Spiced Tea

He held his breath as she descended
the western stair and the color he knew
she would pick had just peaked through the colonnade,
a slinky grey dress that fell so perfectly
about her hips and in the face of vibrants lips
at the dress's greyness that he forgot again to breathe

and again forgot to blink so stuck and struck dumb
until he found his voice and heard Wonderful Tonight in his ears
and she passed oiling fingers through his bearded cheeks
and kissed the chin as the sea washed through their eyes,
so strange and divine they rested there at the base
of the western stair loving both their lull and fray.

Foxes I & II

I

I want a baby fox for Christmas, Mother--
a red pup curled at the foot of my bed
to yip at the snowflakes and passing squirrels.
His tail would wrap beneath my nose as
he perches on my shoulder while
I study in the Den.  I know the fox
is not a pet but Mother please
I cannot be appeased by a dog or cat
I want a baby fox for Christmas to sleep
at the foot of my bed.

II

a wolf pup plays

with a fox pup plays

with a boy pup plays

with a gun and then learns

how to aim and then seeks

out the fox boy he seeks

out the wolf boy he takes

careful aim then the boy

sees the eyes of the fox

of the wolf boy then whistles

his hound boy he stumbles

to see through the fog

in the woods then the boy

leaves the farm and the hound

for a far-away land

boy he carries his gun

through the jungle and steam

boy he aims at the boy,

boy he takes proper aim

oh the boy shoots the boy

and his bleeding wound drips

boy the boy drops his gun

and the boy dies in vain

and the boy with the hound

and the wolf and the fox

is a man is a man

is a man is a man.  

yes the boy is a man

in a far-away land

he has blood on his hands

now he's back on the farm

now the boy has a boy

yes the boy who's a man

has a boy of his own

and his boy has a hound

sees the hound boy a fox

bearing pups and a wolf

boy a wolf bearing pups

boy that boy sees the wolf

and the boy sees the fox

and he says to his boy

"boy those pups are your kin"

says the boy to his dad

with a glint in his eye

he says "why father why?

why are animals kin?"

says the boy to his boy

"son we all of us die,

boy but some of us kill"

and the boy saw his dad

with a glint in his eye

and the boy was a boy

and the fox was a fox

but the wolf was a wolf

boy and all of them pups.

Frank the Fregan - for Izzy

Frank the fregan foraged for fruits,

for finery and feathery fronds, finding fleas

and fungi instead, some lice for his head

and a box for a bed, but two day old bread
and a lapsing of dread

and the peace of the dead,
the frugal prince crowned,

to his green dumpster wed.

Short story draft

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

-Mark Twain

He was always hyperaware of the unnerving mouth sounds the old people made when they were settling into their easy chairs, or the sagging, smoke-colored couches in the nursing home Activity Area, which of course meant Television Area in 2029. Only its oldest residents were pre-TV, the few born before the old tube and antennae were a staple of every American living room and kids sat around transistor radios or simply listened to cows mooing and the wind over the plains after dinner. The gumming sounds (he referred to them as gumming sounds even though many residents had most of their original teeth even into their second century of existence) unnerved Jeremy because he was afraid of hearing the same sounds come from his mouth as he relaxed in the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat each night after his shift at the home. He usually got to his beige flat around 8:30, just in time for McGilroy's Celebraslut Hour and a quick session in the Vibra-Seat before bed. He felt the tension drain out, down from the stacking pressure in his spine to the hot spots in his heels and toes that had been carrying him about all day, padding lightly from room to room in the same terry cotton slippers that residents wore, checking daily vital displays and replacing the meal and medication dispensing cartridges. He heard the elderly smacking their lips contemplatively and shuddered, the retired bank managers and insurance salesmen and nurses and chemical engineers, all of them feeble and cast aside by their children, bitter at the costs of maintaining the ailing bodies of their progenitors.

