Past the No Trespassing signs are endlessly
straight paths of mythical terror, grounded with
mud that footprints are left indelibly in
beyond the time the sky clears and the moisture
in the churning dirt dries. They culminate
where enough is decided and one poof of
gusty wind responds to a set of problems
with a curt message from a mountaintop.
In flux he [...]
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Trespassed Paths
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Voices
Objects that were never worth
finding a place to leave them
have piled up and gotten coated
with the brown leaves and pine needles
of a season that must have been years ago.
The inconvenience of finding an adequate
box for it all is the black shape of a shadow
cast by a body that is not there.
Now a crucial search is [...]
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Mountain Ride Haikus
He went silent when
the words to the only song
he knew were finished.
********************
The vastness of the
continent is diminished
by the mileage signs.
********************
Imposing mountain
rock was swallowed up in the
mouth of a tunnel.
********************
The wolves’ red pupils
gleaming through the mists saw light
in the spirit, prone.
*******************
The person being
scrutinized avoids looking
directly at me.
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Suddenness
Even over the suddenness
with which bombs explode
a constancy runs, as insulated,
as cohesive as the sudden
explosion that renders everything
within the range of its destructive
reach irreparably altered:
the pieces of an erstwhile whole,
the view of a distant star,
thousands of years away.
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Meat
Preventative measures cut but miss the line and
slice down too deeply to where avoidance opens
up like water to a stone, and flows back in waves.
The meat he used was a practice block,
a disfigured knot of carvings and scars
to be burned when the pile that buried it
went over the head of opulent fantasy.
Standing invitations pend. Rooms [...]
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Ideas
The idea of mental suffering is a vicious thing.
It bites into the flesh of hours, first with fangs
then with dulled incisors, and gnaws in
as it jerks its flopping body wildly. It is flying
uncontrolled from a spring that never was chosen
toward the wall in the world where pitch dark begins
and the ability to maneuver direction is [...]
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Thirst
I have a thirst to lick damp pavement
so roughly my tongue would get stuck
with pebbles and sharp little flecks of dirt.
The doctor who I would stick it at
won’t know what to make of my condition
but will diagnose it as the closest thing
he knows with the flourish of his hand,
as supernal as a white-gloved musician’s,
which to [...]
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Farther up the Five
Words like dread and doom
had no significance to me
at the time when I was using them.
Listen to your fears, I told her,
do not be afraid of them.
They are premonitions
of the myriad ways to go.
That poor word, fear
has been invested with such avoidance
it’s become an object of shame.
The gregariousness of my ideal self
had so identified with [...]
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Up the Five
Blinking through the present
Seeing through the night
Thoughts fall back upon themselves
Eyes take me side to side
Dead ahead, down to the ground
And up into the sky
I wanted to tell you about
How I had scratched underneath
My nose the moment it happened
But found myself in a car alone
Too capriciously minded to commit
To the conclusions that words mean
Hungry in [...]
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The Queen Bee
The bees are only sleeping, keeping warm
with incessant insectile movement and the
ability to never feel chill or smell the hints of wood-
smoke pocketed at eye-level in quiet mountain towns.
Until abandonment and nihilistic perdition
come bringing death like a clattering bunch of coins
in a swinging purse hitting the thigh, which nature
rarely does except when she feels weary [...]
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