadows in sweet phosphorescence, and caress the wind with your whispering needles. when i was a child, my father used to cut my hair. our kitchen turned into a barber shop those afternoons. i remember thinking what a talented dad he was, that he knew how to cut hair, but did something else for a living. my hair is wild now, uncontrollable. it is learning to sing. my girl has a body like a fire truck, like something i used to dream about. when i kiss her i become the numbers above the elevator, switching every floor, our lips touch and the doors open, and every number i am, i glow.

when the future looked like a cartoon, the bellowing was faint, but now that the future is a fist inside an anthill, the bellowing is an empty belly

when the dust settled, our guns were rusted over. the man at the bar crumbled into a pile of dirt with daisies where his grin had been. the arriving twelve o'clock train sounded like a mother in hard labor. we didn't move at all. for three hundred years we stood there. the time felt like sand on the back of my neck, grains shifting, moving, blowing in the wind. the building collapsed around us. they built an enormous city where the town used to be. we were statues in a park. everyone was under the impression that we were great works of art. but at some point i decided to move again. the people around me seemed pretty alarmed. my mouth tasted like cactus death. i sure could have used a beer. but out of nowhere a massive snarling mechanical beast came roaring by. "what in the hell is that?" i said. "it's a car," said one of the funny dressed people. well, i didn't know what a "car" was. "aren't you a statue?" said another one. "son," i said "i've ripped off a man's hand and fed it to him for less than what you just said to me." and that was the last he said about that.

my grandmother's coffin

it was lighter than i expected. like moving a dining room table. the cancer only left her skeleton and her skin.

you reach inside your heart like it's your back pocket and at the end of the day all you have is a handful of scribbles

we send ourselves out to scraped knees and the edges of buildings, knowing they will hurt, and knowing they are necessary. but we forget, when we are standing on the edge, why it is that we brought ourselves there. i can't sew a dress and i can't ride a horse. i can play a few chords on the guitar and sing a quiet song. i've been thinking, maybe we all know it is a farce, and we just have to let it be. but that's where i get caught up, i think i see through it, and i want to point my finger and say "Look!" but maybe you just have to allow for that. sure this is all an act, but maybe it is all we really have. if i'm playing a part and so are you, then we make up some whole that neither of us can see the outside of, but we know it is there, and we know what it feels like to be inside of it, and maybe that is the whole point right there. i just dont know.