Jeremy was only 31, but he felt twice that age each time he pre-counted the multi-colored pills that would whirl out of the dispensers for each of the residents every morning at 7:30, again at 9:30, 12:30, 3:30, and 7:30 pm. He felt even older than that when he took his own cocktail of tutti-fruity pharmaceuticals at 6, a small lime green one for smoking cessation, a pink, egg-shaped one filled with powder for kidney health, (there was a slight genetic predisposition he was told by his doctor), another egg-pill, this one cinnamon red, for pancreatic function and mood regulation, a large brown one to alleviate stress on his sciatic nerve (another genetic predisposition) and finally a huge, gray-blue horsepill he choked down once a day for possible vitamin deficiencies, any buildup of neurogenic toxins from the other mediations, and apparently his bowel health (this confused Jeremy, since he had been told his bowel health was excellent at a previous appointment, a point he hoped to take up and clarify with his doctor that evening, but the connection on his Dial-a-doc app had flickered as the Tram from Westchester to his apartment in Dorsett glided into a tunnel, and the white-coated figure on his handheld faded into static).

He knew the pills kept him healthy, that they would keep him alive for a very long time if he kept them up, if he exercised regularly, stuck with the allotted daily value of Carbo-Flakes and MeatMuffin that was suggested by his nutritionist. He saw the evidence of his potential for longevity every day. The thing he dreaded most in life was the prospect of groaning each morning as he sat up in bed for pills, the way many of the residents did. It was a low, wrenching groan, almost bovine-like in its inanity. He'd had nightmares with the groan, the tremolo coming from his own throat as he saw himself sit upright in an adjustable electronic bed, the multi-colored pharma-gruel sliding down the dispenser chute into his mouth and muting the groaning, pushing it down inside his stomach with the pills and mush. But in his dreams he could feel the groan even as it was silenced, he felt it push out against his abdominal walls and against the ceiling of his cranium, a grotesque rumble, increasing in frequency to an almost ear-splitting hiss, until he woke up to his alarm, sweating and terrified.

Jeremy wondered if the residents who groaned when they woke felt this way all the time, but the medicine covered it up, boxed it inside like the feeling in his dream. He had once seen a woman named Irene who had skipped her medication three straight days leap from the 12-foot roof of the home into a bin of used hypodermic needles. After he had called the Ambulance shuttle for Irene, knowing full well she had already passed from the shock, he requested a week off, checking the box marked Personal Issue/Stress Related.

He took the time to visit his younger sister Jean and her husband in Brixton, they had replayed old YouHome videos of Mom and Dad and their other sibling Peter, recalling jokes and details of the trip they had taken together to Sanibel the Spring after Jeremy had graduated from tech school. Jeremy's parents had passed in a Tram derailment four years earlier along with Peter as they were traveling back from Mexicali on a short vacation. A monsoon had swept the whole car off the electromagnetic tracks and pulled it back into the ocean as the tidal wave receded. Jeremy had watched the footage within minutes of its occurrence on the NewsPro app his handheld came with, unaware he knew anyone on the Tram. It had made him a bit sad to see the expensive new Tram slide off the track the way it did. The Rapid Emergency Safety function (or res for short) had worked properly, immediately inflating a bright yellow bumper raft around the Tram's exterior, but the designers of the res had not anticipated the reaction between the unusually high temperature and salinity of the storm surge, the electromagnetic slabs on the tracks and the sudden expulsion of static electricity elicited by the ballooning raft. The combination of the hot, salty water and the superconductive palladium-coated slabs fried the Tram and it's contents in a fraction of a second, just as the res was activated.

Jeremy found out later that night from Jean, that Peter and Mom and Dad were on it. He regretted watching the video so nonchalantly as the reporter calmly explained the issue with the hot water and the slabs and the static charge, he regretted not keeping in touch with his parents better, he would've known they were visiting in Mexicali if he'd called them that morning. He would've been better prepared to hear from Jean about their sudden Tram accident. Sometimes Jeremy wondered if the accident would've been better had it been his Tram, whether the feeling he squelched each time he shuddered at the groaning or gumming sounds of his residents would've died with him forever. He wanted that feeling to die.

The last image of Peter and Jean and him and his Dad on the beach at Sanibel slid in front of him on the YouHome app of his handheld as he pushed his apartment door open. He eased himself into the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat and quietly smacked his lips, groaning just slightly as the ambulating little electroballs glided up and down his spine and McGilroy splattered his high-pitched voice across near-nude photos of movie stars on the television screen.

River Dog

She stood on the unturned rocks

and paddled between lilies,

huffing each breath to expel

the water coming up from underneath.

Sycamore leaves piled down,

flaking like their mottled bark,

green and white, marbled

like her blue merle coat

shedding droplets down.

