forestry service lookout tower falling in the wind.

i used to circle dreamers;

read their dying wishes

out loud and fall beside them

crying.

i looked like chalk and paper

sidewalks and lasted for nights;

fell and fought with the best

when i felt like it.

i scrabbled words and dictionary

meanings, left my lungs tied to

two trees and watched the bees

honeycomb my spine.

it was desperate and sad

and everything i felt was

swallowed by indefinite

indefatigable silence.

...but this didn't last forever.

nothing ever does. not because

forever is a long time, but

because, forever is impossible.

choreographed graphing paper napkin

i spend my mornings killing

flies, my evening watching

the skies turn starlight through this

thin veil of atmosphere. 6,800 feet

in the air feels like watching them back

home St. Francois mountains;

sky-stained humidity-shimmers

and dog-fight planes. despite this light

pollution leaking business park,

you hide on the dark side

of a building and the milky way

leaps out from behind the trees!

today the jet trails stay all day

the sky a reflection of the blue i feel

diving directly into the pine blight peaks

it's really nothing, just like Buddha.

it's nothing, really.

Instructions for ignoring instructions

darkness on the edge of the night drive tunnel

tunnel stardust back into our being

being split grass seeds and milk money wrist watches

watch as it all flows away and on to the first light

light the way for black fringes of cold leather jackets

jackets brough back from the depth of two eyes

eyes that see starlight as porchswings and porchswings as starlings

starlings bursting toward the sea change

change change change change change change

change nothing, feel nothing, change everything, feel nothing

nothing changes nothing, nothing ever does.

does nothing, eat starling, pray light, bathe naked, feel foolish,

embrace your own stupidity and run off with your mistress mysterious.

television's television dinner sinner

by summertime all the pockets were frayed
and displayed like an open wallet
pictures of empty festering nothings
were haunched over laptops breaking
their nails on every keystroke

berta, my secretary at the time
took to riding her bike every day
to the donut shop down on 4th
and kretzel, she would bring us back
a large box of assorted pastries,
but never failed to drop them,
or eat them, or give them away
before returning to the office,
with sticky hands and face,
sweat trickling down her meaty thighs
and nothing to show for it, but
a suttle stench that followed her around
until evening, when we locked the doors
and went home to our television's
television dinners

toothbrush decay

put on your blind shoes and step
on the cracks, rest your hand on the back
pages of some tennesee williams 50 cent novel
carress it's spine and ask it, 'why are you so sad?'

i'm sure you'll get an answer somewhere in there.

grandma grable gets a stable.

finger puppets in the porchlight
swinging wild berry glands of off beat
oft forgotten long lost shoulder wounds
hip replacement latter ladder saints
you better forget everything i've told you and remember nothing of what you've seen here today this long list of mediocrity is no better than a lisp on a short stick walking the dog in august misty heat of two ton town wrecking balls
clumsy afternoons where you watch spiders build traps of litmus paper
stuck to the inside of your long lost cowboy boots of childhood

clearing my mind of nothing, buttering buddha buddy's body

it's hard to look like yourself these days dimented de-minted and all flossed out tangled hair and beard and windswept dried cracked face. cafe sitting and sipping coffee or tea lounging on backs made of muscle and memory floundering out somewhere beyond where you thought the end of your limitations were. - at 4:40 i'll hop the greyhound to manhattan kansas watch the brown grass bowled under the disc fold into the soil, watch the birds return to the rivers the rivers return to the land, the soil swept away. floods are always on my mind, sweeping clean the debris bringing in new crap, car parts, rusted feeders from farmer's fields. - just like that, the sheep die, the crows fly off with their eyeballs and the dogs can't keep the wolves at bay. the coyotes see the steam, smell the rancid odor of defeat and dig in to some good eats. tongues in cheek meat. - i've got a disaster plan, an escape route in case of hostile government take over, a long list of laundromats in case my washing machine breaks, a back up generator for my backup generator, canned food to last at least a winter, and enough winters to last a thousand years- but i still don't ever have enough socks.

