Sometimes they tell me to not take the train
because of scheduled preventative maintenance.
So there is a bus, the number 3. That is OK. I can deal.
I’ll have to walk a bit on Lexington. Anyway, sometimes I read
while on the usual train in the morning,
while sitting next to naked monks speaking in tongues
while fresh girls get out of their seats
and move to the door for fear he might find them evil
or something like snakes to crush.
White spittle crazy in the corner of his lips.
Then I go to the back of the train too–to get away
and watch reflections on plastic or the sky above
or building’s tops and tree lines.
Sometimes. Sometimes we make loud abrupt stops.
Sometimes I get nauseated and ride the train backwards
on accident or lack of space.
My mom tells me she might get seasick.
The green line is great if you like gentrification
that causes rent that makes rental refrigerators empty
and arguments to flare up in summer heat with no AC
like mosquitoes on naked arms near still lakes.
I don’t care though. But then I do.
I love the way I get to where I am going.
Now on the number 3 it will take a bit longer…
It takes me 20 minutes and a few pages to turn.
From there I will have to walk longer in the heat.
I get some knowledge from my book.
I carry it under my arm and bang my wallet with it–check.
It’s all in my hand, information.
It’s mostly tax free and friendly
and I don’t have to make friends.
But sometimes it gets canceled
and I realize that it means more to me than most things
because it is so easy (and when it’s not there…)
and it is so convenient
and everyone talks about it
and tells you how great it is
and wishes they could live in a big city
because all these things are close
and nice and expensive and very cool.
But tomorrow I can’t take the train to my regular station.
Probably get a ride and talk about my schedule.
my schedule.
dads day
i didnt really get to say much about my dad
on father’s day, but he was a good person.
biggest funeral la crescent will ever see.
that is with me. now after 3 years underground
many conversations removed
the same inscrutable believings of what he would have wanted
and everyone trying to get over on that too.
its hard to give reason, excuses or meaning to.
things, they: just happens. are how it is. …and people die.
yeap, and then i sit here thinking hard
and envision my everything vanish quickly;
was naked in a motel room hungover watching tv getting calls
and i become him for two seconds
hoping that some evil stepparent wouldnt take everything.
no surprise, it costs currency to see me now;
i am a reborn materialist because
a lots been taken, lost. it takes unhinged
strength to drive up past grandmas house
and see strangers for the caretakers of where i grew up
unknowing of the past ills and hollowed dust.
sort of like mine once, how to usurp everything.
the saint-gaudens eagle, the burnt will, the rent to feed mouths.
it makes me soft like nursing homes and very bad news.
thats why i don’t say much about it anymore.
maybe some day i might change my mind.
maybe some day it wont matter.
maybe some day, anyway.
i am serious/sometimes i feel like i care and sometimes i do
probably carbon monoxide poisoning conceives in my virgin lungs and kills my numerous superior brain cells as mowing the grass commences and spins dust and kills plants and other parts of the environment for government ordinance and acquaintance interaction reaction into my eyes–she waited, then I handed her a fresh tomato off the vine for condolences, cherry explosion, on the fresh air of the neighborhood, told her i would get the rest after lunch: father’s day, you know. call me dad. Either that or they call the city about the yard looking like shit, either that and I don’t own the property just renting here for a moment, trying to past muster. Other tenants could be worse, yep. Other property owners too. Just doing what i can; every day of my life. Can’t even save a buck because God killed my internet connection last week in the middle of some lesson about your daddy’s car, so not teaching people in China how to talk like me while using my college degree perhaps more than actual local teachers with their state credits and college degrees saying they can in the public schools where they make less than me and complain considerably more about not being able to deal with students. Foreign students call me “teacher”, say thank you very much teacher, you have good English teacher, you are handsome teacher, you are funny teacher, you are this and that. i am humble. money. I am that guy. unknown poet. He is my son. She is my wife. And this is how we do things in Frogtown, USA. That’s life. Running cords through the wall, drilling holes in the floor, rebooting, resetting, calling and haggling, and not taking names because I don’t have time to remember them anyway, nor do I care. You have five minutes to fix my problem or I cancel my service, all because of you. move on. Thinking: which rung are you and how long can you hold me as I make my ascent? I am serious. sometimes i do and sometimes i don’t and sometimes it is sometimes.
