Tag: poem

Observations in a Notebook While I Was Living on a Farm in Kansas [08-09]

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The glass beads, strung up on the back porch, rattled and clicked as the wind picked up; the trees, swaying south in the breeze.

Our refrigerator sounds like a bullfrog.

His fur shined like a prism against the sunlight; every hair a rainbow of color.

Where is my cat? He should be able to smell me. These Kansas winds constantly blow, taking my scent to his little wet nose, sniffing the ground in a distant cornfield.

The cellar door is open and a fan is on and blowing somewhere below. The kitchen window is propped open by another fan and the cicada songs penetrate loudly inside the room. The counters are littered with mason jars and coffee mugs. Tomatoes fresh from the garden, and various pots and pans. The oven clock tells me it’s 12:19pm but it feels much earlier than that. We are going to keep working on opening up the cellar from the outside, and do some more digging. An activity that has thoughts of wet dark soil, and toads, and caves, and a wheelbarrow in my head.

The sky splashed over the treetops and gathered in pools at my feet.

Their teeth clicked like bone and steel.

My eyes are brown, reflecting like thermal pools in the sun. My hair, from my body catching up in years, will be white as the snow falling outside my window.

My fingers are numb; covered in cuts and scrapes, raw from working in the garden day in and day out.

The nights here are different. The stars and the prairie grasses brush cheeks. The foxtails and shooting stars dancing and flirting, swaying and twisting together. The only things existing in our world are those illuminated by our headlights, and the rest is black, and part of the sky surrounding us.

It’s harvest time here. Every field is full of giant metal machines, cutting and sorting and munching up and down the rows until the sun is nearly set. Sometimes, the fields at night are full of headlights and the roar of engines.

The streetlights in town hang like black cocoons from their metal posts.

The barn lights dot the horizon for miles, being mistaken for bright stars in constellations.

Standing on the back porch, I see the first snow of the year. The barn roof has become soft and white. The junipers dark green salted with snowflakes. It falls slow but steady, a pattern of frozen water whose patterns are never the same. My blonde hair is frozen with diamonds. The smoothness of the coated yard is broken up by four sets of dog prints, and tire tracks from the truck.

Bees have been following me all day as I wander around in the sunlight.

I collected rocks from the road as we walked. Stopping constantly to stoop and pick up the pink, yellow, white pebbles. By the time we got home, my pockets were plenty weighed down with them. I pulled them all out; the flat circular grey stones stacked like poker chips in my hand, and deposited them next to the soft small ones that looked like a pile of jelly beans on the table. Now, they all sit in a glass jar, waiting for you to come home.

Observations at Grand Central Station [4-3-08]

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I would find it smart

When looking for help in a transportation station

Of any sort,

To ask the man with the cleanest

Shiniest

Most reflective shoes.

I figure that a man with time enough

To spit-shine his shoes everyday before work

Really takes pride in his job.

Helping people like me,

Is why he wakes up in the morning.

I am overwhelmed by the fact

That out of all of these people

Passing through Grand Central Station,

Surprisingly,

I am the only one wearing something

That isn’t black or brown.

I wear yellow,

The color of the lights adorning the walls,

And of the stars painted in the ceiling.

The room is filled with

Cops and business men,

A skitzo and numerous car operators.

They all have started up conversation with me,

Numerous times,

But not about the stairs I’m stretched out on,

Where a very obvious and official sign,

Prohibits my doing so.

Black Hills, South Dakota [8-17-19]

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The formations of the Badlands breaks the line of the horizon,

threatening to swallow the sun lie a massive Cretaceous era beast.

The Black Hills rise like the shadows of distant mountains beyond the trees.

The Ponderosa pines stand upon the hillside and granite outcroppings like giant sentinels.

The wind blows steady through the trees, sounding like the rolling tides of the ocean.

The moon hangs low and full over the rolling prairie like a polished rune stone,

illuminating an endless sky full of worlds a world away.

The nights here are darker, longer, deeper.

The distant echo of a dog’s barking seeming as a wolf to the imagination.

The ground shines like diamonds from the mica deposits exposed among the dirt like broken glass.

The crickets, grasshoppers, katydids chirp their songs in the underbrush,

which is entangled with wild raspberries.

We fill out hands and mouths with the tangy sweet morsels,

soft like velvet and delicate as baby birds between our red-stained fingers.

We trek with our packs among the forestry lane,

feeling as though we were the first European explorers to lay eyes upon this ancient land.

Every sight, sound, smell, and taste; a wonder.

Steaming Kettle [7-27-20]

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I gather pinches of the various dried herbs and flowers from their various jars and pouches. My mood today is out of body; distant and detached. I open the tap, filling the fat hollow of my kettle with the cool water of the well. My days have been blending together. I have cravings that can’t be satisfied. I smell my earthy fragrant mixture, stimulating something in my memory. Lavender blossom, chamomile, raspberry leaf, rose hip. Valerian root, orange peel, sage, and mint. Most from my own garden. I need something; a physical touch, intimacy, violent passion, and passionate violence. I watch the honey drip from my spoon and pool in the bottom of my mug, which reads “Pretend this is the skull of my enemy”. Gods what it would feel like to be a warrior again, to know the feel of a man again, and to bathe in blood instead of the crisp waters of spring. I use an old short sword to stoke the embers inside the wood-burner as my kettle begins to whistle and scream. The boiling water in my mug, causing intense clouds of scented floral vapors, the taste of which does something to clear the fog of my mind.

