justwrite 9 december

no matter the weather the sharks still snap still collapse those jaws into claws into tender unsuspecting skin the sinking we are thinking of may not be recoverable from the countless nuns and the manymany monks swimming in their trunks of memories are shivery in the summer air their clothes worn out of habit in the habit of being in the habit nothing much to grab it from the view nothing much to offer you a different truth just on the inside even when we can’t hide our thirst for juice we imagine the truth is easier to find is a more accessible kind than the rinds of melons I saw in my dream in between waking times the refrigerator opened and with hope full in my mouth I tasted this fruit with my eyes somehow no surprise to find these round green greetings rolling out and toward into the sense of existence we’ve all tried to resist but now awake I mistake the sentiments I meant to send I tried to pretend but in the end the differences were greater there was now and now there’s later but they all taste the same they all call my name in different accents they all pitch strapping tents ready for the wind to sail to catch a flailing flap a trapped pole holding itself to the earth like so many pegs driven into the right holes though the earth’s whole paradigm is a different sort of shift when you lift your foot to look you find square holes round soles and something soft enough to build with here you fill it with sand with gravel you pretend that you travel but instead you pace around you hallow your ground with your own steps and what’s next is the house that you built and we know this nursery rhyme and suddenly you are jack with a few twitches of a pen you might be jumping over a candlestick or grumbling over a serving dish picking out the vegetables and passing on the meat the neat way up the beanstalk is yours too if you talk to the right cow-buyer and I can’t help but admire all these glorious stories that you might end up in sinking or swimming or sticking in your thumb to pull out a plumb but oh what a good one you are sitting there in the corner mourning over your dependence on rhyme although at the same time being pleased to be freed of the disease of enjambment a scandal sent from modern factions still safe from gaining traction in the fairytale world so don’t worry don’t hurry up that hill just fetch that pail of water or whatever else you oughter ‘cause when the tumbling after starts going on then it’s anybody else’s song to sing and I won’t be held accountable

justwrite 8 december

now I am preparing for the rumors to spread for the dread to take hold of the knots and box in the parked car we cannot get far with this attitude the rude dudes behind the counter and the changegrabbers looking for higher amounts are we ready to move forward are we sititng all day at the same window looking after dreams and proclaiming sunset scenes in unseen skies fried like pans full of oil and water splattering fog into the courtyard hardening and slowing down obscuring the view the truth often told but seldom heard is a word too certain to hurt feelings we are revealing the yielding of results the tumult of a somersault is hardly worth reenacting retract those statements save those placements for another sunny day when the map stays unfolded this is a hand that isn’t holded but neither scolded nor this hair upbraided maybe some sighs have faded maybe some angles aren’t trying anymore but that’s the store and that’s what you can buy this is the field and there is the rye the marble the wheat waxing flaxen leaning toward pumpernickel with a hammer and a sickle finishing off one history and reaching for the next while the text keeps turning to new pages with plentiful stages of development the plots we spent on our own entertainment the saving graces racing across the frontier steering clear of civilization for they offer too much information that isn’t needed that doesn’t need heeded those rapid steeds leading the way to different days in unexplored corners rushing from the mourners and throwing the black off of their backs dressing in pigtails and hooliganism the kind without sports the kind that purports to think in rainbow languages and to listen to all the right tastes the colors of sound and the rounded bouts of synesthesia the combination of sensations the conversations between to have and to hold and the old ideas breezing by the new the tried the true and the tired and the brewing up cupping hands to the sky and looking up there are plenty of things to say but not in that direction there are no corrections to make no apologies to give from this angle and we cannot strangle something that is already gone we cannot sing along to words we don’t have we cannot grab more metaphors than are reasoned for our consumption there’s something to say but I don’t want to and you wouldn’t like it if I did there are big thoughts and they are caught in the trees on the way to elsewhere while you fish at them with a kite through another sleepless night

