October 31, 2012 (I was 67)
Only the ghosts of pumpkins past
embellish the old house now
Edgar Allan Crow at my window
beckons me to notice no water in the fountain
Spirits of a spook house in the garage
no longer leave their cardboard boxes
The thought of them residing there
in the dark of those casual crypts
unreleased for yet another year
pent up agonies of faceless masks
conjures a colder hollow fear
than those lit up hallowed eves ago
at my chamber door to ask for candy
from this week in October 2014 (I was 69)
Used to be us against them
now it’s us against us
What the f happened
One of us shot five of us
in McDonald’s and it wasn’t
even over money
One of our kids shot five of our kids
in the school yard
They weren’t friends except on the phone
and that wasn’t enough
It wasn’t over money when one killed
the best teacher they ever had
and five of our kids took pictures
selfies as she fell to her knees
Her last breath posted on Facebook
October 29, 2003 (I was 58)
West Running
Things have changed Robert,
not so much on the old Derry farm.
What you wrote caused them to stop things there,
a sort of snapshot during one of your transitions,
like the set of a play after the actors have gone.
Though there was blue sky and full green of summer,
the memory is in sepia tones, the wood of the barn,
the wallpaper smell as I bent to read
the titles of your shelved books,
classics, and no surprises there.
I imagined the surrounding white of winter
as viewed from an upstairs window,
that strong-contrast theme again
and that working across the grain;
that contrary stream pushing away from the sea;
and that home burial dialogue
up and down the stairs.
October 28, 2002 (I was 57)
without wind its scent emanates
unseen it enters the light
soundlessly it vibrates existence
lacking surface or texture it expands
like the taste of salt
under the tongue and into the blood
it is the minimalism that becomes one
a restrictive essence not the other
the this of a succession of nows
the definition of the word
and the consciousness of self
the fruition the expression the realization
of the so much more beyond
the doubt of insignificance
knowing both past and future are then
October 27, 2007 (I was 62)
Other peoples’ children praise the Lord
with no sense of his humility
pass judgment knowing they are judged favorably
Other people’s children have body piercings
They wear hindrances through every sensory organ
and cut-away clothes to expose their tats
Other people’s children withhold their opinions
Their restrained considerations
Produce an impeccable silence
Other people’s children know the value of art
is determined in the auction house
The true critic is counted currency
Other people’s children realize introspection
creates the illusionary devil of self-doubt
and can lead to self-denial
No child of mine was ever like this
because other people are the parents
of other people’s children
October 26, 2006 (I was 61)
I’m a landlubber I like the beach
but live off and on the land If I had to
I’d live on a mountain trade the sand
take a stand for relative stability
I just can’t think with stomach churning
can’t be learning while heaving in the drink
Maybe I could adopt a seafaring philosophy
The sense of adventure is certainly admirable
but could I physically overcome the sway
of waves that destroy equilibrium
Beyond the visceral digestive distraction
within the visual disoriented distortion
the cochleate enigma so near the sound
seeks a foothold on the ground
October 25, 2010 (I was 65)
Stan and Ollie meet Guy deMaupassant
Stanley knows Ollie’s most prized possession
is his fine silver pocket watch
an object admirable in function and design
After a moving van runs over Stanley’s Victrola
Ollie sees him wistfully put a disc to his ear
and finger each sleeve of his precious collection
Christmas morning Ollie unwraps a watch chain
fine silver with engraved fob attached
“But I sold my watch to buy your gift”
Stanley opens the box and laughs to see
the finest modern Victrola made
“And I sold my records to purchase the chain”
-I began a series of pieces using Laurel and Hardy as
representations of right brain and left brain perception.
Not an original idea, I got it from Colin Wilson’s study,
Frankenstein’s Castle. More appear in other posts.
October 24, 1983 (I was 38)
Some Slogans from the bulletin board
of the 8th grade English class:
We are the people our parents warned us about.
Define myself in a word, why that’s absurd.
Illiteracy is nothing to write home about.
To know is to know no no.
The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
I don’t trust him, we’re friends.
The first human to hurl a curse instead of a weapon
founded civilization.
The difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don’t know and I don’t care.
Exact Change!
The vulture flies with carrion luggage.
Anything not prohibited is compulsory.
A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.
To think I live so near the sun! It dawned on me this morning.
When my ship comes in I’ll be at the airport!
October 23, 2018 (I was 73)
D.H.
Designated Hitter Lawrence in the World Series
sits in the dugout while the team’s afield
too slow and inept of glove to seat someone else
or so valued at the bat left here to think of that
which three or four or five times in the game
must batter the pitcher’s claim to fame
A hit is a single line
a double is a rhyme
If a triplem can cripplem
hitting home is the whole poem
Birthed so near the Nottingham thicket
you may have thought he’d stick to cricket
October 22, 1966 (I was 21)
north boy
Remote was the lake
and forest of pine.
A dull boy in the dust
from an open pit mine
knew Bohunks and Finns
and Dago Red wine.
It was little of books
that he knew but he’d take
three-two beer with his friends
beneath the trees to the lake
where they’d drink and discuss
the great lives that they’d make.
Education’s slow breath
engendered reserve
a dislike for his life
of un-sophisticate verve.
And he has yet to discern
the use it served.