basement vinyl reflection
there is no need to worry
my passwords are foreign languages
the spider webs cocoon me and beams
old light and new light dance just there
a records spins and pictures stand
miserable hours ago though
there is no need to worry exactly
florescence from below, flowers grow
be bold, be bold, be own, old soul.
be alone, confluence with those.
just here skin and bones, skin and bones–all those
acting like they know but they dont
acting, just do it for the show, tho–
there is no need to worry
there is no need to hurry
and then i think about it some more
begin to sweat, begin to whittle
my fragile courage into tooth picks
sitting in a creaky chair and staring
on the floor at my feet in the dust
and the record spins and goes
more of me gone trying to find it too
no ode / summer cold
oh man, you have problems,
i look in the mirror:
when your
sore tender nose
is running
sluicing, flowing, going
but you can’t blow
your throbbing nose,
i do really hate you
summer cold.
it runs down my face
to my lip,
to me, leaking somewhereselse..
like me wanting to be.
one part in the whole open
implements monitor,
asphalt, gasoline, cigarettes,
mechanisms, structures held by sand
to the inevitable collapse;
then clasp down, then clamp, then tamp it,
wires of a root canal like,
telling me positive to be
telling me otherwise, go.
no room for downcast eyes, limiting ideas.
coffin for thinking outside the box.
fate doesnt care about your beliefs
when it happens and you think miracle
a secular part will think fortune, strange,
and others will says wow, my idol.
truly it did happen
the song and dance on what spins freely
no matter politic or particular or purpose
great person you are or you are not
no matter, it doesnt.
that architect that does not think
could not ever care for it and that.
Moon man
Im sure
that
when my dad died
he didnt die
he moved to the moon.
He builds planes
there not rockets.
Flies them too.
Sort of stranded tho.
Even when we see a sliver
hes up there.
Waiting.
Working hard.
Getting stronger,
ready to tell a good story.
He does that.
Just up there alone,
cold, thought of.
I wonder when hell come back down.
He told me
of men on the moon
and heaven
in some valley
somewhere
but long ago.
See him up there?
morning sun, knowing it’s god in ways that we don’t
morning sun apart,
i apart the sun cutting the shade
cutting the street cutting the car cutting my eyes.
birds standing dandelions pulling worms
like i do zippers in the northern cold.
the used car lot neighbors crowded the street again
like modern protests,
disrupting a conscious flow
though lacking the initiative as most–
there is no justice to be given back here on the boulevard
and not peace. take history for example…
i see no change in the human condition.
tho that’s me.
it was there before they came as most
they just didn’t see it,
not until it was stirred cause bright schisms
for their eyes to take. redoubled.
i only have a problem when it’s before me
usually i remain silent and wait for it.
still wanting what’s replevin them.
no getting it, they are no robin at the soil.
i am no robin at the soil elsewise.
no glare to morning eyes.
no standing stem to be lopped at rusted blade,
and the mower will start.
a hundred years old, my dad fixed it before he died,
that is how fucking trusty it is.
arcature of the gods–nay, with purpose.
sun reclaiming its take, no problem.
it doesn’t believe in science to be a spinning orb
in blackness of space
to heat up something it does not know, earth,
and does not care to
and we can call it what we want for naught
because it’s still there and we are proud.
that glare and those cars.
never moving. why should i? never knowing
something impossible, keep asking for it.
Shadows and shade
Shadows due to grow
at the cement on East Bank station
as those minutes do stand.
Fading like eulogy,
bitter coffee taste waiting
on crimson jawlines
for it to stir and twist
with waiting tongue’s bud. The patience, no reason for no reason
to have none.
Tanning like cigarette butts
and lead paint. Moisturize like ash. Another day wheres the time?
Somewhere crawling closer
bringing it dim.
Dig harder for your gold.
Somewhere that shadow shade for them at once too.
