My eyes fail

Soon I won’t see you

Your eyes will not dance with mine

I won’t see the smile before it comes

I won’t watch you skim words and think

 

I hear you less and less

The sound barely reaches my ears

I know you are singing but

I can’t make out the tune

Soon I will begin to forget the sound.

 

I can barely reach you

My arms can’t seem to touch

Can’t reach your face

You move so quickly

It seems you move away

 

But I then I catch the scent

Of sometime ago

And drops me

Into a place sensate, flying falling spinning and sparkling

Aloft and adrift

Igniting

aware

more than alive

 

Windshield

February flattens against a windshield

Waves of useless pain,

resurrected

Buffet the inside

Splashing like a well

 

Crushed in a car

A son in tears

and the atmospherics  of a

father

 

Reactions inundate trust

Once faithless faculties become a

window into fear

 

Watching him melt is easier.

Nuance is hard and

he is moving so fast,

blowing through

your life

 

 

His Basement

Downstairs

Bowed like him

I scrape my back and bump my head

Trip on loosened bricks

when the mud doesn’t suck at my shoe

 

In musty light

I pick through a poor plan of

rusted tools

to fix again

things that never really worked

 

staring as I work

into the old coal bin

old wooden storm windows stacked

on dust that has lost use

wondering what might be obscured

 

On cue

His throaty furnace

Wheezes, spews heat through the house

Through vents to rooms

Through walls and doors

To and out gaps and caulk and fatigued aluminum

And dissipates into air

 

Radiation

Waves and rays change

change again

changes crystalline

infinite fractures

flits through the leaves

as I move down the path

 

Three thousand things I haven’t done yet,

Worse than things I lack

Worse than the obvious regrets

 

Too late

for green  leaves

flashes of yellows

relentless browns

and reds to come

the meaning of light

changes

 

A picture, a street

It is a street, someone else’s bout with  chance,

that I want to walk on. I can breathe in the whole of a day

in truth and fact, not sentiment or romance

And prove in visiting I am worthy to stay.

 

My fathers city, or perhaps his fathers dream of  place

Gone, gone, lamented to hatred, lost to fear, dead.

Black and grey and white, in street and suit and face

Frames, jerked and blurred silent, yet relentlessy sped

 

The questions over asked, watching lives in sequence,

How are they different, when were their thoughts mine.

Patting feet, turning heads in places gone I still frequent

How they take my confidence and undermine

 

What is this flame that tempered  me so,

Is the parade of images all I can ever know

 

 

I know what ghosts are, conjuring desires, facts denied

What has been spent

Ghosts are for the moments we squandered

foundering

We know who the ghosts will be when they are still alive

And I say to you, you will be my worst ghost

 

 

 

tyranny

The rain failed to return

summer withered

my designs

became coarse and bristled.

Expectations tended, never flowered,

germ  diminished in the dust.

 

Through this famine, You moved

as with  privilege, among impoverished souls.

Was it  charm or the grace of a simple manner, or

an  undue beauty, that kept you immune,

unaffected in the  upheaval

 

Surely I am coarse and given my small tyranny

transparent as I am sparse.

Deaf to honest appeal

Reacting with despotic slight and condescend to

Your fulsome smile that begs appreciation

to give you just  moment.

 

And yet it must show

as your undermining beauty

Collapses me,

with the thirst and impotence of a refugee,

distracted, stricken, stranded in your eyes

 

So I catch your profile, drink the radiance from your hair

watch you from middling distances ,

jealous of all that is not for me

and when captured, shuffle feebly

and deny the charm of disaster

 

 

Jeered beggar, constrained by necessity.

Without a choice to be made

I do not imagine your laughter or kindness.

But fear you will begin see me unhinged.

Do I torture on? sustaining dream of your impatient anger?

 

I contemplate the sad simplicity of a something unintended

I indulge denial

Something like rain falls.

My designs and nature regain their vitality.

Plans right them self

And the drought is relieved for a time

 

Gone

And now she is gone.

I am shorn

Raw, done

less in asset

no display

just listless, sore.

Nothing revealed here,

Nor wisdom, relief or irony

Just  reduction

 

The saw whines

The saw whines when spinning free

It groans and curses

spits chips at my glasses

Shapes are changes,

part of a plan

only and merely different

 

posts for a bridge

for effect not safety

for a creek  rather than a stream

in a yard not a garden

a house where I may not remain

 

Why make the measurements,

dirty my shoes,

scratch my hands

adjust my plans?

I could move away

I could die here

What do I fix next?

 

Over and Over

We always say

goodnight at the end of the day

and then

we sigh

only those who can not play

really understand the music

and those too tired

love the dance

and we cannot sing but we know the words

 

we fly into the night

and don’t notice

till the mud sucks our shoes

and we pause, tired

but then the moon wants us to keep moving

and we carry on,

but sigh

goodnight

to the stars

 

Birds 14c

The promise of configuration

is at my throat

Safety of a distance remote

From the battles with primitivists interloping
and sentimentalists hoping and

the cigarette-smoking

rolling their eyes

 

For their causes caught,

or their notions or thought

the quick sick tic qualities

of the jolly complacency

and conformity bought

 

but I won’t twist words

listen to the birds

Cut the grass

I’ll haunt these streets

Pay my bills

 

bird number 12

Shut up  you fucking bird

Do you ever shut up

do you have no self respect?

Have you considered with pride

Your mission, your evolutionary design

Eat and crap to procreate

And get out of the way

 

Silence stupid bird

You go on and on

There is nothing beautiful in this manic display

No loving creator would

Cause this repetition

You bring no joy or comfort

 

Be Quiet damned bird

You interrupt and cause me pain

Prevent my work

distract my thoughts

Stop my progress you machine

Selfish chattering for nothing

 

Silence bird

I do not know this song

It gives the feeling there is something

That disturbs you

What do  you need

Hush bird

Be at peace