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The hapless soul, a water ring on a coffee table
and you, the bent nail in the door.

All of this, yet nothing
you haven’t heard before.

Senseless ramblings from the radio station
set in between the dials.

I see your name tumbling off bus stop benches,
swirled in graffiti on the school brick wall
and on the outside of coffee cups in the street’s litter.
Not really,
not really when I read them again.
More careful this time.

What I wish upon every person who dreams a big dream is that you have people who prop you up.  I have some people like that in my house, but I also have my friend B. who, if you’ve been tuned in all along, you may have heard me mention from time to time.

My friend B. writes me to say how awesome the writing is.  Keep it up.  Most importantly, keep going.

Have I ever mentioned I’ve never met my friend B.?

Somehow my friend B. is acutely aware of the time span in which I will become frustrated, bored, busy, etc. and think about giving up.

Did I ever mention my friend B. is a brilliant psychologist? 

Probably not because he’s not a psychologist.  But he played one while in graduate school.  He’ll foo-foo that and say he only ran rats in mazes but he always tries hide his brilliancy under a bushel.

You know what song I’m humming now?

Anyway.

I received my first copy of Writer’s Digest today.  I’ve been waiting for about 2 months.  Maybe 3.  Math is not my strong point.

It’s got a lot of commercials, so far, but also a good article about writing small in the time you have.  I have to say that I resemble that remark.  Have a ten minute sonnet to fade out:

Ten minute sonnet – June 14.06

There was no release to the pressure of

having to come up with a thigh to rhyme

and fit in the space, and meet the half

of the lip, the thrust of misspent sky time

writing your name in walking rhythm, da

Dum, da Dum.  Some type of chest drum keeps this

song a chorus of birds sitting on the

emergency party line.  Come in, Miss

April, mind your mark.  Smile for the people,

bend over for the crowd, be a sweetie,

wipe the seatie.  4 minutes, no more pull,

no more room.  Shaddup and get the pointy.

Even you can formulate.  Its chaos

contained, Mr. November.  All bathos.

What the heck was I trying to say?  Whoo.

Everything must rhyme

today,

 for everything has a beat.

Much too much walking

astray,

and too much time on feet.

Laden is an inert verb when laid upon your back, the eaves trough, a pine branch. Always it implies snow, at least at this latitude. I imagine you bent with the weight of my ardor as though two buckets of water hung from a pole across your back. Even the word is heavy and hard to drop from my tongue. Winter impending threatens to turn this water to ice and snap the branch of my respite.

The story of his life

is the story of mine.

                -Anne Sexton “The Legend of the One-Eyed Man”

He lives the here and there

of a travel job, making acquaintances

forgotten past Tuesday,

collecting matchbooks

with stranger numbers

than his own.  His colors

ring metal, sob silver, dull

brown, same sailboats nailed

to the wall.  They do all

look alike, he muses and fancies

himself a doctor who has

shelved his bedside manner

with last night’s litter.

There are evenings

he just goes to sleep.

the wee children screeching in the summer  woods

doesn’t end under nightly nine.

that’s when the zombies

arrive.  their unstuffed grunts of hilarity

in the piney poplars

precede the bonfires, prelude

the beer bottles,

and preface the singular dirty sock

found on the pathway next day

as an exclamation to the moon cabbage moon.

we’ve tried calling the cops.

they tell us to keep our children inside.

we tell them the zombies were our wee children

once

last summer.

As waves pounding this shore

of unrelenting mountain, foothill and field

I am the valley reciprocate

of this white void.

Channel 83 tuned in to the weather

comes up with nothing

but blank stares. 

It is an avalanche of emotion

just opening the curtains.

I am ploughed swift into a vast

refrigerator with a burnt-out light bulb.

I will scream mutely for any breath

only to  be found in this ordinary tundra,

stiff,

 yet still surprised.

I don’t have the feeling I have been here before but

I have been land before.  Cactus spine,

my seeing eyes,

a craggy of rock, my ear.

To hear that melancholy wind blow

as a ship yet unseen.  Oh water,

even you remember being here,

of being desert.  You mourn and wail

when the clouds are low

wanting to excavate the fish bones

that lime the soil with pernicious hope

of another salty Gomorrah.  Lines of nets

roam the shored banks of highway,

droning a lullaby of nothing and nothing then

shock-jumped into the metal end of mortality.

While travelling through Nevada

it is easy to forget my cactus spine,

my craggy rock, to be caught by the lighted lure,

 to ignore the lyre of a ship still unseen.

I have been you before.

The guy next to me on the train

is listening to Nirvana

and sticking out his chin

in time to the bass drum

quite like a rooster does

when he’s looking to mate.

He smells like deep fry and ashtray

and has dog hair on the thighs

of his stone-washed jeans.

I wonder if he thinks Cobain

would be his friend

if only he could resurrect him.

I tap my Converse sneaker

in synchronicity with his chin thrust

and mumble sun destroys the night,

night divides the day.

When we stop

we go our different ways.