Cannonball-sized bodies

folded firmly in the rush,

the rapids telling stories

as she lingered in an eddy.

Boldly she dipped her head and paws

to hear the current speak,

a murmured secret carried

through, the yarning ocean's deep.

Settling

The speckled orange of a Marb Red filter

dangles from his lips, trusting its place there

as it has a pack a day since '06.

  If it's brown it's down he says

shifting his bulk around

under crinkling camo. Deer season's

initiation for twelve year olds and

now we are adepts at 18

  Well I ain't bout killin a doe--

a smirk, guffaws

but this late in the season,

you gotta take what you can get.

Thoreauvian Arithmetic

Simplify.³

Green River Reservoir: Canoeing Journal Excerpts

Eat all the hunger you can,

this is not a morning for a delicate breakfast.

Your lunch is moist, day-old and smaller

as the day gets high.

A kettle lake is the kind I best know, a round glacial divot fed by meltwater, underground seepage, an island of water in the vast scar of land and people, but this lake, the Green River Reservoir, is a slowed river, outwardly connected to the water around it via channels narrow and meandering; the flowage system is elongate and fanged, with many sharp inlets, coves and bays; the trees here explode unto the edge of water, only separated by a smooth crest of rock, like foliage sprouting on the shell of an enormous ancient turtle.

Lining the bottom of the cove,
as much as I have seen follows:
Newts, decaying leaves and sticks,
some kind of seaweed, old logs, a dead sunfish.


The fluid wander becomes stagnant, glacialized; we are awash in a landscape and ourselves--

Daring the Yellow Light

I thought of a place

that could come to be

a holding cell for

the thirst in our hearts.

I held it in my mind:

--a burial ground

piled with peat and

wilted daisies,

forgone letters tapped out

lovingly on typewriters,

a thousand lonesome glances

at the hoary swelling moon,

more caskets of clichés,

more trinkets tired of dirt.

I heap higher and higher

above the settled earth,

until it scrapes the heavens'

knees, until we've set

beneath the moon's chin

like a contemplative fist.

I pull darkening blue sky

close around myself,

wrapping it like a cloak,

as it's cold above reason

near the timberline

of memory, where

roots can't hold to time,

dates without dates,

eternities spent curled together,

conversing in a treehouse always

just at dusk, laying weaved

together in a bobbing canoe,

letting the wind pull

us about the narrow pond.

I've made a bed of all of this,

plumbing a dark sky for you

--this is where I will

rest my tired eyes tonight,

the blue daring

the yellow light.

Green Canoe

The whirls were twisting in patterns

as they touched beyond the gunnel.

A paddle turns the world beneath

me, leaving stillness, leaving land.

Sweeping seaweed from my blade,

I glide through misty vastness

Leaving bounded space behind,

shedding moorings and the coast.

I was gliding there in a

green canoe. I was gliding along.

I was gliding like a hockey

puck pushed, smooth black water shifting

to blue, with the Sun peaking

just below the needled fir.

Thinking of my stroke beneath,

a feathered open row.

Ain't it a Shame?

Ain't it a shame,
this gonerism,
byeism,
simple see-you-in-Julyism?

Ain't it a shame
for your arms to slump
and your back to arch
like a dew-laden grain-
stalk bending in the dawn?

Ain't it a shame for us to
hold cold hands in a cold
parked car, and to pack off
at that moment like
shiftless old dogs?

(--and suddenly, I'm holding nothing:
one cannot hold onto a
memory's dead moments, I learned)

And so long so long,
but ain't it a shame?

I disagree, with civility.

I disagree, with civility.

But you see your argument has been
anything but civil--


Precisely as I said,
I disagree with it,
in no uncertain terms
and I am anything but
a civilian, a citizen
of a civil society,
I am a wild denizen rather
of the tumult
of the Earth, a formless
creature beholden to nothing
but exuberance, joy, liveliness,
I wander in fierce destitution and timelessness
and the Walls of Legality and Process are Jericho's
to my thunderous horn,
I marching, them falling,
forever in vitro  in transito  in lumino
and riding a white-hot bolt called
wind of momentary life and so
you see
I do not disagree as one incorporated
with civility,
but as one imbued
with all that civility lacks
and desires.