justwrite 7 december

there’s no caffeine in this machine the revolution may be internal but it’s an infernal racked while I’m trying to sleep while I’m in kneedeep in issues trying to dig my way out trying to catch trout of the rainbow kind loosely defined as freams the seeds of such scenes as we’d like to activate to water witht eh slaughter of apathy but the antipathy suggests to me that only so many ribbons can be worn only so many heads can be shorn to make a point and how out of joint your legs would be if you tried to free every cause from its marathon the race going on must be run in teams and when it seems to you to be your turn then earn that bread that liberal bed you sleep in lets you steep in sympathy gives energy toward causes and applauds effects looks on to what’s next and takes notes leaves hope in the box and switches up the clocks to let you have the time to unwind the problems and maybe not to solve them but to swim in those shoes for miles in atticus finch style and to do what must be right in any shade of day or night while still washing the dishes while keeping up with laundry and mowing if it’s a lawn you’ve got growing on and so on until the dealing’s done and we have run out of cards to play but there’s still plenty left and I haven’t had my say

justwrite 6 december

not sure what to say about that piece there’s a puzzle but it’s been muzzled nestled in the mothballs calling out the cannons from behind the sofa and there are hopes standing out on the corner waiting for the wind to die down but it lives on and the strong bury the treasure measuring steps away imagining gold can stay buried in poetry or otherwise that’s a surprise I still haven’t read a tea leaf I haven’t brewed and the truth is a lifeline away but not the gameshow kind and not the one that palmreaders have in mind waiting to be done waiting is not the way to move forward let’s make a schedule a deal a feelgood philosophy moving upward onward toward a helicopter landing in an auspicious square the way you dare to plant something in this soil is not quite excusable really hardly usable and the temperature besides leaves something to be desired being fired without being clay leaves something to say and it’s not hello and there are mellow corners of the universe I’m drifting toward what about all those windows open into the night they are letting out the light sifting life through squares in easy-to-compare doses the movers and the shakers and the candlestick makers all those takers out doing their thing and the givers realizing shivering but with their pockets still out with their doubts still pushed aside this one won’t hurt this loan will be repaid the fading colors will return will earn interest it’s an investment and the best meant and the best believed equally deceived but this is a different chapter the laughter of those pages and the stages upon which snow falls again the scandal of a lamp post catching just the right angles down in the courtyard it isn’t hard to imagine tragedy it’s easy to freeze with eyes wide open and a mouth full of air but to compare what’s being said and what’s being heard is to notice the absurd coming in at the ears we have fears and we wrap ourselves in safety nets neglecting to remember that these are not warm but there are storms over those seas and the breeze is more than necessary the dispensary of hard knocks clocking the tower right in the face and replacing the chase with the seeking the hiding and the finding the neverminding the pleasant surprising and I wouldn’t mind subscribing to that I wouldn’t mind sitting on that quiet end of the table and learning to listen more remembering that there’s no score and it’d be easy to say that everyone wins but that’s just not the case there’s plenty left to face besides what’s in the mirror but the quieter the clearer and it’s a find I don’t mind mining in the meantime

justwrite 4 5 december

now we’ve made it to this season and there is no reason to rewind we had fine times but we drank that wine before it was ready and the steady-going rumor is a tomorrow we can’t fathom hard to imagine such a grand canyon between what we thought we brought and what we truly bought when the bag was opened and our hopes were roped in to and really what I came here tonight to tell you is a new view on falling I was walking I was talking maybe hurrying the buttons on my coat yes but the zipper no it cannot stand pressure and will not start up will not do its duty when there’s any sort of hurryup attached and when we left the restaurant so I was thinking too bad too drafty but crafty of those makers to attach a backup plan and I’m not saying they were anticipating faulty craftsmanship but maybe they knew my fingers would slip or the zipper would trip itself up anyway the play resumed and into the zoom the freezer faster moving zone honing in toward home when suddenly I was down hard and it was simply a fact I took a moment to react propped myself up on my elbows and surveyed the situation then got up with little hesitation and said yes I said yes I’m fine thanks only wow that was a surprise and no it’s the first time this year and she said well then it’s the only time it’s a sign you won’t fall anymore this winter and a splinter of pain worked its way from my palm to my neck and when I wake up it will check me in one place and I will face the ceiling feeling just a little off and wondering how that happened but I will adapt and then go about my day stretching through the way it ought to be but what I meant to turn to first was the ride back toward home in a bus with frosted windows the glass flashed in fractals and no way to tell but to lean to the front windshield to see it yield some sort of clue where you want to be had better be where you are because there’s no way to find another but out I went stepped into the snow again and scanned the path a small slip a skip a slide but forward and on until I found myself in the middle of a field a collection of dips and swells and ankle-grabbing dents and having spent half the energy to get across I looked up and was lost suddenly falling again but this time into the sky the stars so clear not far but easy to trip into and be suddenly gone and in the morning when I wake up I will see these same stars and I will wonder as I check myself into place stretching into day

