29 december

pleased like a breeze that drew its breath from dew that flew the coop and recouped its losses tossed like a salad and sung like a ballad to the end of broken hearts: let us depart in pieces in the name of delores and all the pie pieces that fit together to weather storms that coffee cups can cure and that tea can draft off decaf wafts the troughs and all the cattle calls I’m stalling out I’m falling bouts of cannon powder the wonder at ceasing at never releasing the tension I’m trying not to mention what never could have been and the neighbors change the spin as their newspapers turn their pages as the bicycles raise their wages we are all just counting time until the parade begins again the cliff the riffs and all the circuses the next gig the carnival’s big and the commercial’s almost over for my next trick the easy lick and the bridge with the electric guitar from spain the one from the stolen train from the night with the moon in the mountains when that girl with the blankets broke those hearts and the wine and the trees changed his mind and I turned to a different page but the hills and the winds and the colors and the rains and the seas and the everelse and if you knew then I’d already be gone so let’s laugh as the eyelids grow otherwise and let’s turn down the sequels for the now

27 december

looking at the statistics you can just miss the butterfly flapping surprise in the face of all comers the numbers adding up the pages and the rage is the thing you can eclipse the sun the rips the run right around the stocking locking all the barrels and caroling all the tunes we and the moon and the man with the swoon in his step we leapt past the sweep and we keep our own counsel we trim our own tinsel and if you ask me there's a bonnet for that bee but don't let me keep you don't let me deep you into the motion because i'm too good for my racket i'm too taut for my tennyson and the fun has begun again without the standard four-part dropout service the candles can't handle their wax these days and we pray for delivery in thirty minutes or less if the creek don't rise and the cheese won't slide but the good lord's willing to let the toppings go their own separate ways the raise could be happening the napkins could be dampening in the passenger seat of a hopeful-eyed radio-singer-along we're strong in our faith of something good happening i am wondering and wandering out under the sky because otherwise well where are you really it's hard to be over it although sometimes you're through it and sometimes you knew it but never can you see it if you're right in the middle of it and reading you're like shove it! but so nice that you don't say that because hey if you could weigh that you'd have quite a pound of hay that doesn't matter at all

25 december

With thoughts that hot the toddy boils over and the snow freezes in its boots the ice in cahoots warms its winter whiles and the smiles shake up the bacon whether it’s turkey or tofu whether there’s no fool like the present the pheasant or another the wonder of weather the feathers and the betters the whiles we forgive and the guiles we give in place of sense these are the mentionables and we haven’t got the cases to set aside the rest the studies are the best and the situations in the labs leave the rest up for grabs I have got to tell the carolers to turn up all the volumes because no one’s coming to the door and no one’s got the words anymore I remember the time with the kazoos when we’d forgotten the lines but those were different times and we had all the addresses we had very different stresses and totally different dresses in those days and these ways are sweet as well the ways we tell that time has passed the waves have crashed and sure we make mistakes like so many cakes baked and cooling in the windows for passers-by to smell and stop by and ask about and maybe even taste or steal away when we’re not looking and when we notice that we’re gone we hide our faces in our hands and when our neighbors wonder whether we cry we hide again because we laugh our mistakes our gone and carried off and why then should we cry as off they go down tangled paths to meet new characters creators and wanderings

23 december

The thing is altogether too delicate to say with words. I had a herd of feelings come stumbling through my lips but my tongue eclipse the sounds and my teeth drowned them completely. I mumbled something about consideration and the rain that falls between syllables but no one was listening anyway when I was finished and it was hard to tell if they’d been listening when I’d started. The hardest part is the middle but the beginning is a bit rough, too. Following through to the end will get you. I remember walking out the door, day after day, carrying a bag of things to finish at home. Days when nothing was ever completely done, when I was glad to leave, but still. Was there anything I would have rather done? I left anyway. This is what we do. Love, leave. Stop, drop, roll, rock. There are times when I see the big picture but I’m not sure where I am in it. There are times when I can figure on sitting back and letting everything happen, just riding along with the current, then I remember that current is electricity, too. A little learning is a dangerous thing, combined with a ridiculous sense of language and humor. My mind’s too quick for my sense to make much of. My teeth could be whiter and my skin could be smoother. My hair could be wavier and my everything could be more, you know, the opposite. Other than all that, I don’t fall out of a mirror. That being said, it’s time to move on. Language, facing itself, factors arguments against equations and nitpicks diction. Quick to draw, the curtain certainly takes its time in closing on this particular episode, loaded with navel-gazing and vague bits of phrasing though offering little of insightful value at this time. All in good rhyme, without reason or crime, and the clock ticks on toward Christmas.