Psychonautics VIII

Tossing disc is omnipotence
when headiness high and spaced
is arranged vehemently around you
with every motion of the spinning disc
mapped  instructional  schematic  magic
across the arcing dome of your mind and
each moment and measure of mass is
asserted, willed by intrinsic forces manifest
in their paths, each throw-catch movement
a literal display of decimal places and laser-
point curves allowing a systematic mastery
of frisbee, just running high and really snapping it down.

frgmnts

briefly slots of darkling stars

fleeing tongue of saccharine caves

countenance of rigid tare

doorstop fairies  se e m i n g  of ledge

trims of legless potioneers

tincture sips of Jamborees

jungle peace of ornate rims

fleeing teaks of kindly sound

secant arms of teeming struts

roguish isles of patterned lips

acrid sacks of simmered dim n e s s

sacral crest of greenish blue

septum elves of coughing trails

Gorgon welps of withered greens

poultices of echo crimes

sorghum jellies, sou r e d of etches

denture cold of grin ning keys

putrified of puerile oats

kumquat splice of tempered flute

eyelet pin s of frigid themes

strayed for sins of lab y rinth pines

rattleskin  t w i s t  of opal lime

contrail mane of  o v o i d specks

corru gates of pencil lead

deviant of forg e d dream times

fragments of words of

fabrics misheard as

fragments of verbs of

fragments of words of

fabrics misheard as. . .

ORD/DFW/MSP

Can I glide now?

Might I expedite this trip?

Does my baggage weigh too much?

May I please get on with it?

Just six more long soulless hallways, white shoes are strictly prohibited, and please check any presentiments of hope or feeling at the gate. Also no smiling at strangers, leaning in doorways, or holding hands with loved ones. No warmth please. No kindness.

Please try and do your best to observe the moral blindness. Straight ahead dead stares will be rewarded with advanced line position. And while we're on lines, form orderly lines between the lines, fall into line, line up now

Is that all then?

Are there any more instructions?

Can I board now?

Are you done with your inductions?

Please embark, now. Mind the gap and eyes straight forward. Slower steps now, leave your grace but lug your airs. Don't bother trying to recline in that plastic go-kart chair. Don't forget to roll your eyes at the stewardess as she demonstrates the proper safety belt technique.

Please put your tray table up and apathies in their full upright positions. Remember to secure your malcontent for the passengers around you before securing your child's. Now please direct your attention to the mindsucking pamphlet tucked in the seat of the tall man reclining into your knees.

Please continue to stare deadly. Now remove the flotation device from under your seat, following all directions. Insert the plastic inflatable tube into your mouth, taking care to fill your entire mouth in order to completely obstruct your airway. Once your lifejacket is secured, pull the ripcord and wait for take-off. Runway delays are expected, so please bear with us.

. . .

Virus's Verse

After Gwendolyn Brooks: We Real Cool

We versus viruses, virus's verse,

we weirding waitresses waiting

in line. We buying sickness for

suffered and blind. We twisting

spoons with the needle and vine--

Wrapped leather belts and the

little brown bag, we squeezing

sleeveless and wiping a rag.

We holding handles and hawking

at doors, we lurking late on

the stairs of your porch.

And we diving dumpsters and we

washing cars, and scrounging for

change on the floors of the bars.

We's growing thinner, we's seeming

dimmer.

We jazzin' crazy

all night

at the moon,

passing and sharing

we get the bug soon.

a resolution of elementary semiotics regarding physiological response and responsibility

T makes me p.

Two related poems:

How a hawk sees his lunch flying over Millie Hill in September

Trees and sticks over

boulders and logs and shrubs

and a tittering chipmunk.

How that same chipmunk recognizes the advancing pall of the hawk and his own impending oblivion, and thereby avoids the clichés that accompany the last moments of many small rodents

Hark, a hawk. I guess I'm through.

Hello Gregor and Hello Charles

and goodbye to you, 

my dear sweet darling.

Where one can find that rascal and fiend Peder Swanson as he is trying to score after rolling drunks outside of C&R Bar:

Down in the hollers

hawking his dollars.

How Astral Weeks feels after a long walk in the Winter and your toes are still damp

Palate-like, a brass pin tongue 

resting in the groove,

taste: dense hysteric wisdom.