quiet now. the sounds might here you…

 Hand Creams and House Blend

there are always several women sitting
cross-ledged at the wire tables at the rear of
the cafe, making small noises to each other and
their own hands; their hands never talk back.

and older man in light denim bends
over at his waste, folding in his chair,
as if something sudden had happened to his shoes.
he makes a small ugly sound, something akin
to the noise a fledging crow might make
failing at flight and difficultly finding
a lower branch; neither the table nor the shoes
can help to clear his airway
but they are all that bear his presence.

he had become as invisible as
his father had been after his working
days ended with a silent lack of integrity.

forcing the bitter burn of coffee past
his screaming tongue and budgingly
into his throat, he felt the air come back.
he swallowed a few hard breaths and stood
rolling his paper and wrapping his napkin
around the heat of his cup of coffee
and made for the door.

before his exit a white-haired woman
with round eyes and sagging cheeks put
her limp hand on his forearm and asked
if he had been choking, if he was okay; she could not tell.
he nodded once with a slight smile and replied that
he needed something to wake him anyway.

as he pushed through the back door
into the smell of morning, he caught
a glimpse of himself in the glass.
it swung past him–too fast for him to
recognize his own face.

one woman at the table sneezed into her hands.
the old man blessed her. her hands said nothing.
she worried she might have offended them.
she apologized
but still no reply.

The straightest lines I remember ever writing…

The Best of Us (Love Us When We’re Not Watching)

The best of us have made their quiet turns
making chestnut drawers in desks overflow with records,
ugly detail and tedium in plagues–
those things that squint our eyes and cause
our fat fingertips to drag up and down the center
of our greasy foreheads, same as our father’s fingers dragged.

The best of us take the traditions of teeth and pennies
to bed where nightmares live and myths are jolly
as lies in a hand or two of life beneath sour cigar smoke.

The best of us have learned to cry invisibly, back behind
those dusting dresses under the red wicker sewing kit,
stepping all over over-turned shoes that are always expected
to leave redder marks as their feet grow paler
and their ankles go weak in forgetting stirrups.

The best of us make phone calls from the road
on their way to nurse their mother to a comfortable death
and ask without the slightest bitter irony
“How are you feeling? Did you get the check in the mail yet?”

When in the woods, when I am feeling youthful again…

I Don’t Know What, But I Know I’m Forgetting Something

I sat alone in the same room
for nine days with two chairs
leading two different lives

I watched the film I thought I’d wait
to watch with you but
in the end, before I started
it, decided I’d better understand
if I were alone with it

I gained some slow weight
and saved the bags in which it came.

for nine days I forgot grammar
and spelled words like a dream.

now I think maybe one day I’ll
remember how I’m supposed to be living
remember my filthy childhood
find my way back beneath the sand
before the plywood rotted and
the alarm went off.

We, as the growers of new and carriers of old, do not punctuate our ends or beginnings.

“A Tiny Singing Voice Emerges From A Swimming Pool”
[a story, a hypothetical, a paranoia]
When presses of anxious child-feet
push against our insides out
and the trees of our roots are blooming
the blossoms we will hang around our necks
and wear like royal garments
The riggling worms in our grainy history
will tie into grape-vine gift wrap
and you will be uncovered
and taken out of your hide house
and given reluctantly to the future days
of tree climbing and seed sewing
When the stories we have written
all conclude with a preface for a tale
we can neither write,
our graves will be dug and given
the smiles and laughter with which
gods will greet us as we step down
from our recent thrones

When there is hope for men I will finally doze and wake into the same dream.

“Prayers That God May Curse Other Angels”

the able-minded men sometimes make
a sorry case for strength,
with folding brows they might mistake
the softest rounds of honest cheeks

long across the shoreline’s break
or the gentle age of mountain lakes
for a heaven or a holy face,
for a future solid under shaking feet.

Kindly aims are no account for fakes,
for promised lands for exclusive faith,
If our devotions bring us snakes
over ankles, hiding quiet teeth.

Our world has known many to wake
from uneasy prophecies, to forsake
the future storms of black and flame,
the fires lit as, for gods, we seek.

able-minded men read books of guilded page,
sometimes convict truth with hate,
and spoil peaceful bread with ego’s waste
as age comes quick to leave hope weak.

we, the tiny, should worry beyond ourselves except in good will toward our gods.

