task: explain why your
average well-educated
super-smart adult can't
explain themselves to
their children
when they don't get
how people act
how the world works
what to expect when the future
comes

explain why
professionals
in any number of fields
can't tell me what
I should be doing to be
healthy wealthy and wise
the decisions I should be making
to live forever
and defeat my foes

explain why the people
who tell me that they
have the answers
and can lead us through
crisis, famine, and plenty
go to work
and proceed to steal my money
and make my decisions
for me
and I don't get anything out of the deal

I stood at the edge of the field
and slowly squeezed
until I felt the force and
there was no way to see it
careening out of the muzzle flash
but I caught a glimpse of
lead and paper
before it struck in a
wisp of dust in the
dirt backstop
and in that sliver moment
was the heart of effect
and the drive of revolution
so I squeezed again

under yet-unborn skies

bringing

and belonging

and reminding

the glass casket tablets,

etched with our eyes

encircled with the incantations

of abdicated thrones

and the steely gaze of man

hovering behind

He awoke one morning with his lips sewn shut his lips stuck together and his nostrils flaring to suck in air. There wasn’t enough room there to wave down help and there wasn’t enough steel on the walls to block the radiation images beamed from the aether. His screams were hums and his cries were muffled gasps in space. There were no other ways about it and in the end he knew he was done for, but he got up just the same. He kicked the door to hear the echoing pings, watch the waves of sound bounce in the still space. He palmed the brushed matte walls and pressed his oily face against the surface to feel its touch, to beg for, to seek any sign from outside. Betraying his position. Casting hot breath on the alien grooves. Where had he come from, where had he gone? He reached for the corner of the room and his hand seized in place and the steel wrapped gelatinous around his wrist and crawled to his arm and agitated the flesh of his back. It spread across and around him and it ached him and prodded and slit him, and he moved less and less, he struggled and it held, and he pressed his chest and forced his jaw shut so that he could not beg for release, and it clenched around his eyes and ears and he could not perceive space and he could not sense the distance closing around him. The living steel burnished him and penetrated his pores and it met itself around his last bit of flesh and there it collapsed him into a point.

ring true like
the last smile you
flash a brick wall
before the mortar cracks

smile chaste and
hold in a good long puff
stonefaced and upright
and walk like that
from now on

yards all bent-bladed

brittle, decayed, splintered, and coiled

under the dark weight

of those light, only-a-little leaves

all layered and pressing down

and, combined, smothering

I halfsquared five doors
in the time it used
to take me to
really square one
or two

each nut hand tight in
the space of an hour
where I torqued and
double-checked
a fraction as many

and the perilous
lop-sided universe
groans in contention
with gravity with
her keepers'
better natures

wheels turn
perpetual
forever rust
in the direction
of smog-sky
and stone echo halls
and pared-down groves
and the wheels
turn along pitted
ground past suits
once stood to
coax words to
control from
miles until
only paupers
and forever wheels
remained

crouch and
pounce bloody
sputterscream and
the plan you made
for the afternoon
is off and
the car still
needs a belt
and the heat
is still
off

he broke the magnet in half

and half and half again and poured into the poles

to where is the when with the power cord around

manage your electric obligations and

raise the piano lid and slam it down again and again

and live inside the sound

Go here for to access my 38-or-so-page poem parsing published in e-book form by Chalk Editions, and be sure to check out their other excellent offerings.

swing of the hammer the impact the sound the

click of keys the arrangement of words the

final press of the button the plate metal machine the

cool exhale after finishing the

product the

monument the

ever-standing immortal and forever

Concise Delight Issue 1 available

Concise Delight Magazine of Short Poetry no. 1 is on sale now. The inaugural issue of the journal features 129 writers of short verse (including yours truly). The publisher previously edited Modern English Tanka and is founder of MET Press. The issue is available from the publisher, or at Lulu.com. Go buy one and tell them how much you love it and that you think I should be in every issue.

when I was a young'n we smiled and shimmered in the fields, threshing the wheat, sickle in hand and hood on our heads
carrying bale by bale to feed the animals, dumping feed and bagging grain
we were ages and we were the golden sun and
we were gleaming farm implements spattered mud and spattered blood and germination
we were feeding stars and shoveling politics
we were shortages, off the grid, self-sustaining and self-mutilating
the bastards, they were sorry they cut us loose when
the cities were burning and the markets were cavernous
and the last of our loamy soil was dug up for basements

Expect

d-d-d delay iso-
Late night the
Bourbon-soaked cloud bank
Haze the peripher-
All distortion
Through the
Bottom of
The glass

When I was little I ran ran, ran down

the street with my shoes untied and the

quicksand asphalt gripped my shoes – I didn’t

wait to see the wind shift, the

clouds gather – and when I saw the little blonde

at the corner I pretended

like I was sprinting so she’d look – and the last time

was when I slid on the gravel and my

feet kicked up in the graying blue – and the

trees and the clouds and the

sky all vibrated when my

head hit the concrete – and

twenty years later I forgot her name and the address of

the house but – I still have

a pebble embedded under the swirl on the back of my scalp

Chapbook Link

Link to handoutpalmup at Lulu.com