Candlelight on Imbolc [2-2-18]

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The nights were long and the days were short,

and both equally cold and dreary.

The worst of the winter was past

and spring was right around the corner.

But the ground was still frozen,

And the food stores were running low,

And the sun still remained hidden from the land,

And the animals weren’t ready to give birth.

So they stayed together in their homes,

warm by the fireside, praying together.

Hoping for a break in the harsh conditions

and the relief that sunlight would bring.

So they lit their beeswax and tallow candles,

And wove their Brigid’s crosses,

And supped upon the last of the milk and oats,

And gave thanks for their health and their families.

And they waited, and hoped, for the return of spring.

The Surgeon [10-2017]

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The surgeon had done this many times before, for many years, and he loved this procedure more than any other.  Paper had been lain beneath to catch the refuge, and the cold metal tools waited in a row, glinting in the harsh light.  He drew the lines across the orange colored flesh with precision and palpable excitement. He held the knife as an artist does a paintbrush and made the first incision, the jagged blade penetrating through the outer layers of flesh and then deep inside to the hollow body. He admired the dark cavernous insides, where no eyes had before seen its hidden beauty. He whistled while he worked, his hands steady, the shapes of his carving taking life. The viscera lay around him in piles, and his hands were sticky with the wet bowels of his work. Upon completion, he stood back from the corpse and smiled. And the face of the jack-o-lantern, its jagged-toothed mouth, grinned back at him.

I wrote this when I was on speed and watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. [1-3-07]

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He sat alone in the room, his only company an off channel TV whose picture hissed and popped as he sat quietly, indifferent to the loud noise penetrating through the door from the other room.

The focus of his eyes was distant; glazed and wet from snorting the lined formations of cocaine from the table. The flashing of the TV screen reflected in his glassy eyes. His head was filled with white noise. His body tingled and rushed. Eventually, he sat up on the edge of the couch, and began sliding his credit card across the table; condensing the remaining dusting of powder into a pile. His empty pupils were locked on the roaring black and white screen as his tongue ran around the edges of the plastic card. Somewhere in his mind he thought about the subliminal messages in the static and picked up the last of the minuscule granules with the sweaty pads of his fingertips and rubbed them along the inside of his absorbent gland of a mouth.

With his gums tingling-eyes heavy with radiation-and his tongue grouping over his pearls for teeth; he stood. Swaying, he gave himself a moment to let the blood pump back into his head. He grouped for the doorknob and his clumsy fingers turned it with a loud creak.

The small apartment was swollen with people and the atmosphere seemed uncontrollable. Where had he been? How long had this been going on? He scanned the room and realized that nearly every drug known to man was present. Was that the root of this gathering of self-gratification?

Snaking through the mass of bodies, his mind recoiled in horror at what he was seeing; bottles of poisonous liquor and cackles of flirtatious laughter; the smell of cancer with every burnt clove cigarette. Men with lagoon eyes were surrounded in fog breathing smoke from shiny hookahs and exhaling like dragons. There were philosophers in the corners, passing a joint to the left while figuring out the meaning of life. Pro sports teams were in the kitchen, surrounding the cup-covered table and raging with testosterone. Scientists were mixing colorful and potent drinks from large labeled bottles on the counter, and passing them out to empty hands with fever. Mermaid women with bubbly laughter and sparkling champagne eyes indulged in each other’s half naked bodies, never once dropping their cups full of rainbow liquids.

Gliding through the crowd and casually glancing his way between bong hits and raunchy comments, she finally caught his eye.

Then suddenly, through the thick haze and movement of colors; he saw her. The clear bottle of rum in her hand; half full of the coconut delicacy, sparkled and splashed as her body swayed in an erotic sashaying of hips to the music. She, with a blonde mane of twine for hair and cat eyes, approached him. As she did, he shook his long shaggy hair, heavy and brown like leather, out of his eyes. Their deep color looked like a wet street at night; the red-greeen-white-yellow lights mirrored and stretched against the reflective blacktop.

When she smiled his mind became overwhelmed with instinct and drive; he felt his self control reduce to the sobriety level of a maniac. It was apparent that there was an on-setting lust from the drugs; the blind impulse to fuck. She was stoned and he was twisted. She was blazed and he was ripped. Had he no power to ignore these terrible drugs? These irresistible urges to taste her tingling flesh? The loud noise melted into a buzz and the mass movement around them slowed and stopped. Suddenly his hand was around the back of her neck and waist and her fingers were tangled in his hair and they were kissing. Their tongues were snaking around each other; their mouths were full of bitten lips and soft moans and the taste of pot and rum.

Then, suddenly, he was watching time fast forward and when it slowed he found that he was laying back on a bed, lacking a shirt and covered in scratch marks, and she was smiling as she locked the door to the dimly lit room. The air in the room was humid and heavy as he pulled back her head by her hair and tasted the THC on the hot skin of her neck. Their breathing was slow and deep as she bit his shoulder and her hips rocked against him to the beat of the loud music, which had slithered from beneath the door and filled the quiet of the room.

Apology [4-08]

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I offer my sincerest apologies to the friends and family of the victim. I cannot imagine the amount of pain and suffering you must be feeling, and I am sorry for your trouble. Apologizing is something I am not very good at, and this is no exception. Especially since her screams were so beautiful, and her young flesh so delicious. I found her begging majestic.

Forgive me; I cannot help myself.