justwrite 3 december

underneath the sidewalk the blazing saves itself keeps warmer the route forward we are tired of making meaning with our words we’d rather you heard what we felt like saying instead of playing along within the lines the colors are fine but the pumpkin is squash and there are no more vegetables waiting in the snow it’s a cold wind blowing but the buttons are all sewing themselves right on singing getalong songs in the back of the auditorium the boring funs around the track counteract the view and it’s true that it’s the same but the game gets played anyway like why do the commercials always work when the recording skips over key sorts of details it never fails the pie gets baked a thousand mistakes at a time but there’s no worry no rush no foul no fuss and we don’t even have to play baseball to swing that one we don’t have to trust a busted set of chops hopping over the fence into the woods and through the other side of day we are playing those songs that we used to remember but now we forget and we’re wondering when it’ll hit us that all that’s past is gone and the stronger lines have already been spoken the TV remote has always been broken and we haven’t got a chance I was never one for dance of the public sort the distortion of mirrors is not enough to bluff this viewer the truer the look the faster the exit and it would take a lot of smoke to shoot down that attitude to light that fire all the drier sheets in the world couldn’t lap up that static and when the sound comes in from the hall I will wonder again if it’s a child a cat if it’s a scattering anything that needs to be gathered up there’s too much time on the screen and not enough on the clock and when I pick up what I’ve bought I’ll wonder about the receipt I will keep the records discreet but when you play them save them softly ride them like rafts into crafts of different sorts distorted or purportedly straightforwardly those are for you and the usefulness has worn off I am scoffing at my feet in the double socks and slippers and I am still not taking anything off I haven’t got anything to hide but I’ve tried to seek and tried to find and pay no mind to the time it takes to look and the books I’ve still to write are waiting in the overthere and they can stay for now they can sit for now and they can roll over for later we all have our own best tricks

justwrite 1 2 december

there is no space left in my dream journal and so I cannot go to sleep I’ve got to keep treading treacherously across the ice and I am remembering that this is how it is this is the time there is rhyme but no reason and it’s a treasonous season this is when people lose their faces and turn into feet I cannot look up I cannot watch for trucks or other greetings there are only steps to take turning into mistakes too easily too slippery the road and too slippery the walk we balk at easy errands comparing outside ventures with perilous indentures we are selling ourselves too cheaply and needing things too deeply when we ought to stay at home and monitor the situation we have some sources of frustration inside yes but here it’s easier to stand them it’s easier to stand up straight to face the wind and to spin easily today the way seemed clear enough but it was another bluff to call anybody’s fall today and there’s a lot of knocking on wood in this neighborhood and yes I stopped and did it yes I rapped on the table once and I’m a dunce if I don’t and I’m done if I do too because there’s more of the same where that came from and it’s not a plain plain it’s a slippery slope made of hope and water crystals a mystical system a problematic cistern dumped upside down drowning easygoing mopes with their summertime hopes all along the wayside it’s a quick glide or a careful step forward and we’re all warned but some have to hurry some have to worry and the bus doors won’t open and the bus floors are hopefully clean but not in the freshest wettest icy of ways where we save ourselves the trouble of walking when the lurch goes forward and the feet slide along inches at a time and it’s an uphill climb to see where it’s all going next but with any pretext I will hide under the covers for a few more minutes just to see what’s in it for me which is warmth and safety and yes I’ll go out and yes I’ll face doubt but in the meantime I’m just fine and I can see alright from here