16 december

Sorrow enough to borrow without any thought of begging off or stealing away, the fray at the edges and the hedges needing mended—the friendless and the weary brushing off worries and hurrying past, catching no backward glances. These are days that should never come. Dark shadows cast longer and alphabets with the wrong number of letters for pronouncing with tongues that don’t make sense, throwing off the speakers who struggle with the details: this is not the right news, these are not the right views. Who would have done otherwise? Who would have said anything else? Those who do the job, who know the role, who say the words and mean it. To grow, to shape, to protect, to mold. There are tears and they are easy. There are answers and they are few. There is no job more important, no service more clear: to grow, to protect, to teach. I struggle, now, as I wonder how my days will change as my title does, and I wonder at the power of such events to shatter and to shake. Selfish and ego-ready to turn so swiftly inward, but I know this service, this mission will always be strong within me, and this dark breaking will turn slowly to healing and to remembrance, to love of strength and values, toward positive action and away from the creation of sensation.

14 december

The question was whether I would ever go to sleep early again. The character balked, the dog talked, and all the action continued. There was no rest. The quest, the distress: conflict found no resolution. The author’s life wrote itself. I painted myself a new career, a different sphere. The sentences became abrupt as I changed tones. The groans. Moans of wonder. The color scheme. A pattern emerged, urged caution. Sleep.

Lights of the holiday sort purporting to—this is what happens when I attempt capitalization the space facing the nation with public ideas we are fearing ourselves we are toasting ourselves with old-fashioned prop-bread no-flip slice appliances the kind where you see all the bread on that laid-out wire thing the wide-winged scheme with the dreams of other sorts of wonders the carrots and the sticks licking each other’s wounds as no one motivates no one dinner dates the way to the top fast enough the race not only to the commonest of cores to the bitterest of anemones we seize these days we raise our hands and toast our glasses we and all the masses of wonders adding up the numbers: are we telling the truths we see fit to pringle to print to crispy chip into answers we dance upon prancers and wonder into the laptops of otherwise reasonable situations we face nations and we cast aside starches we raise shimmering arches and capitalism reigns the metaphors the anecdotes and this is how we hokey poke the story times that just won’t folksy up to me close enough but I’ll call that bluff and I’ll write that wrong into edited reason the calendar season the easygo reason I will tell you what I think and I will listen to what I know but by the time the clock says snow I will hope to be ahead I will hope the winter’s lessons will have rushed into the progress of a thousand sweeping wonders of a distant memory this is trampling down a rhythm that I ought not to have used and I didn’t see it coming until now it is too late so I’ll finish up this line now and I’ll turn to other things as the words all come more slowly and the end is here at last

11 december

But when I turned around again the room had spun and the war was won! It was incredible. Inedible, like an egg after breakfast, a taskmaster seeking disaster of someone else’s making. There is no bacon too rowdy for this household. I’m tired of the discourse that charts sports we can’t ford. The battles are to the weakest when the kings are for the stable. We are looking for the tables as we listen for the triumph and we’re watching for the rhythm that must follow as we ride. Stop.

These are the angles we get into when we try, when we look and fumble, when we cook and stumble more than recipes allow for, the storage bags that just don’t lock, the aggravated seconds that just won’t clock. Watching football for hours and worrying after the score that subtracts the minutes the winningest seconds from firsts and the worst of it is the best can’t pass the stress tests without losing all their assets. You know it and I blow it every single time, every other rhyme, no waiting, jingle-belling and simon-saysing, raising daisies and calling all the kettles black, keeping off the other track. If you had two cars, I would give you mine. These are all the answers I can keep from other times, strapped into my pockets and wrangled up with cash. Shake your legs and whistle while you sleep. These are the secrets that the middle-schoolers keep: no one knows the answers but the questions still run deep! We are the older ones but wiser’s still a ways, the worrying will get you as you vanish in the haze, a crazy phase you thought would pass as the vanishing goes, as the alabaster roses bloom and the castle haunts take their turn with an overrunning holiday. Why be restrained to once a year? There’s plenty here to boo about much less to lose a shoe about to stir another rue about or roué or true to spell about the spill of letters mills about and I for one am one to shout when all these letters get turned out the wrong way but it’s a long day’s journey into this night for those of us with little getting done so let’s reach up and tug the sun with a cue and a stick and see if the hint gets through.