October 21, 2010 (I was 65)
If you were seven in 1952 in northern Minnesota
and you heard a plane overhead you looked up
It would be a small plane Piper Cub red
maybe silver but nothing big and of course summer
If you were at the ball field
you lay on your back in the grass to watch it
It happened every other day or so
You made the connection with the plane
knew someone was alone flying up there
depending on the sound of that motor
to get them back to that little strip in Hibbing
If the engine coughed more than once
you listened hard and looked harder
Your uncle said you had to stall it and restart
just to get your pilot’s license
It seemed dangerous to me
I wanted to learn to fly
I just didn’t want to have to use a plane
from this week in October 2014 (I was 69)
We rely on hypocrisy to save the world
Were all who declare devotion actually practitioners
we’d have a chaos of justified warfare
to establish one theocracy or another
It is uncivilized to sanction brutality
except in the name of business
We leave the butchery to the ignorant and the poor
who best interpret canonical law in pictures
or metaphor lurid enough to be thought literal
Wealthy nations have their armies
They sell their enemies outmoded weapons
so instead the foes make missiles of themselves
and believe the fables of celestial bliss
that promise forbidden fruits of the un-ripened mind
October 19, 2014 (I was 69)
Before
If things were going to fall
they would fall into place
Wasn’t that the way the world worked
If a corner was to be turned
things were right around the corner
That was the way the world worked
If it was in the papers it had to be true
When they said You know what they say
There was nothing more to be said
October 18, 2009 (I was 64)
stunt
At a particular time for each thing
that we think and thing that we do
we become stunted
Suddenly or progressively we stop
or grind to a halt in the height that we grow
our running speed begins to slow
We eat what we ate read what we read
we sleep when we dream in our particular bed
Affects and attitudes are reflex and platitudes
expansive becomes exclusive variety intrusive
When we think what we thought
our forefathers thought we forget
that they thought we would think
October 17, 2013 (I was 68)
I walk the invisible dog in the park
It follows without a leash
Sometimes other people’s dogs
half know the invisible dog is there
There is no canine confrontation
My attention is invisibly occupied
Other dogs chase squirrels that can see
The invisible dog chases nothing
I do not know where it sleeps I do not feed it
It does not arrive in the car with me
Many dog walkers bag the defecations
Many of us do not I go unnoticed
I don’t know what kind of shit the invisible dog leaves behind
It is not my intention to walk the dog
I am here for the exercise the light the serenity
which I achieve only in moments the dog minds itself
Most of the time it trots alongside
close enough for me to count its breaths
It is not in the car when I drive to the rest of my day
The distant wail diminishes but does not cease
I’d like the invisible dog to successfully run away
Whatever path I walk I remain a familiar scent
October 16, 1977 (I was 32)
After a dozen years all he could hope to be, was clever.
Most often his work was simplistic, even superficial. He was a
General Practitioner who recorded symptoms, wrote prescriptions
to treat the most predominant manifestations. Not what you
would call a definitive diagnostician. He wrote poems because
he could fit it all on one page. Direct doses, the pharmaceutical
middlemen eliminated.
October 15, 1974 (I was 29)
Long Tom,
What ever became of intellectual clarity?
It was not so long ago
that we survived all the shit going down
by understanding our ultimate righteousness.
We knew it was advantageous to be firm and correct.
Our lives were all sixes and nines.
We mused on autumn afternoons;
you knew about Sufism and dervishes and Essenes,
and I knew about Emerson, Thoreau and Ahab.
We were focused on the whirl of transcendental possibility.
Now you have died privately
and I have stepped through to uncertain ground.
New ignorance is the product of old truth.
October 14, 1973 (I was 28)
It’s the season
Such an arrangement
Each week the same
every night a football game
or sports page to examine
rules scores and end zones
It’s all timed with commercials between
It keeps a man at peak efficiency
moving along with the game plan
Minor injuries are sustained without notice
Chronic aches are a part of the competition
The champion forgets fatigue
forgets injury and he functions
Sit back and relax
You’re in good hands Where the rubber grips the road
Fly the friendly skies
It’s the water from the mountain streams
and it’s football
October 13, 1977 (I was 32)
Measuring Distance
Standing on one ridge
looking across the canyon to the next,
distance is deceptive.
The line of sight is direct.
The turkey vultures glide it in no time.
The mind flies as easily across
and does not understand the resistance of the body;
does not understand flight as unified commitment.
No command is given to fly.
And the trek down the mountain across the creek
and up the mountain
is the correct way to measure geography,
pacing the actual terrain,
making observations beyond geometry.
It’s a practice in the correct sense of place,
and perfect really, if you can’t fly.
October 12, 1971 (I was 26)
Art’s Event in Shallow Water
Arthur Octopus has got
all these tentacles which extend
out and over around and about;
one carries burning torches
one orders all it touches
one flexes all it’s muscle
one drifts on every current
one probes to break the surface
one buries the dead
one counts the other seven
and one strokes his jellied head.
October 11, 2018 (I was 73)
The fabric shreds it does not tatter
like a wind torn banner not split
not pierced or torn by foreign force
not chafed nor worn from use
but by each who pulled a loose thread
one end to the other detached at length
The start of a fringe
a sort of decorative disintegration
stripping the weft from the warp
relieving the weave that is the cloth
The one that’s lost held the next in place
The progression of thoughts once a grand idea
removed from mind one line at a time