last night, the night before

send me dizzy up the stairs,
but i fall down. all
around me, they're tracing white
lines on table tops.
asking me, but i always,
almost always, say no.
and here i am laughing,
telling myself lies.
a little further away from
everyday, every day i live.
-


scrape bottom down
this rutted road
made old by winter
and the big trucks
that just can't sit still.

two trains coming,
running down river
tracks ripe with coal
folding like bricks
around the bent hills.

pass the pipe and know
we will never know
what it was we felt before
our old souls knew
new shoes loose in the gravel.
-

wind and words

the wind is a sucker; chasing it's tail
indefinitely, finding cracks and alleys to run
through, corners to howl around, always
running after itself.

if you had a tail you would be
like the wind; always ahead of and behind
yourself, essence
of an incapturable moment, like sunlight.

if you were like sunlight, what would that mean?
would you glow with truth? hide behind clouds?
interfere at your feistiest times with electrical signals?
if you, words, were like sunlight, would you provide good
clean energy, or would you simply burn?

no, you are more like the wind
perpetually unaware of your beginning middle and end.
unaware of your own existence, unaware of the wars
fought, lives lost, treasures gained, thoughts shared.
you propagate yourself in a thousand dialects,
a thousand ways to say the same thing.

nothing, has ever, or will ever, change.
the wind will chase itself, words will pile up and mean nothing.
the sun will glow red and disappear, swallowing cultures, and people,
and planets.
the wind will still chases itself, and words will still pile up and mean
nothing.
nothing at the end of the world, will not know,
will ever know, and has ever known...

-

crockpot piss on a blackspot
your thought is nonstop
so cop-out and block
the nonsense you incensed fool.

-

if i were hamfisted
i'd buy a bag of peanuts
and see what that was like.

-

your lasso is a truth lasso
wonder woman
your lasso is a truth lasso
asshole.

keep it upstairs

spend your time passing by strangers and forgetting

them. wired resistant, but out of flux, and too much

reality weeping through the glass.

Ride

in the half-light half-baked morning
said our goodbyes, watched the street
signs blurred by distance fold over
the horizon.
car tires grinding snow
to slush and forgiving the road
for beating back.
neck bent to the wind hurling against us
as we hurled ourselves against the great
green kansas tallgrass.
blacktop unfurled behind us stretched beside
and inside the lines, lions teeth chewed
the rubber, spit out a constant hum.

the apricots are coming!

kinder hands stand on their own
let me be a magician
a magic man that can hold back his smile
and drop it on you like a ten pound sack of rice
i don't want to rush to judgements
or judge the rushes that grow along the river
the horse tails and catnip slipping into the pool
just down past the junction, where the crooked moon hangs all night
like a vagrant light that steals beauty from the still pines
shouldered like a soldier's musket
tightening the belt, adding new notches
spring won't be coming round here no.
it won't be filteing the coolness out of the air
the ice out of the fog
the lightning strikes hair splitting end of the world
is coming
is falling tomorrow
on the beginning of the last march, or last aprils apricots
rotting.

monsters of time

there's green eyed monsters
and brown eyed monsters
and lovers who don't know your name

there's time to be changing

and times to be changed

and neither can be re-arranged

theres scribbled down wishes
and played out day dreams
and chased down ideas of self

theres lies to remember
and truths to engender
of portents to somebody else

so time runs you over
but time don't get bolder
it simply stays the same

and it washes across you
til you lose all consciousness
and fight to regain it again

but you can't fight the darkness
and you can't guard the light
you just watch them both do their thing

and you keep your hope distant
so it won't have an instant
to creep up and hurt you again

oh, there's green eyed monsters
and brown eyed monsters
and lovers who forget your name

and there's times to be changin'
and there's times to be changed
and these two can't be re-arranged