(( BOOK 1.5: A Year of July)) -- Part 3

“A Hint of the Barrel”

           – 18 January 2012

What goes into death?

Everything but breath:

Every bone and oil,

Every muscled coil,

Every tendon drawn,

Every fusion bond

On every jigsaw plate

Of every skully crate

Around every liquid crib

Over every neural web,

and every rounding rib

(affixed, to flow and ebb

with every sudden start

and quiver of the heart),

and every bend of skin,

and every cilium-pin,

and every hairy trail,

and every milky nail

that crowns a finger tip

or caps a calloused toe,

and every pit and bow

of every limb and lip

and ridge and flap and dip

that used to send a spark

back inward to the dark

through trellised ganglia

to something – less of a

part in us beasts than air –

left traceless in the stare

of eyes death came to find.

Does it ever taste the mind?

Online Dating – Poems of the Week:

(16 April 2012)

"Red Flags"

Her profile says, "I believe in strength

In the face of adversity" -

Which means she thinks that her life is hard

and cruel consistently.

And if I said back, "You're fine," she'd think,

(he doesn't know my pain).

For admitting, somewhere, her world is bright

Means her paradigm's in vain.

(30 April 2012)

"At the Other End"

Roommate broke up with his girlfriend yesterday,
Went into his room and started to play
"Chariot," like now he had the time to be
Here with his musicality.

But he'd played that song so many times before
He met her, and it had always sounded more
Half-lunged than it did as he howled it now:
"Oh Chariot, I'm singing out loud..."

He comes home, every day now, tells me about
His life: how it's good, unhitched, “No doubt,”
He says, “it was the right move,” but –
Still, sings: "Give me your strength, Oh chariot."

(7 May 2012)

"Self-reporting"

I always drive at the speed that the freeway

SHOULD be.

And I never complain unless someone

is doing things wrong.

I've never been dumped

(if I was – she was wrong for me).

And I'll always make sense,

provided you can follow along.

I'm sensitive, and clever, and a man –

a manly man – so

I'll tell you to "buck up" when you need

a shoulder to pour on.

And that's what any sensible woman

would want. No?

You're totally gonna love me,

unless you're a moron.

I don't understand why more girls

don't write back to me

When I tell them that I'm so awesome

and then say "U so hot."

Am I hidden, like a god, by my

incomprehensibility?

Or do they see (much more than me)

all the things that I am not?

“Hold”

(a song)

      – 11 March 2012

You're gonna die some day.

That link will break away.

So while you're down on the ground, here …

Hold someone.

My one-trick dog knows “stay” –

Quivers in his house for days.

But if I sit on the lawn, humming softly …

He'll come out and play.

The girl downtown thinks coffee makes time

& swallows her food whole when she dines.

But when she sits by the pier watching ships crawl, …

Her breath starts to unwind.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

The booth boy at the carnival goes

To the gym each night and sweats through his clothes

dreaming all that cotton candy melts away from him …

As he grabs that bar and rows.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

She ignores it as the sun falls, but then

The Ferris wheel's too bright not to win.

So he hands her a ticket, “Angels free.” She thinks …

(nice arms). My God, amen.

You're gonna die some day.

That link will break away.

So while you're down on the ground, here …

Hold someone – hold someone.

“Eaten”

(Maurice Sendak spur)

       – 8 May 2012

Found it.

In the kitchen, like

It was supposed to be –

Eaten.

But mother said that

Such things meant aches for me.

Still I

Couldn't help but touch

The leaf or spider or –

Ink stain,

Small and beautiful.

I knew what it was for.

Cherish

Even food, they say.

For all joys are born to –

Perish:

fading, scattering,

Tickling young boys' tongues(

You do).

JK's most commonly used Principles:

      – 23 May 2012

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See a need; fill a need.

Leave it as good as you found it.

(Everything else is extra credit.
But if you move a piece of trash, consider it yours.)

Everybody dies.

(This, my antidote to embarrassment.)

Say 'thank you'; show 'sorry.'

Everything is fuel.

(For un-clinging to things.

A distillation of William Blake's “Ride your cart & your plow over the bones of the dead.”)

Why walk when you can run?

My life is a balance of excesses.

You can learn something from everyone.

Better a dog than a devil.

Make all decisions from your deathbed.

Unless we are discontented, we will never change.

*