“If We Can Feel the Coming End”

When the men are all bitter from the wars
Waged with stomachs emptied of memories of their mothers
And the women have lost their tears for loneliness and love
Gone way of the spirit of Roman ghosts,
We will have fallen asleep too few nights
In the beds of comfortable souls…

When the wells are full of family’s bone
And our children have lost their thirst for history–
In from the fields to pass their hours
Frightened and heavy in the corners
Of graveyard walls, eyes to the flashing lights
Of cemetery cities grandpa built
With his rough, rifle-and-hammer hands…

Grim neighbors have built their fences
Too often around our gardens
And we have only the age of Earth to repair us,
Only Appalachia’s legacy to hold our hope.

three: a meager mustering by a tangled tongue

01.
FOREGOING PROCESSES OF ELIMINATION

having finally found a solid piece of earth,
i have found a tiny truth to sew at my feet.
it merely takes a single bird to teach
the wanting to fly; and there are many
teachers who will lead you into glass.
maybe all but one.

02.
A NEW BOX

i found a slip of page
carrying your hand in light
buried among the tallest grasses grown–
taller than the sticks you found
full of Spanish snails.

the clouds had fallen
into your words with disregard
for a lovelessness as small as yours,
and some roots had their own
say in orange stains.

as i read your note to no one,
falling backward onto a pillow
of memories i’d forgot to revisit,
i couldn’t help but think that
what you need is a good box.

03.
WHEN YOU PRAY INTO THE DARKNESS, SOMEONE MAY BE LISTENING

you placed it there,
on a park bench, singing
secret songs for spirits gone.

i was lost and tired
enough to rest my legs,
hung over a bench
in my travels’ path,
a bench by which
you had passed.

i read your song,
know the words and believe
that my legs have rested
too long, too far
from where you may be traveling.

Two new, in the hush of passing opportunity.

01.
A TEST OF PATIENCE, OR THE FLAW OF THE FAITHFUL

What we think the both of us should know
Is hidden in the mouth of a hungry fish
And we have built our fences up around it,
Like a home in the flatlands you never grew up in–
You without your fences,
Holding none of your family at bay.

And I am a retired bird-watcher who,
By the small and discrete graces of ghosts,
Have begun to find the soil again,
Have begun to notice the flowering scripts
That rivers write as the moon stops in
And leaves again with waves.

Maybe I will find you sleeping on a boat
Drifting by, blinded by dreaming,
Fluttering eyes closed against your hands
And the ribs of a wooden hull,
Breathing slightly below the leaves
And the footsteps of timid rodents.

If you will wake I will cast a line
Across your bow to pull you in
To the foot of a new and steady home,
But if you will remain in sleep,
I will listen hard with a fool’s hope
That you will mumble, from your dreams,
Through your lips, my simple name.

02.
WE WHO WAIT HAVE ONLY ANCHORS IN THE MUD

Will you come again to my field,
Up among the oaks and chestnut?
Will you push and pull your oars
Against the fallen rains of winter,
To once again tell me stories of
The people God never left behind?

I pray–unpracticed–you’ll find a breath of time,
Between new loves and approaching dreams,
To find me among the croaks and crickets,
Burning a slow warm flame in an empty box
And sing, soft and rough through the shade trees–
Turned to shadow forests by the star-starved night–
A song you wrote once about a floating love you’d found.

Come again, without warning or fear, to me.
I am not waiting–my breath ceased holding
When the river spilled from its old path,
To the far side of town, across a bridge above dust–
But I will smile straight through myself entirely,
Upon your miracle return while making tea
Of flowers and river water, which we will take
With honey and the company of God.

“Home-come and Re-lapsing (FUCK!)”

There is again a faded bird
that once flew over and beneath white tiles,
bent and balanced in front of me,
blind as I held on
to a plain view of young roses.
She’s flown by again tonight
in a distant dark
and Im up again with lumbering lips
trying again to learn her whistling call,
to know her song and eyes again.

I know it’s an evil song, beneath her lost eyes.
I know its full of hapless circles that will leave me
and take off for tilted seasons.
I know there must be some viral thing in me,
some allergic crutch.
That is all there must be to keep me
so fixed on finding again
her lost and hollow bones.

on becoming someone worth boasting about…

here’s the idea, a plan for a better self, a blueprint before a sturdy home for my pride.

part one: freeing anonymity.
forget myself. lose that idea of myself that defines my actions as i go through life building a complete portrait of myself. disregard outside views of who i am, for if there is no i, who are all of those people looking at, what is there to which guilt and consequence can be attached?

part two: selfish charity.
rid myself of all possessions not necessary in my elemental survival. not as an act of the good man, the humanitarian, but as the act of a man lessening his load in an already difficult journey, preparing for a quick escape in the case such an escape is needed.

part three: thoughtless honesty.
no more pleasing, no candy-coated veils to throw. empower myself, strengthen the foundation of my integrity by saying all things as they truly are. be unafraid of the tears of others. in fact, consider tears as possible proof that i am an honest success.

part four: inconvenient family.
bear the burden of family. wear the label of a last name like the badge of a martyr. find a wife. collect her life and make it my own. make new lives and shape them to serve me, feed my pride, and further carry the badge.